Did Richard Prince buy a townhouse? (Interview mag)

Richard Prince, famed for his paintings and photo appropriation, has not limited his acquisitiveness to muscle cars and Marlboro ads. He also appears to have appropriated a townhouse at 55 East 78th Street.

The five-bedroom brownstone has been purchased for $13.75 million by Noel's Egg LLC., according to city records. Noel's (Mr. Prince's wife's name) Egg is registered to an address that matches Mr. Prince's upstate New York studio at 151 Righter Road in Rensselaerville, N.Y.

The townhouse was not listed publicly, but the listing from the last time the house traded hands—for a mere $8.5 million back in 2010—speaks of a mahogany library, wood-burning fireplaces with marble mantels, Venetian stucco walls and a wine cellar. Best of all, it comes with hard-wired smoke detectors. Not a mere just-in-case safety measure for a man who lost one of his upstate buildings after lighting (literally) struck.

Home? Gallery? Bookstore? Studio?

Mr. Prince's by-appointment-only bookstore Fulton Ryder is rumored to be located on the same street, although the store is very hush-hush about its location. Mr. Prince is, after all, famously mysterious and more than a little evasive when it comes to pinning down the details of his past. One of Mr. Prince's employees cited the artist's preference for privacy when declining to comment on the sale when The Observer called.

But the shoe certainly fits, and what's more, it's an art world transfer. Sellers Otto and Heidi LLC are, with little doubt, Old Masters dealer extraordinaire Otto Naumann and Heidi Shafranek, who recently traded their townhouse on East 78th Street for a condo at 333 East 91st Street.

Upon moving into his new, more manageable space, Mr. Naumann told The Observer that he'd been only too happy to abandon the headaches of townhouse ownership, especially after realizing that relocating his gallery to the parlor level was unfeasible. We certainly hope that Mr. Prince, if he intends to use this space for the same purpose, has better luck.

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Cariou's work (L) and Mr. Prince's (R), photo courtesy of ArtInfo.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that Richard Prince may proceed with his appeal of a March decision that mandated he must destroy tens of millions of dollars in art work said to violate the copyright of photojournalist Patrick Cariou.

According to Artnet, Mr. Cariou had tried to stop Mr. Prince's appeal, but the three-judge Second Circuit panel ruled in favor of Mr. Prince.

The case's original judge Deborah Batts found that the photos did not fall under the terms of fair use, and wrote in her decision that Mr. Prince even testified that his art doesn't “really have a message” and has “no interest in the original meaning of the photographs he uses.” According to Artnet:

“Judge Batts put too much weight on the artist’s own characterization of his work, and the artist’s ability to articulate what their message is,” [Mr. Prince's new lawyer Josh] Schiller said.

Mr. Schiller has until Oct. 27, 2011 to file his appeal.

Baldwin and Schumer.

The swans in Town Pond paddled on serenely, unfazed by the crowds filing up James Lane toward Guild Hall. The birds, evidently, are accustomed to such revelry. The event, last Saturday, was a celebration of Richard Prince’s exhibition “Covering Pollock,” currently on display at the Hall’s gallery. The work, Mr. Prince’s latest, consists of black-and-white photographs of Jackson Pollock obscured by images of models, ’80s punk stars and various forms of old-school erotica. Inside, groups of curious viewers—some of them peering over their spectacles at the prints—made polite banter about the graphic images.

Simon de Pury, the famous auctioneer enlisted to moderate the live art sale, had flown in from Monaco for the occasion. He effused about Mr. Prince’s latest show. “It’s great to see him constantly reinventing himself” Mr. de Pury said of the artist. “He is an outstanding master. I’ve loved his work for many years. He’s getting better and better.”

Around 7 o’clock, the party caravanned up Main Street, a procession of flowing gowns and white linen pants. A stalwart member of the East Hampton police force halted traffic as guests paraded across Main Street, walking unhurriedly past stopped cars and onto the grounds of the famed Gardiner Estate.

Elizabeth Sobieski, Kim Heirston Evans, Stacey and Matthew Bronfman, former MoMA director Richard Oldenburg and his wife Mary Ellen, and a slew of Macklowes (Harry, William and a racily dressed Julie) all enjoyed the cocktail hour. “Let me introduce you to the young wife,” Patricia Durkan announced to a gaggle of other guests. “It’s just like being on my brother’s boat,” another said to her friend.

