Entrepreneur Grant Cardon said collecting and displaying art gives him a greater sense of fulfillment than investing.
Grant Cardon
Multimillionaire Grant Cardon, who has been collecting art for about 15 years, says he’s a compulsive buyer.
“I don’t consider myself a connoisseur. I’m just getting into the art world. If I like it, I buy it. I don’t care who made it,” Cardone told CNBC. In addition to having pieces displayed throughout his home, Cardone also owns an art gallery that houses his extensive collection.
CNBC spoke with Cardone over a video call, with an untitled work by American graffiti artist Letna hanging behind his Miami home office that he bought at an online auction.
“I clicked the button, I didn’t really do any research, and I bought the piece, and then it got here and I absolutely loved it,” he said, adding that he paid “probably $140,000” for the piece.
A piece called “It’s Now Time” by artist Fringe can be seen in Grant Cardon’s home gallery.
Grant Cardon
In the hallway of his home are two works by American pop artist Burton Morris, both of which depict red Coca-Cola bottles lined up in a repeating pattern, Coca-Cola 50A and Coca-Cola 50B. “It was bought from Tommy Hilfiger, and it’s a reminder of the importance of scaling,” said Cardon, the fashion designer who was the home’s previous owner.
Cardone, a real estate investor and author of “The 10x Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure,” has about 17 million followers on social media and occasionally uses his platform to dispense art investing advice.
“[Followers are] Look at a work of art, you know what? [has] Was it good for you? And I was like, yeah, it’s good for me… better than the dollar or the euro… the stock market doesn’t give me satisfaction, I look back and see my apple I’m happy to share it, but when I walk through the gallery, my kitchen, my office and see the work, I think it’s really cool.”
Grant Cardon’s gallery in his Miami home, with prints of Basquiat’s work hanging in the lower left.
Grant Cardon
Cardon’s gallery, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and security guards, is showing American contemporary artist Kenny Scharf’s “Blipsibshabshok” (1997), a colorful abstract painting of a futuristic symbol. Cardon also owns a second work by Scharf, “Controlopuss” (2018), a striking painting of a red, multi-legged creature, which he bought from the auction house Phillips for $279,400.
“This is a Basquiat. The original is worth $45 million,” Cardone said, pointing to a print of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Flexible” (1984/2016). The original sold for $45.3 million at auction house Phillips in 2018. “We bought this one together with the auction house,” he said, pointing to “Read More,” a work by American contemporary artist Al Bashir Khoury, which sits above the Basquiat work.
Grant said he follows his instincts when it comes to choosing which items to buy: “I try to walk away from the item, and then if I start looking at it or thinking about it a lot, I’ll come back and say, ‘Okay, I should buy this,'” he said.
“I have no intention of selling these pieces. This is really for my own enjoyment, and, you know, art makes me happy,” he said.
Florentine women’s art
Christian Levett, a former investment banker, has taken a different approach: He has been collecting art for almost three decades, starting with classical paintings and Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities, before moving on to works by female abstract expressionists.
Art collector Christian Revett is hosting private tours of his home in Florence, Italy, where his collection is made up of mostly Abstract Expressionist works by female artists.
Christian Levett
In addition to owning a museum in Mougins, France, Levett also hosts tours of the artwork that hangs on the walls of his home in Florence, Italy, where he lives six months of the year and whose entire home is essentially a museum. “It’s a private museum with private tours,” Levett told CNBC in a phone interview.
Levett’s home, near the city’s famous Ponte Vecchio, features 20-foot-high ceilings, original frescoes, and two floors of art, all created by women. The collection is dominated by abstract expressionist pieces by artists including impressionist Mary Cassatt and surrealist Dorothea Tanning.
Once or twice a week, Levett invites small groups, sometimes consisting of students from Florence-based American universities such as Harvard or New York University, to see his collection and often leads tours himself.
The highlight of Levett’s collection is a painting by American artist Joan Mitchell, painted in 1977. Titled “When They Left,” the large piece is about 90 inches tall and 70 inches wide and hangs in Levett’s dining room.
Levett acquired it around 2015 for approximately $2.8 million.
Christian Levett, pictured here in his Florence home, has switched from collecting antiques to collecting works by women artists.
Christian Levett
“This painting would probably sell for $15 million to $18 million at auction today. Mitchell has always been one of the most important women painters of the 20th century,” Levett said.
He also spoke highly of an oil painting of John F. Kennedy by Elaine de Kooning, commissioned in 1963 as part of a series of portraits of former U.S. presidents. Mr. Levett purchased the work in 2020 for about $600,000.
Levett said he also opens his home to students because it might spark an interest in supporting the arts in the future. “Students are the acorns of the art world,” he said.
Levett is focusing on the work of female artists and is planning to reopen her French museum as the Musée des Women Artists de Mougins on June 21. She is currently selling art and antiques from the museum’s former collection in a series of auctions at London auction house Christie’s, which have so far brought in nearly 9.5 million pounds ($11.9 million).
Bunker Art
Christian and Karen Boros’ home in the center of Berlin, Germany, is located above the bunker that houses their private art collection, the Boros Collection.
John McDougall | AFP | Getty Images
In this unique art space in Berlin, Christian and Karen Boros live in a 6,000-square-foot penthouse apartment above their private collection, which is housed in a former World War II bunker. The couple acquired this huge skyscraper in 2003 and over the years have renovated it into five floors of exhibition space, with the couple’s residence on the sixth floor.
The bunker housed up to 4,000 people during the war, and was used as a tropical fruit storage facility after the war and then as a nightclub. According to Raoul Zoellner, president of the Boros Foundation, 450 tonnes of concrete ceilings and walls were removed in the process of converting it into an exhibition space and living space.
Cyprien’s work “Gaillard Lesser Koa Moorhen” (2013) is part of the Boros Collection.
Boros Collection, Berlin | Noshe
Christian, an advertising entrepreneur, told the Financial Times that he bought his first piece of art – a spade by German artist Joseph Beuys – when he was 18.
“The bunker is not a museum. It is a special project started by a passionate couple of collectors who had no idea how many diamond saws it would take to tear down the walls of dozens of bunkers or what it would create,” Zoellner said in an emailed statement.
Karen and Christian Boros live in a penthouse apartment above an art collection in Berlin.
Max von Gumpenberg
Zellner added that since the museum was renovated in 2008, nearly 600,000 people have taken guided tours and the museum features rotating exhibits of works from the Boros collection. Currently, the museum has 114 pieces on display, “focusing on the human body in different positions,” Zellner said. “The works focus on the constant drive towards optimization, the gradual adaptation of our bodies to technological devices,” Zellner said.
