All part of the service
THE ARTIST Paul Cezanne once said, 'Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.' You can find that quote on page nine of the glossy brochure published by the Citigroup Private Bank to highlight its Art Advisory Service. It, too, addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals, although exactly how many clients avail themselves of this expertise - never mind who they are and what their taste levels might be - is veiled in tantalising mystery. 'We can't talk about client numbers, it's a select few,' is all that Mary Hoeveler, the service's managing director, will say on the subject.
Hoeveler and vice-president Jon R. Bourassa are based in New York, but were in Hong Kong recently to meet prospective and current clients. There is no on-the-ground Hong Kong representative - the thinking has been that any Citigroup art-loving client will have other homes in the west - but if the client base expands, that may change. Mainland collectors, or would-be collectors, are not yet in the picture. That, too, may change.
In order to qualify for Citigroup's private banking services, you have to have a net worth of at least US$10 million; once you cross that threshold, Citigroup offers experts to deal with what it terms 'the soft side of management needs'. And if you want to start up - or extend or modify, insure or store, frame or use as collateral - your art collection, then the Art Advisory Service is there for you.
It was launched in 1979, the oldest of Citigroup's extracurricular services. 'It showed a huge amount of foresight on the part of the bank,' says Hoeveler. And, certainly, a huge amount of nerve that the bank kept the service going through the artistic rollercoaster that was the 1980s. Neither Hoeveler nor Bourassa is a banker. 'We're all art professionals,' says Hoeveler, who has been with the service for a year. Before that, she was a senior vice president at Christie's in New York. Bourassa, an adviser with the service for 20 years, used to teach Asian and Western art at the State University of New York and Vassar College.
'In academic work, you're focused on one small aspect,' he says. 'I like the broad foundation. I collect myself, I have the disease . . . I wanted to be in the market.'
'It's very similar to what I did at Christie's,' says Hoeveler. 'The difference is I don't have an agenda. I have the luxury of developing long-term relationships, I love building their collections, having an oversight role.'
The rich are different from you and me: they have more money, and when they spend it, it can be with a dizzying ardour.
Vast expenditure in the art arena - fraught as it is with pitfalls of provenance, market exposure and authenticity, not to mention the quivering barometer of aesthetics - requires a particular degree of hand-holding. 'The service offers comfort to our clients,' says Hoeveler. 'They can pick up the phone and say, 'I want the [Diego] Rivera to go from my house in New York to my house is Miami', and it's done.'
Asked about transportation arrangements on a recent trip to Marfa, Texas, with a client, Hoeveler replies, 'We went on the client's jet.' As it happens, Marfa - an old army fort and several hundred acres of scrub - is a good example of how the art world can fluctuate as spectacularly as any stock market. It was bought in the 1970s by a German art dealer, Heiner Friedrich, who married an oil heiress, Philippa de Menil. They set up the Dia Centre for the Arts, a Manhattan-based trust, and gave Marfa to the artist Donald Judd who then created what The New York Times recently called 'Minimalism's great shrine'.
In the 1980s, the art world underwent a convulsion and Friedrich was obliged to sell many paintings, just as De Menil's oil wealth nose dived. Judd went to court to protect his art works from being sold.
Now Dia has just opened one of the biggest art galleries in the world, Dia:Beacon, north of New York City, in a disused biscuit-box factory.
Such giant arcs of triumph and despair occur naturally within artistic territory so, private bank or not, clients are encouraged to look beyond the beauty of the dollar. 'The bottom line is not transactional,' says Hoeveler. 'I can't speak to people's motivations - that's not the level at which we engage - but the rewards are aesthetic.'
