Visual Arts

Rachofskys have become more selective, but collecting contemporary works is an obsession

04:21 PM CDT on Tuesday, May 2, 2006

By JANET KUTNER / The Dallas Morning News

"See for yourself, go to any length, leave no stone unturned." That mantra has put Cindy and Howard Rachofsky on ARTnews magazine's list of the world's top 200 collectors for several years running.

BRAD LOPER/DMN

The Rachofsky top 10: Balloon Flower (Magenta) by Jeff Koons is one of Cindy and Howard Rachofsky's favorite pieces. It sits outside their 'art house' on Preston Road. Full list, 5G

What started as a casual pursuit has become an obsession.

"When Howard and I first met, we spent three weeks a year in the Caribbean, lying in the sun and drinking wine by the pool," Ms. Rachofsky says. "I've never seen a pool since."

That's only a slight exaggeration, her husband admits. "Collecting affects everything you do – your every trip, the way you budget your money, the people you hang out with, the friendships you start," he says.

The Rachofskys' friendship with Marguerite and Robert Hoffman and Deedie and Rusty Rose grew into a partnership that is transforming the Dallas Museum of Art through a bequest by the three couples of 800 contemporary pieces valued at $215 million. Six months after the gift was announced, the Rachofskys reveal the method behind their obsession.

"It's not about buying out a show or buying one of everything you see," says Mr. Rachofsky, likening the practice to stocking inventory. "There's an editing process. Our goal is make sure what we have is as good as we can find or that it tells a story in a particularly effective way."

He's a risk-taker by nature, having made his fortune as a hedge fund manager. That's reflected in his collection as well.

One of his more adventurous choices is a fragile Mark Quinn "blood head."

The British artist cast it from his own blood and the object must be displayed in a special case that keeps it frozen.

But his early collecting efforts were conservative, starting with a painting by a local artist purchased shortly after he received his law degree, moving on to a color field painting by Helen Frankenthaler, a safe bet back in the mid-1970s, then edging up to a Frank Stella he describes as "the first serious commitment, in 1982."

The Rachofskys still own the Stella, but they've weeded out a number of early purchases.

"We've sold a few dozen things over the years, usually to trade up," Mr. Rachofsky says, citing two Robert Motherwell paintings that no longer fit the direction of the collection; plus, the DMA already had one.

Ms. Rachofsky still misses a de Kooning abstraction her husband sold since their marriage in 2000.

"I was there when Howard bought it, and I loved it," she says. "I'm sorry, too," says Mr. Rachofsky, who met his wife in 1993 and involved her in collecting four years later. "But the Hoffmans have four de Koonings, and we try not to duplicate efforts. And we put the proceeds toward some works that mattered more," he adds, among them a sculpture that Matthew Barney showed at the 2003 Venice Biennale, an important figurative painting by Philip Guston and Shadow Puppet/Spinning Head , a riveting Bruce Nauman video installation that was a joint purchase with the DMA.

"Our collection has clearly evolved," Mr. Rachofsky says. "Initially it was more random, but it's moved into two broad strains of contemporary thought – one responding to the sublime minimalism of the house, things that deal with the essence of perception or perfect forms, and the other with issues of identity."

The house he's referring to is an 11,000-square-foot showplace designed by award-winning architect Richard Meier on Preston Road that is also part of the gift to the museum.

The minimalist side of the collection ranges from boxy Donald Judd sculptures to monochromatic paintings, many in tonalities of white, by Robert Ryman, a New York artist who's having a one-person show at the DMA in December.

Signature works in the identity camp include Eva Hesse's haunting self-portrait of her face with unseeing eyes and Louise Bourgeois' sculptural Cell (You Better Grow Up), a poignant reference to her troubled childhood.

The Rachofskys' interest in minimalism, an East Coast movement that originated in the mid to late 1960s, led them to post-minimalist artists such as Félix González-Torres, who carried the tradition forward with conceptual objects such as Perfect Lovers, a pair of clocks set at the same time, but slightly off.

"Next we branched out into parallel movements going on in Europe, which led us to the Arte Povera group in Italy and to works of a conceptual nature by Lucio Fontana," Mr. Rachofsky says.

The couple thinks nothing of hopping on a plane for New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin or anywhere else in quest of art. Their search for a Fontana took them to a warehouse in Switzerland, where they were offered a piece they wanted if they would agree to pay for it in cash.

"Sacks of money, to be more specific," Mr. Rachofsky says of their reason for walking away from Concetto Spaziale, which they later bought at a London auction.

The Rachofskys credit Raymond Nasher, founder of the Nasher Sculpture Center downtown, with sparking another of their interests.

"Ray's done an excellent job, but artists didn't stop dealing with new ideas in sculpture in the 1970s and that's about where his collection stops," Mr.Rachofsky says. "It was logical for us to become involved in works that move the history of modern sculpture forward."

The Rachofsky House is surrounded by sculptures: a glass pavilion by Dan Graham, a Maurizio Cattelan effigy of a young drummer that sits on a ledge above the front door, a playful Jeff Koons Balloon Flower floating in a pond on the 3 ½ -acre property. The huge front lawn is a site-specific work by the prominent West Coast artist Robert Irwin. Titled Tilted Planes of Grass and Steel , the 60-by-60-foot piece was the first privately commissioned sculpture he had completed when it was dedicated in 1999.

The Irwin, like the blood head, is high maintenance; it requires constant mowing and trimming. But whatever lengths the Rachofskys go to, there's logic behind their efforts.

"We took up the Arte Povera mantle for a couple of reasons, not just because it resonated in our collection, but because there aren't that many collections of postwar Italian art in America," Mr. Rachofsky says. With several dozen works by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, his widow Marisa Merz and Michelangelo Pistoletto, their holdings are second only to those of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The Rachofskys are ahead of the game in other areas. They've introduced Dallas audiences to works by dozens of up-and-comers such as Nigel Cooke of England, Kai Ahltoff of Germany and Tim Gardner and Laura Owens of the United States.

The couple have clear favorites. They own four works by Mr. González-Torres, six by Mr. Quinn and seven by Janine Antoni. They have multiple examples by many in the Arte Povera group and by Germans such as Gerhard Richter and Thomas Ruff.

And they've slowly acquired eight works by Jim Hodges, including Complete/Dissolve, a lyrical wall piece made from pastel-colored silk flowers, which they commissioned for their marriage.

"I think we've gotten this down not to a science, but to an art," says Mr. Rachofsky. "I tend to be an obsessive kind of character, but collecting really teaches you to look."

Ms. Rachofsky talks about an even bigger change in her husband.

"Howard never sits down to read a book or anything not work-related," she says. "This is his first real passion. He's learned what being passionate about something is. Before he buzzed around doing this and that, but now he's very focused, consumed. We both are, I guess."

E-mail jkutner@dallasnews.com