Alec Baldwin, the evening’s emcee, staked out a chair on the periphery and generally kept to himself.

Mini seemed to be the order of the evening: mini-margaritas served in diminutive Patron flasks, mini-rum and Cokes in tiny glass Coke bottles and mini-white wines in microscopic chalices. (Naturally, two full bars serving full-size drinks were available to those searching for a more generous pour.)

The night’s honoree, Martha Stewart, gracefully made her way around the party, trailed by a roving receiving line of well-wishers introducing themselves and reminding her of their acquaintance. The homemaking queen told The Observer her favorite pastime in East Hampton was walking her dogs on the beach every morning at 6:30. Frightfully early, yes, but, as we all know, dogs are not allowed on East Hampton’s beaches after nine o’clock.

As Ms. Stewart walked along the tree-lined path leading from the main house to the back lawn, where dinner was to be served, she was exhorted by an admirer. “The oldest tree in America is on this property in the back,” a member of the group exclaimed with obvious excitement. “I’ll show it to you.” “We’re going to see the oldest tree in America,” Ms. Stewart then informed The Observer as we cut through the thicket. Once in the arboreal section of the garden, the fearless leader was suddenly confused. “This is the tree. Or did they take it down?” Having perhaps seen the oldest tree in America, the group of sojourners disbanded as Ms. Stewart walked back to the path to the tented dinner area.

Mr. Baldwin, a longtime supporter of Guild Hall, took to the mic and announced the lineup. “You can feel the pulse, the buzz, the heat of this exciting teenage crowd we have here,” Mr. Baldwin said, generating a collective guffaw from the 60-something audience. “If you really want to show your appreciation for me and anything I may have done for Guild Hall, just get the hell out of my way when the Clifford Ross piece comes around. I want that Clifford Ross piece, and I’m going to get it,” Mr. Baldwin said.

True to his word, Mr. Baldwin paid $70,000 for the photograph titled Hurricane, LI, a black-and-white image of the roiling surf of Long Island. For his part, Goldman Sachs exec Donald Mullen paid $100,000 for a Barbara Kruger piece depicting a blindfolded man with the words “He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke no word, and looked at all the objects with wild and vacant stare” emblazoned on the blindfold (a quote from the harrowing Edgar Allen Poe story “The Man of the Crowd”). We thought we spotted George Hamilton in the audience, but it turned out to be a warmly bronzed Larry Gagosian. Mr. Gagosian put in a few bids, driving up those art prices as he is wont to do, but didn’t end up taking anything home.

After the auction, Keith Richards’s progeny Alexandra Richards, who was D.J.’ing, had the crowd in a youthful way, and as we took our leave Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” came over the speakers, and a sea of fists pumped into the night.

—eknutsen@observer.com

The event was emceed by Alec Baldwin and deejayed by Alexandra Richards, the daughter of Keith Richards.  Other attendees included the artist Richard Prince, Matthew and Stacy Bronfman  Larry Gagosian, Robert Nederlander, Elizabeth Sobieski and Harry Macklowe.

Prince.

In the case in which art superstar Richard Prince and his agent, megadealer Larry Gagosian, and Mr. Gagosian’s gallery were all found to have jointly infringed the copyrighted images of photographer Patrick Cariou, their appeal of the U.S. District Court’s March decision is having some trouble getting off the ground.

That’s because Mr. Cariou has moved to have any appeal tossed out. It’s premature, his lawyers are arguing, because there hasn’t yet been a jury trial to determine the damages Mr. Cariou suffered.

If that trial goes forward—either because Mr. Cariou’s motion is successful or because the appeal flops—the buyers of Mr. Prince’s infringing “Canal Zone” paintings have cause to be on edge: the prices each paid likely will be publicly disclosed, as, perhaps, may be the names of the owners.

In the meantime, Mr. Prince’s unsold “Canal Zone” paintings have been sequestered in a Long Island City warehouse as part of an agreement between both sides to forestall the paintings’ possible destruction—an option the district court had explicitly granted Mr. Cariou—at least until Cariou v. Prince is finally resolved.

These are some of the revelations disclosed to The Observer by lawyers and gleaned from Mr. Cariou’s recent motion, which could be decided as early as August.

