David Grob, la passion de la photographie
1.You are known as a great art collector with a passion for photography. The
presence of the works you hold is noticed in international art fairs all over the world
and many reproductions of these works appear in catalogues and in works of art.
Where does this passion come from and how you have built it over the years.
DG :
Visual curiosity and a thirst for in depth knowledge has always been my nature.
As a young boy in 1966 aged 12 I remember vividly the day my sister Sally first took
me to The Tate Gallery in London and from that moment onwards I was hooked on
Art. My favourite two pieces I saw that day were Gaugin’s Faa Iheihei and the
Brancusi Danaide.
I hated school and spent most of my time from then on, when I should have been at
school, in Museums, libraries and art galleries. In 1970 my parents, having
recognised that I was totally focussed on my passion for art, gave up on finding
another new school that would accept me, and instead gave me a budget to start a
family art collection so I was able to embark on this marvellous adventure.
2. How long have you been passionate about Brancusi? The interest in his work
certainly led you to consult the fundamental works, Sidney Geist’s books, the first to
have done a hard work on the art of the Romanian sculptor and who analysed and
classified in a catalogue raisonné still valid, and also Friedrich Teja Bach’s catalogue
raisonné. What were your other points of reference to deepen this knowledge and to
feed your curiosity about Brancusi's work?
DG :
In 1972 I saw, in the storeroom of the Marlborough Gallery in London, Brancusi’s
Maistra , which was being sold to the Tate Gallery. It completely stunned me, and I
can still remember the emotion and shivers I felt at that first viewing.
At that time there were very few books or catalogues on Brancusi, and I searched
everywhere to find whatever I could.
Geist’s study was my bible.
I was always in the Auction houses and in 1972 at Sotheby’s there was an autograph
auction where I was able to buy a dozen photographs of his work including a group of
postcards sent to his first patron in Romania, Victor N. Popp. The price was £60.00.
I had no idea then that the photographs I had bought were taken by the Artist.
That same year I met Henry Moore, and he showed me around his studios.
One of the studios was specifically for taking photographs, the walls splattered with
paint to help give depth to the black and white photographs that he took.
He explained to me that although many good photographers had taken pictures of his
sculptures none of them showed them as he saw them and so he took his own.
I was immediately struck by the significance of the artist's own vision and certain that
Brancusi had taken the photographs I had bought at Sotheby’s. Photography was in
its infancy at that time and even so they were unlike any other artist's photos, they
were so obviously Brancusi’s point of view.
In the Catalogue raisonne of Moore’s sculptures all the works are photographs taken
by the Artist himself and extraordinarily his photographs are as unknown today as
Brancusi’s were in the 1970’s.
3. Why did you choose Brancusi's photography?
Compared to his sculpture, photography has been very little commented, except for
the beautiful book published in 1977 by the Centre Pompidou, by Marielle Tabart and
Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, with illustrations of the most interesting shots preserved in
the Fonds Brancusi of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, then Elizabeth
Brown’s book, Brancusi photographer (1995) and that by Anne-Françoise Penders,
Brancusi, la photographie, ou L'Atelier comme "groupe mobile" (1995).
DG :
Why Brancusi’s photographs? It is an important question. I was on my personal quest
to understand the artist’s perspective to contextualise the sculptures. You must
remember that Abstract sculpture was new and so were the conversations around it.
I moved to Paris in 1974 to study photography and started to collect photography
seriously. I went in search of people who had been friends of Brancusi and was able
to meet many of them. Most had been given photographs and all had marvellous
stories to tell, which has helped build my understanding of him as a person as well as
an artist.
I had read the Brancusi biographies by Geist, Jianu and Gideon Welker but for me
my true understanding of his work was through studying his photographs.
He took the medium most seriously and it is not surprising that amongst his friends
were many of the most important photographers of the early 20th century. Edward
Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Paul Outerbridge, Andre Kertesz, and
Man Ray. Whilst in Paris I acquired works by all of them. Such was my passion.
