[Top Collectors] Passion + Intellect
Deborah Campbell traces the evolution and influence of the vanguard photography collection of Vancouver's Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft
Vancouver has a reputation for producing art and artists. What is less understood is the way such raw potential has been quietly nurtured by a pair of collectors whose passion and intellect embody the best of the collecting impulse.
A weeping willow fronts the home of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft near the University of British Columbia. Beck and Gruft were "collecting Vancouver" long before it became fashionable to do so. In 1976, the couple opened the influential NOVA Gallery on West 4th Avenue, on the site of an old popcorn factory. They were representing photo-based art at a time when there was still debate over the merits of photography as an art form. Some in Vancouver recall the moment in 1978 when The Destroyed Room by Jeff Wall was shown in the gallery window, the curtains parted so the viewer seemed to be looking directly into a woman's upturned bedroom, a scene both terrifying and erotic. Through Beck and Gruft, the National Gallery of Canada purchased the work, its first Jeff Wall. "The rest," says Beck, "is history." The couple, who last year curated a photographic exhibition for Monte Clark Gallery, have played a seminal role in the evolution of the arts in Vancouver.
Beck bears a resemblance, in compactness and intensity, to the American writer Joan Didion. She frequently leaps up from her desk to retrieve a book or a catalogue that will illustrate her train of thought. In her library, she is surrounded by art books and artworks, such as the tiny aluminum foil sculptures Vancouver artist Geoffrey Farmer made with his feet. (They were purchased at a charity auction, and Gruft has quipped that they may be the world's most expensive pieces of tinfoil.) "As a collector," Beck says, "you are recognizing what you think is important. You are willing to take a risk based on your understanding of what is good work, and you are willing to pay good money for it. In the case of Andrew Gruft and I, we had a very important role in the 1970s: we actually bought photographs. I've never been interested in collecting as an investment—I'd rather invest in my grandchildren's education. There's a very simple thing: to bring your own recognition to art and perhaps others will pay attention." She sees the collector's role in terms of "boosterism" and "patrimony." As collectors, occasional curators and dealers, intellectuals and bon vivants, Beck and Gruft have been actively engaged in the Vancouver arts community for three decades.
Beck first moved to Vancouver in 1970, leaving behind graduate studies in Indiana to teach art history at the University of British Columbia (she replaced the artist Ian Wallace, who was leaving for England). There she met Gruft, an architect also teaching at UBC. Once an amateur photographer, Gruft had aspired to be a painter, only to be steered toward architecture by a practically-minded father. He grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, in a Polish-Jewish household with a European liberal tradition, and it was Beck who introduced him to a different appreciation of photography. She had become "obsessed and enthralled" after studying photography under the renowned artist and educator Henry Holmes Smith, who had established the first academic photography program in America at Indiana University. (Smith made abstract, camera-less photographs—cliché-verre prints—using syrup.) In the early 1970s, the couple often made the long drive from Vancouver to San Francisco, which was then an international hotbed of art photography, to see what could be seen. A trip to London in 1973 took them to the Royal Photographic Society, where the staff curators, delighted that anyone should be so interested, handed them a box of William Henry Fox Talbots, not so much as bothering with gloves.
In the 1970s, Vancouver was fertile ground for the photoconceptual movement that would rise to international prominence in the following decade. Beck and Gruft came to know a number of artists, including Ian Wallace, Christos Dikeakos and the painter Michael Morris, a "key connector." They also kept company with a group of serious photographers who had formed the Vancouver Image Exploration Workshop (VIEW), which brought in photographers such as Ralph Gibson, Eugene Smith and Judy Dater to speak.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, the couple had become friendly with Simon Lowinsky, the art dealer whose gallery was one of the earliest photography galleries in the United States. One day, Beck was musing aloud about opening a gallery when Lowinsky handed them $50,000 worth of photographs and told them to take them to Vancouver and try to sell them. Beck and Gruft held several open houses, serving cheap mulled wine and laying out the photographs on furniture. In all, they sold one photograph for $75. It was a sign of things to come.
From the outset and until it closed in 1982, NOVA was a money-losing proposition. But as a force within the arts community, it was a nexus for artists, curators, collectors and dealers. NOVA was "massively important," says Roy Arden. The Vancouver-based artist, known for his large colour photographs of the "landscape of the economy," recalls encountering the gallery in his teens: "It was really important as a young artist to see that work." Alongside exhibitions showing Marian Penner Bancroft, Robert Minden, Michael Morris, Ian Wallace, the N.E. Thing Co., Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham were shows featuring William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Frith, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Stephen Shore and Eleanor Antin.