The biggest news Mr. Prince’s collectors have to absorb now, though, may be that the paintings they bought from Gagosian Gallery not only can’t be displayed; it’s also likely they can’t be resold except, conceivably, on the black market (unless the court’s decision is overruled on appeal, a process that could take years).

There’s a discrepancy regarding the number of “Canal Zone” works that sold but, according to the defendants’ documents, at least 14 works from the series found buyers, and four sold for prices ranging from $400,000 to $2.43 million.

After the court ordered the defendants to inform those buyers of certain effects of its decision, lawyers for Mr. Gagosian and his gallery sent them letters stating that “in the opinion of the Court” the paintings were “not lawfully made under the Copyright Act of 1976” and they “cannot lawfully be displayed … in the public.”

What the letters didn’t explain is that the paintings are now not too different from contraband. They have to be hidden from public view and, according to Mr. Prince’s own lawyer, Josh Schiller of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, probably can’t be resold.

“Any kind of sale would include showing [the work] publicly” and that’s been forbidden by the court, Mr. Schiller said.

Mr. Schiller didn’t say the “Canal Zone” paintings were now worth nothing—he described their worth as “undetermined”—but he did say that the decision had placed an “implied limit on their value.”

“An injustice” is how Mr. Schiller termed the decision’s effect on the various collectors.

Copyright law expert David Wolf, who is not involved in the case and is former litigation counsel at Time Inc., said the owners would do well to “think twice about selling,” and that any third party who knew about the court decision and tried to sell the work—an auction house, for example—“would run a pretty severe risk.”

Have any of the purchasers asked Mr. Gagosian or the gallery for a refund and if so, what happened? The Observer asked the Gagosian Gallery gatekeepers almost a week ago. No comment.

Mr. Cariou’s lawyer, Dan Brooks, has received the appropriate receipts for each painting sold, and the parties have stipulated that that information “shall be admissible as evidence.”  Mr. Brooks said that the prices will be “fully aired” at a jury trial on damages—for now they’re subject to a confidentiality agreement—and “there won’t be any dispute” about how much each work brought.

The sales prices of the “Canal Zone” paintings apparently have a broad range—four of them sold for between $400,000 and $2.43 million, according to the defendants’ papers. The gallery is known to be tight-lipped on prices, and the precise sales prices of Mr. Prince’s works may end up being brought to light in the course of the suit. Then again, settlement is always a possibility, if only to protect the secrecy of just this type of information.

If the appeal goes ahead, among Mr. Schiller’s arguments may be that the district court should have in effect rejected or at least discounted his own client’s testimony—in the court’s view, Mr. Prince’s testimony was highly damaging to his case. Instead, Mr. Schiller said, the court “would have benefited” from considering “more objective factors,” which he didn’t specify, and evidence of “how the public perceives [Mr. Prince’s] work.”

Mr. Prince had argued that his use of Mr. Cariou’s photographs came within the “fair use” exemption of copyright law, which permits limited borrowing of other people’s copyrighted work for such things as commentary, news reporting and satire.

But the district court held that in order to be considered “fair use,” the new work must be “transformative” of the original. Mr. Prince’s work was not transformative, the court found, because it did not “in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back” to Mr. Cariou’s work.

Mr. Prince himself had testified at deposition that he had no interest at all in what Mr. Cariou’s photographs meant.

Focusing on Mr. Prince’s testimony is too “narrow” a view of the law, said Mr. Schiller, and it means “an artist has to lawyer up to get his perception across.”

It could prove tough to overcome Mr. Prince’s testimony. “Whatever arguments they make, the court will look at Prince’s testimony,” said Mr. Wolf, the copyright expert. “Anytime the party gives detailed testimony about what he’s doing, it’s important.”

One effect of the decision in this case, Mr. Schiller said, is that courts “will be really strict” now in interpreting fair use. Mr. Wolf, however, said appropriation artists shouldn’t necessarily be concerned: “Every case is different,” he said.

editorial@observer.com

Means of transportation.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO an evil laugh?” asked the 10-year-old son of artist Lee Quinones, standing last Friday in the packed and tiny Eric Firestone gallery, an art space slotted in a nook between East Hampton fashion stores.

The sun had not yet gone down and the attendees had dragged their kids, pets and other accessories to the opening. There was plenty of rosé and men in suspenders. Women stood in harried circles outside, smoking and talking.

