Book Description

The PaineWebber art collection, housed in the PaineWebber offices in Manhattan, is home to one of the greatest private collections of contemporary art. Never before publicly exhibited or published, this private collection offers a remarkable survey of international art of the past forty-five years. The collection is strikingly avant-garde and represents work in all media, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculpture. While the collection includes a number of works by such well-established artists as Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Anselm Kiefer, and Cy Twombly, there is also a strong focus on the artists of the 1980s-- Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Francesco Clemente-- as well as on younger emerging artists, such as Gunther Forg, Guillermo Kuitca, Lorna Simpson, and Kiki Smith. While many corporate collections avoid controversial, emotional, or political art, the selection guided by Donald B. Marron, the businessman who pioneered the establishment of this museum-quality collection for PaineWebber, is remarkably free of such self-censorship with a daring vitality in the choice of works. This volume encompasses more than 350 works of art, many never before published. Each work is augmented by a companion text that serves to contextualize and explicate the work and the artist. In addition, there are several special commissions included by artists including Susan Rothenberg and Frank Stella. Photographs by noted artist Louise Lawler depict the installation of the art works as viewed every day by PaineWebber employees. PaineWebber's collection is in part founded on the idea that art should be as accessible as possible in everydaycircumstances. The experience of working next to a Roy Lichtenstein painting or an Andy Warhol print is different from a brief museum visit, and in his essay, art critic Jack Flam analyzes how the lives of PaineWebber employees are affected by the regular, close proximity of the great art of the twentieth century. "The PaineWebber Art Collection" brings together this unprecedented collection into a distinguished catalogue of work, accessible to the public for the very first time.