A chic Parisian crowd gathered in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district for the opening of “Basquiat & AR Penck”, an exhibition at Cahiers d’Art that explores the little-known connection between Brooklyn native Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 -1988) and AR Penck, born in Dresden (1939-2017). Nearby, a massive protest crowded the streets.
On the walls hung 18 works on paper and a canvas depicting skulls and heads, stick figures and body parts. They had similar nerve marks and pulsed with raw energy. The relationship between the two artists, separated by the ocean and a generation, was instantly palpable.
Real estate scion linked to a string of glamorous love interests, DiPersia is making a surprisingly serious name for himself in the art world. It was the third exhibition focusing on Basquiat to open in Paris this week. The exhibition “Basquiat X Warhol. Painting 4 Hands” is dedicated to the artist’s much more famous collaboration which resulted in 160 paintings. An exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris explores Basquiat’s relationship to music with film images, installations, paintings and works on paper.
The smallest of the three, “Basquiat & AR Penck” is the brainchild of Alexander DiPersia, a 41-year-old private collector and dealer who chose this moment to come out as a curator.
The collector Alexander DiPersia at the opening of “Basquiat & AR Penck” at the Cahiers D’Art in Paris. Courtesy of Alexander DiPersia
Over the past 10 years, DiPersia has gone from an under-the-radar Hollywood player with little art market awareness to a savvy aftermarket player. A self-proclaimed “art addict“With little patience for the kind of review required to enter the primary market, DiPersia is swimming in troubled resale waters. It has paid the highest prices for some of today’s most coveted emerging artists and counts among its friends Nathaniel Mary Quin, Rashid Johnson and Harold Ancart.
“Alex is a tastemaker for some people on a tour,” said Benjamin Godsill, an artistic adviser who has known DiPersia for years. “He is a very fashionable, handsome and witty international man. He has very good taste and a good eye.
Moving from Los Angeles to New York to London, DiPersia has filled their homes with an eclectic mix of art and design. In the mid-2010s, her Tuxedo Terrace residence (just below the Hollywood sign) had artwork by Raven Half Moon before she had a gallery performance, a bedroom with Korakrit Arunanondchai pillows, a pink painting by Jen Guidi next to a Claire Tabouret, and lots of funky ’60s furniture. A guest bedroom in his SoHo loft was lined with wood like a Swiss chalet and adorned with designs by George Condo and a faux old master by Jesse Mockrin. In London, he placed a hippopotamus skull inside a fireplace and a seascape by Hiroshi Sugimoto above, flanked by a ceramic vase by Clementine Keith-Roach and a marble torso from the 5th century BC.
Artist Nathaniel Mary Quin and collector Alexander DiPersia. Courtesy of Alexander DiPersia
DiPersia’s role models are marketers like Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn.
“You walk into their homes and they sell you a lifestyle,” he said. “At Larry, you see a huge Cy Twombly, and then you see a new emerging artist. At David Zwirner you see Franz West chairs and a wall of Pettibones – and it looks awesome. You want the same.
Truly passionate about art, DiPersia also has an enviable rolodex. Over the years, he has been romantically linked to a litany of gorgeous women – heiresses, models, actresses and the founder of a Kazakh oil and gas conglomerate that has already lost tens of millions of dollars in day-to-day sales to London while he was on the beach. In person, he cuts a memorable figure, walking with a cane following a series of back surgeries.
Last summer, when recession worries began to escalate and interest rates soared, DiPersia embarked on a shopping spree in Basquiat.
“Works on paper would resell and resell and resell, and the prices would continually increase,” he said. “I started buying some.”
Besides being an investment, it was also a dream come true. DiPersia has been obsessed with Basquiat since childhood. Growing up in Connecticut, he had two posters in his bedroom: Nirvana’s “Bleach” album and Basquiat’s blue head from Eli Broad’s collection.
“To think that I can have one of these things at home! says DiPersia.
“Basquiat & AR Penck” at the Cahiers d’Art in Paris. Courtesy of Alexander DiPersia
The idea for an exhibit came later, after learning that Penck and Basquiat were overlapping in New York City in the 1980s. They shared a love of jazz and a proclivity for caveman-like hieroglyphics. Penck exhibited with Michael Werner Gallery, Basquiat with Mary Boone. Werner and Boone were married at the time and often shared entertainers. In 1984, Penck painted a monumental Triptych for Basquiatwhich is part of the collection of the Fundación “La Caixa” in Spain.
“He found in him an extraordinary painter,” said Michael Werner of Penck’s feelings for Basquiat. The admiration was mutual. “Penck was such a figure to him at the time and he didn’t believe he would honor him,” Werner said of Basquiat. “I had to take a picture of him.”
DiPersia began stealthily acquiring artwork for the exhibit, he said, buying from auction houses and dealers.
“It looked like I was buying for my art collection,” he said. “Nobody’s ever done a Penck/Basquiat show before. I didn’t want anyone to know. It’s the art world. People hear a good idea, they’ll blow your mind.
At one point, he panicked. “Normal people get loans and consignments. I spent a fortune on this work. What if they don’t sell? he said. “If my mother felt what I was doing, she would spank me.”
It was DiPersia’s mother, an artist and teacher, who got him hooked on art. She gave him a work by René Ricard for his 30th birthday, triggering an addiction to buying art. Soon he became a fixture at art openings in Los Angeles, where his acting career was “a notch below average success”, he said. It was around this time that zombie formalism exploded. Lucien Smith’s $8,000 “rain paintings” he saw at the opening of the artist’s OHWOW gallery quickly traded for $100,000 or more. He didn’t buy any, but he helped sell some. DiPersia realized there was money to be made.
He went from knowing nothing about LLCs and resale certificates to “buying and selling my trailer artwork while I was doing my makeup,” he said, referring to his decisive role in the horror film. Curfew. There was also a passage to put contemporary art at the lobbies his family’s commercial buildings and, later, in two Hudson Yards developments. Today, DiPersia owns several limited liability companies and warehouses in five countries.
“His taste has really evolved,” Godsill said. “He’s doing a grown-up, big-boy thing now.”
Alexander DiPersia’s London apartment includes a hippopotamus skull, a Hiroshi Sugimoto seascape and a 5th-century BC marble torso. Courtesy of Alexander DiPersia
Selling art has become a side job which has allowed him to buy more art for himself – and now he’s trying to take it to the next level with the show ‘Basquiat & AR Penck’. Once again, his connections paid off. While looking for a space in Paris, DiPersia met his friend Etienne Macret, who did the artistic programming for Cahiers D’Art, founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos to publish Picasso’s catalog raisonné.
DiPersia declined to say how much money he invested in the work, but prices for the show range from $20,000 to just under $2 million. A record auction for a work on paper by Penck is $125,089 and for Basquiat $15.2 million.
“All I will say is if you had asked me two, six or eight years ago, I never would have thought I would be able to do this,” he said. “No matter what happens, I’m happy to try something meaningful because now, in the words of Fran Leibowitz, ‘we live in a world where they applaud the prize, but not the Picasso’.
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