Many of the little ones were the artists’ children. Even among that voluble crowd, the miniature Mr. Quinones was quite the talker. He was standing below the nose of an old military plane—junk in a junkyard, once, but now salvaged and made into art by his father. Mission Accomplished, it was called, and like the other works, it embraced, or maligned, American iconography. The exhibition, which opened last Friday and runs until Aug. 21, was called “Nose Job,” named for both Warhol’s before-and-after schnoz pics and the front parts of fighter jets. Each piece was rendered from parts from the galloping mess of steaming iron known as the Bone Yards, scrap heaps in the Arizona desert housing dead metal once tossed into combat by the Air Force.

“An evil laugh?” The Observer asked.

The show also brought out the locals, or whatever a “local” is in East Hampton. A woman in her 80s, pastel sweater flung and tied across her nape and back, applied red lipstick and leaned into another conic art work, this one by of-the-moment artist Dan Colen, that was blank save for the rouge remnants of kisses. “Like Oscar Wilde’s grave,” an onlooker said loudly.

“Yes, a deep laugh, like this,” Mr. Quinones demonstrated.

He leaned into a nose cone fashioned as a sergeant’s megaphone by Shepherd Fairey, about to laugh into the echo chamber. Mr. Fairey was one of the many contributors to the exhibition—along with Richard Prince, Mr. Colen and RETNA—who made pieces but did not make the trip out east.

Mr. Fairey may have had a reason. As the day went on, several of his fellow artists referred to him, with disdain, as “the man who got Obama elected.” The plane tip—once the wind-beaten beacon of this country’s bullet-speed airborne propulsion, but now art—had been branded on its side with the phrase “Amplify Your Voice.” What, again, did Warhol have to do with this?

“Muuuuu-mha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” the kid bellowed into the Fairey sculpture. The echo was eaten up by the metal. We couldn’t hear much of it. The Observer, taken with the idea, ducked into the antimegaphone, the cone that squelched voices instead of amplifying them—as Mr. Fairey had falsely advertised—and emitted an evil laugh that only we could hear.

We had been in the Hamptons, itself an echo chamber of sorts, for not quite an hour.

"SWIFT AND STRONG, as vengeance and arrows, come the Americans,” read the subtitles to the 1920s war film screened at the “Nose Job” after-party. A projector had been set up, as well as a puddle jumper pulled from the Bone Yard, with its cockpit open for kids to climb in. It had been decorated by the graffito Futura.

Carlos Rodriguez, a graffiti artist who goes by the name Mare139, stood toward the back holding a bottle of Casa Dragones, an ultra-luxe brand of tequila, as the deejay, designer Timo Weiland, spun “Ask” by the Smiths.

“There was a section of photographs by Henry Chalfant of the old trains, and that contextualized a lot of the artists in the show, because a lot of us come from that generation,” said the artist. “It’s expanding the idea of what graffiti or urban art is.”

But street art needs real streets, and when we zoomed out of East Hampton, having been stuffed into a car driven by a Russian man named Dmitri toward the end of the road—the ocean—there was not a single appearance of anything resembling graffiti.

"OH, GIVE IT SOME GAS," Nathaniel Christian said. It was now Saturday afternoon, and blistering. The Observer was driving a $200,000 Ferrari California around wooded curves, hugging each one and swerving delicately across the tight-waisted Water Mill streets. We had not been behind the wheel in years.

“Just rev it, pump the gas, push it,” Mr. Christian said. The prolific collector of Italian cars was sitting shotgun in the black convertible, charging his iPhone and tightly gripping the car’s door. He wore aviators, kept a patch of stubble and owned more Ferraris than any other man or god needs to. And that Saturday he held his annual Ferrari Rally, a celebration of spun-out tires and breakneck, rowdy speeds that wrangles 120 different versions of the Italian super car to construction don Michael Borrico’s estate. The cars—total worth, $100 million—were dashing and elegant. Outlandish, they were made decent by diversity—beautiful cars in red, yellow, white and black, angular, boxy, buxom, hourglassed, upticked, hardtop, no-top, half-top, sleek, small, enormous.

And of course they were all loud.

With a gear click and a whirl of the steering we shoved our right foot onto the gas pedal and out came a guttural growl—“VA-roooorha-reeeouuuu-thududumhhvvv!”—that shook the sunken leather seat as the California sashayed, as if on ice skates, through the winding Hamptons lanes.