4. In 1970, on the occasion of a great political and cultural opening of Romania, a
major Brancusi exhibition was organised at the National Museum of Art which
brought together works from the greatest museums in the world, Europe and also
and especially the United States. This exhibition presented only sculptures,
photography not being taken into account. Twenty-five years later, in 1995, the
retrospective "Brancusi" organised at the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre
Pompidou, then at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, marked a broad opening to
photography, as a very important aspect in Brancusi's creation. An important chapter
of the catalogue is dedicated to photography with Friedrich Teja Bach’s text, followed
by a rich portfolio of photographs. In the meantime, you began to build up an
important collection of Brancusi's photographs that you presented in your gallery in
Geneva and London (?) and also, in 2003, in Paris, at the Hopkins-Custot Gallery.
How do you feed your collection? What are your criteria?
DG :
Devotion. I am an addict and buy every week, sometimes every Day. There is always
the criteria of quality and rarity. But with Brancusi I am less concerned about their
condition than most collectors. To me the blemishes of provenance become the
reality of their story and a patination which adds more than hinders.
5. To collect is to know the field, to bathe in the history of art, to document oneself in
order to be able to situate the work in an artistic context. Avoiding confining yourself
only to Brancusi's photography, you collect other avant-garde artists and
contemporary artists. What are these artists that interest you particularly?
DG :
I collect, in depth, photographers that worked in France in the 20th Century, Man
Ray, Brassai, Pierre Boucher, Kertesz, Doisneau, Tabard, Roger Parry, Willy Ronis,
Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and William Klein amongst others. Brassai, Ronis,
Newton and Klein became friends of mine which enabled me to acquire works
directly from them. I spent much of my youth in France and still feel most at home
there.
6. As far as Brancusi is concerned, you have photographs of the most diverse
periods of the artist's work, which makes your collection special. Apart from the
photographs representing his studio, his most famous works, you collect photographs
– exceptional fact – representing his sculptures of his first period of work, some are
unique prints. Your research in this area has led you to become one of the few
specialists in Brancusi's photography. What are the criteria according to which you
choose them.
DG :
Brancusi’s life story can be seen and told through his photographs. From his
development as as a sculptor from figurative to abstract; to the importance of how he
and his sculpture are represented; even to the inclusion of his beloved dog and
devilishly handsome self portraits; to the reveal of his romantic nature through gifting
photos of flowers to girlfriends and even to documenting the early installations of his
sculptures. Every new photo discovery I make gives me more personal insight into
Brancusi. I continue to buy his photographs whenever they are available, and I have
a particular fondness for the early works. The postcards he sent to Romania between
1905-07 preserve many lost sculptures and help in our understanding of how he
developed as an artist.
Unlike most photographers his works are incredibly rare. He made no editions and
made very few copies of each; some are unique. I have been cataloguing them since
the 1980’s and so I have a very good idea of exactly how many of each there are.
They are also a key to authenticating the sculptures and exposing the endless copies
and fakes.
7. You are kind enough to lend these photos and a large part of your collection to the
exhibition Romanian Sources and Universal Perspectives that I am preparing as
curator at the National Museum of Art in Timisoara. Do you think that by showing
them, for some of them for the first time, you will be able to get in touch with other
collectors and other specialists who will commit to continue researching the
provenance and authorship of these photos?
DG :
By the time I left Paris in 1976 I had acquired almost 80 works by Brancusi and I
decided to organise an exhibition in London. This exhibition, in one form or another,
has been travelling ever since. From London to Geneva to Zurich to 3 museums in
Germany, to Venice, back to Paris to New York, to Canada etc probably 30 different
venues and with each show something new turns up. A plaster given to newly weds,
shown to me by a grandchild, a group of photographs give to a girlfriend (there were
many !) a publisher with an envelope found in his archive, a composer with a
wonderful photograph of the kiss, explaining that the footprint on the print was
caused by it being walked on when his home was raided by the Gestapo during WW2
and a portrait of his great friend Eric Satie with a note of their hangover cure on the
back and another girlfriend with a paper cutout of his left foot sent when he needed
new shoes during WW2. Through these exhibitions I have met many collectors and
scholars and it is my hope that we inspire the next generation with Brancusi’s legacy.
I have been preparing a catalogue raisonne of the photographs that I intend to
publish one day.