“When I first got this, I thought it was a chick car,” explained Mr. Christian, who, when he’s not vrooming past dogwalkers in red machines, is a successful commercial real estate broker in the city. The automatic transmission—no way we were driving stick—burst into a new gear and summoned another set of horses in the already galloping engine.

“But it’s not,” said Mr. Christian, removing his sunglasses. “It’s not a chick car.”

The exhaust pipe sounded a glissando that swung upward in pitch, the tone peaking with each thrust on the pedal—and that rush! A few more turns and we came back to Mr. Borrico’s estate—we had gone in a circle, a small version of the circuit the Ferrari owners would take later as they rallied through the Hamptons.

As The Observer pulled the Ferrari California into its spot, we overheard another Ferrari owner. “Can you move my car, so it’s not near the front?” he asked. (Were all the drivers male, and white?) “I don’t want the polo balls to come flying at my car.”

There was a polo match later, and when it began we sat at a table with Chelsea Leyland, the deejay, who was having a smoke and wearing sunglasses the size of lily pads. We watched the ponies trot out of the stables kept beyond the pool, where floating, gold letters spelled out MOET MOET MOET. The match began, and the horses, the literal kind, barreled forth with thunderous muscle.

We drank a bottle of Moet Ice, and went to talk to Ed Westwick, Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl. The party had comped him a house and a Ferrari for the weekend, and we had seen him pull its marvelous grill up to our Sag Harbor brunch. He sat a few tables down with a girl who never took her sunglasses off.

“Nah, I’m not doing anything, nah,” Mr. Westwick said to The Observer. “But I love ya!”

His chest spilled out, indecorous tufts of hair unfurling around five undone buttons, as he leaned on the back of his wingman and fellow bloke, Jacob.

The wingman pointed out a girl, all legs, who had just walked away.

“I was gonna say, ‘Yeah, see you later!’ and then this chick, well—you done scared ’em away!” he said to The Observer.

He began taking off his shirt.

“Boom!” he said. “Observe that! Heeeey—bada bing, bada boom.”

Then with a “ta-ta!” they headed toward their Ferrari and sped off.

The sky darkened and in an instant the white house stopped glistening in the hot sun, while the men on its balcony—and their copious stock of wine in ice-stuffed buckets—were quickly draped in a cool, purple night. We hadn’t yet been up to that balcony: it was for the car owners only. So, a girl in a black dress, full of Champagne confidence, snagged our hand, and we ran by a guard through a door and into the redwood interior, past decorative canoes and out to that Ferrari-only deck. The women up here wore riding boots and frilled patterns of another era. We lit the cigarette of the girl in the black dress, and then lit our own.

Another woman, in a white dress, approached The Observer and offered to buy a one of the last cigarettes in our pack. She was offering $10 for a single one.

Mr. Prince emerged as part of what the Metropolitan Museum of Art dubbed in a recent show the "Pictures Generation," an 1980s group of artists that includes Jack Goldstein, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine. Though I don't believe he invented "appropriation," he is definitely the most successful practitioner of the technique. It entails taking an image from one place, and creating a work of art by changing its context. Hard to believe, but that's all he did in many cases, and in so doing, he carved out his own place in art history, as well as disrupting traditional definitions of what constitutes "photography." This because his "Cowboy" photographs are just pictures of existing Marlboro ads, and his "Girlfriends" are just re-photographed pictures of pages in biker magazines. So his photographs are pictures of pictures; He's carved his place in art history for that. He gives them new meaning by making us see them out of their original context, which is the thread that holds all his work together: cowboys, girlfriends and what came next.

It was at a Barbara Gladstone gallery show in 2003 that Mr. Prince showed a new body of work: paintings that were based on pulp fiction book covers from the '50s and '60s. These were soft-core porny novels like Nightclub Nurse and Man-Eating Nurse. The paintings, priced at $75,000, sold out immediately. By July of 2008, only five years later, Overseas Nurse made almost $8.5 million at auction, a more-than-100-times return on the original investment, making Mr. Prince one of the most expensive living American artists.

By the fall of 08' he had already left Gladstone and joined Gagosian gallery when he debuted with his apocalyptic "Canal Zone" series. His prices were doubled for this auspicious occasion (new paintings were then priced up to about $3 million), but neither the artist nor his gallery could predict that the world would be entering an apocalyptic financial crisis of its own. The timing couldn't be worse, so if the artworks of Rastafarians with whited-out eyes and electric guitars as machine guns didn't scare off most collectors, the prices sure did. Stylistically, the works suggested Bob Marley as a terrorist rampaging through Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. To make matters worse, the Rastafarians had been lifted from a recent book titled Yes Rasta by French photographer Patrick Cariou. The Frenchman didn't approve of the use of his images out of context, and sued.

On March 18, in U.S. District Court, he won a summary judgment against Richard Prince and Gagosian Gallery for copyright infringement, fair use and liability. (In the lawsuit, we learn that only 8 of 28 paintings found paying clients.) Now a judge has ruled that the entire series is illegal; even worse, it was decided that the gallery must "deliver for impounding and destruction all infringing copies including paintings and unsold copies of the book." The court went even further, declaring that the "paintings were not lawfully made under the Copyright Act and they cannot be lawfully displayed."

I always liked the series, and I'm a contrarian, so, in the pit of the crisis (summer 2009), I had bought a big one, and proudly hung it in my living room where many have shown curiosity and some experience serious disapprobation. Did I know about the lawsuit at that time and was I concerned? Yes, it was a perfect Richard Prince scenario: a work that was made under a potential copyright violation, the subject of a lawsuit, by a self-avowed "appropriation" artist.

Now some have mistakenly interpreted the judge's decision to read that I need to give it back to the gallery, but possession is 9/10's of the law, and there is a whole chapter in this story yet to been told.

A few days ago, I spoke to Patrick Cariou. He said that he was never offered any settlement money by Prince or his gallery before, during or after the show. He felt that that the artist had exhibited "arrogance, an overwhelming sense of power, and plain laziness."

The Frenchman was clever to hold out in court, his damages will be substantial and they will be decided on May 6.

But, I wondered: What of his subject matter, the poor Jamaicans living up in the hills. Did they get a modeling fee? Did they give consent to the publication of their likeness for profit? What, if anything, were they paid, and shouldn't they be entitled to some share of the suit proceeds? Well, Mr. Cariou agreed, he said "absolutely they are, and if I get anything, they will." It irks him that the images were used out of context, "he (Prince) made them look like zombies, it's a racist piece of art." He summarized his views for me: "Hell, No. Fuck Prince, Fuck Gagosian".

Synonyms for appropriation include stealing, confiscation, seizure, usurpation as well as pilfering. If, as Pablo Picasso (paraphrasing T.S. Eliot) is oft quoted as saying, "Good artists borrow but great artists steal," then there is no doubt that Mr. Prince is a great one, since he has stolen successfully for years. With the "Canal Zone" series, the law says he went a step too far, taking images out of a book recently in print and without any semblance of concern for ownership of copyright. But the paintings were really good, and as collectors, that's all we care about. This time, Mr. Prince got busted, but I'm not too concerned for him.

These days, he can well afford it.

One way to get access to the best artworks is to open a private exhibition space to both showcase emerging artists and confirm the status of established market favorites. An example of a private exhibition changing the course of art history is the case of master ad man Charles Saatchi, who handily succeeded in creating a role for himself of art collector/kingmaker. Early on, he owned great Donald Judds, Andy Warhols and more, and sold most of it in order to start buying and showing newer art at his London gallery, flipping over and over again. But it was when he created and exhibited a group of young artists he branded the YBA (Young British Artists) that he pioneered this important trend of privately sponsored exhibitions. He succeeded in having his private holdings exhibited-the show was aptly called "Sensation"-at the Royal Academy in 1997, the Hamburger Bahnhof in '98 and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in '99. The controversial show propelled several of the YBA artists into major-league market stardom. Fifteen years later, their ringleader, Damien Hirst, is the king of the art-market machine; Chris Ofili has a full-blown retrospective at the Tate Museum; and several others, like Marc Quinn, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin, still have healthy careers. Clearly, Mr. Saatchi chose good art, but we can only speculate where those artists would have been without "Sensation."

Don and Mera Rubell went a different route. In 2002, when Art Basel launched its annual Miami art fair, a few collectors joined in to exhibit their private collections to the thousands of partygoers, collectors and scenesters who came to town. The Rubells seized this opportunity and, mingling good timing with an attention-getting location, opened a private building in Miami to exhibit their recent art acquisitions. Exhibitions of Neo Rauch, Kelley Walker and Wade Guyton, or local Miami favorite Hernan Bas, were influential in creating awareness and consensus about the value of their work. Of the Miami private annual exhibitions only the annual Rubell exhibition became a required stop on the Art Basel Miami tour, and shows like 2008's "30 Americans" were given the attention normally accorded museum exhibitions. The same show anywhere else, any other time of year, would never have achieved the same critical mass. The Rubells did on a relatively modest budget what most contemporary museums could not do with triple the resources.

In Europe, one of the most powerful collectors today is luxury goods magnate François Pinault, owner of Christie's. During the last Venice Biennale, he filled two beautiful buildings, his spectacular Palazzo Grassi and the refurbished Dogana, with his selection of 20th-century art. These shows displayed major works from established artists like Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan, all the way back to Mark Rothko. But alongside them, artists like Rudy Stingel were given somewhat overdue recognition, and emerging stars like Anselm Reyle were showcased. The spillover effect was tangible-a young artist like Mathew Day Jackson went from relative unknown at last summer's Pinault show to million-dollar result at auction in London in February.

Peter Norton, of the household-name computer program Norton Utilities, also exerted considerable influence when he was collecting more actively. Mr. Norton jumped into art collecting in the 1980s. He became active and high-profile in museum philanthropy and started buying large quantities of very promising contemporary work at a great time in the art-market cycle. Next, he hired influential curators to do keenly watched installations of his works at his house. Suddenly, his patronage became an important credential in marketing and positioning young work to other collectors. Then he came up with a unique, now famous idea: the Norton Family Christmas gift. Each year, a new artist is selected (Kara Walker and Takashi Murakami were early picks), and an extensive list of art-world movers and shakers receive a small work by that artist as a gift. It became important to see whom Mr. Norton was selecting, as well as who got on the list, so the gift had two meanings-neither of which was lost on the art world.

Publisher Peter Brant, meanwhile, has been a shrewd collector for years. He bought Warhol in the early 1990s when prices were soft; then he bought Jean-Michel Basquiat when few were interested. In the late '90s, he bought great, large-scale work by Jeff Koons when the broader market wasn't paying attention. His big spending and contrarian collecting has earned him the friendship of artists; the respect of some other collectors who follow his lead; and a coterie of dealers who track his every move like a pied piper. Last year, he opened a foundation space in Connecticut and exhibited highlights of his collection to the public for the first time. It featured top works by Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and more. His stated plans to do single-artist shows of emerging artists will likely ensure he continues to influence the art market.

Today, when it comes to collecting art, buying well is not enough. Many collectors who have spent the money and done shows of works they own still do not garner credibility; they remain buyers of art trophies but never makers of art trophies. To make the leap requires a creative and focused approach to dealer relationships; museum patronage; focused exhibition strategies-and significant capital. The reward, beyond the art itself, is that thoughtful collectors can have more of an impact than before: in setting prices, influencing dealer and museum programming, weighing in on new discoveries and confirming reputations. The art market has totally changed, and for the good. No need to be nostalgic.

editorial@observer.com

Smart contemporary artists like smart old Upper East Side mansions: According to its listing, Mr. Prince's new place at 57 East 78th Street was built in 1869, and has a marble kitchen; six bedrooms (or five, depending on the layout); a landscaped garden with trees; wine storage in the finished basement; and an 11-foot-tall living/dining room with "a large window of beveled glass, a fireplace and French doors leading to a terrace." (There's also a humidification system and a back-up generator, for some reason.)

A woman who picked up the phone at Mr. Prince's house in Wainscott hung up, and broker Louise Beit did not return a message. She had listed the house for $15 million just this year, which means wily Mr. Prince got a $3.5 million discount.

mabelson@observer.com

Like everyone, Lindsay Lohan has an opinion on Sarah Palin; Ms. Lohan is not too fond of the vice-presidential candidate's sponsorship of a conference to "convert" gay people. [Celebrity Myspace] 

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have donated $2 million to the Global Health Committee to provide care for children with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Ethiopia. [People] 

Artist Richard Prince may or may not have purchased a jet. [P6] 

Alicia Keys is likely the other woman in the breakup of producer Swizz Beatz and his wife, R&B singer Mashonda. [NYDN]  

Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is getting back to her reality TV roots with an engagement to I Love New York 2 contestant David Otunga. [US Weekly]