NOVA was "catalytic," says Beck, and it ignited their personal collecting. Soon, "NFS" began appearing on certain items: Not For Sale.
"When we got the Robert Franks in 1978, we were very loath to sell," says Gruft, standing in front of two of Frank's black-and-whites stationed modestly in a hallway. One portrays black-faced coal miners. Another, of an American flag gusting in front of apartment windows, is the first image from The Americans, the series taken in 1955-56 that established Frank's importance. "I sold some," says Gruft of the early Franks that passed through NOVA. "It pissed her off. It pissed me off." Today, they own 25 of Robert Frank's photographs.
"We were reluctant to let things go even though we were up to here with financial burdens," says Beck. One of her favourite photographs, hanging near Richard Avedon's black-and-white image of Andy Warhol's scarred torso, is of a construction worker taken by the communist radical Tina Modotti, with her signature and the date: 1927.
Roy Arden became intimately acquainted with their collection while curating the exhibition "Sun Pictures to Photoconceptualism," which included 120 of their photographs, for the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2001. "Claudia and Andrew are the most erudite, serious, passionate collectors Vancouver has ever seen," says Arden. "Their collection is documentary, anthropological, lyrical, journalistic. If anything unites it, it is the humanist view—who are we, what are we, how did we get here—without the sentimentality." There is Samuel Bourne's photograph of Vishnu Pud and Other Temples, Benares, circa 1865; Edward Curtis's 1912 cyanotype Cowichan, Masked Dancer; Bruno Braquehais's photograph of the Paris Commune, 1871; Roman Vishniac's photos of the Eastern European shtetlekh; Robert Capa in Paris, 1944; and the Russian photographer Yevgeny Khaldei's pictures of the fall of Berlin. Realist rather than pictorial, their collection "leads up to what's going on in Vancouver now," says Arden.
"I never thought of us as collectors until a few years ago," says Beck. "We bought photographs. We were crazy about them. But I had this other image of what a collector was. I think collecting is a kind of private passion. It is a set of ideas, and you aren't always aware of what they are. There is a sense of playfulness as well as a sense of rigour. There's this sense of discovery."
A tour of their home confronts the observer with an overview of Vancouver photoconceptualism and its offshoots. Alongside historic photographs such as Nadar's portrait of George Sand are works by Ian Wallace, the N.E. Thing Co., Jeff Wall (Another Look at the Pine on the Corner, a black-and-white study for the light-box of the same evergreen), Roy Arden, Scott McFarland, Alex Morrison, Kelly Wood, Chris Gergley and Karin Bubas. Howard Ursuliak's photograph of store-window vacuum cleaners hangs next to Stephen Waddell's image of an Asian man in a white suit, his blue tie flapping in the wind.
Brian Jungen's mask made from Nike Air Jordans rests on a stand. It is a shock to see it, to pick it up and run fingers through the strands of attached hair. Being knowledgeable insiders has allowed them to pick up on emerging artists; the mask was purchased before the artist had found a dealer (in Catriona Jeffries) and become one of the most celebrated young artists in Canada. In truth, it is more often outside of their home than within, so frequently do curators call to borrow it.
Beck herself is currently planning an exhibition of work by Christopher Williams, the L.A.-based photoconceptualist, for Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery. Gruft is organizing a touring exhibition of contemporary Canadian architecture sponsored by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC.
Along the staircase is an Alex Morrison photograph of skateboarders, Stan Douglas's portrait of the port of Vancouver and Ed Ruscha's If. In two rooms upstairs are print drawers and racks containing larger works, some veiled with blackout cloth to slow the ravages of time. On a work table next to a pair of white gloves are piles of matted photographs, carefully labelled in Beck's handwriting; among them are works by Dally, Baldus, Baron de Meyer. Beck and Gruft sift through the photographs, arguing over details. "I'm right and you're wrong," says Beck, having checked with a reference from their vast collection of art, architecture and photography books.
In a corner is a talking stick made by Native Canadian artist Fred Davis. West Coast Native art is another focus for the collectors. Shortly after acquiring the piece, Gruft was about to get into his 25-year-old grey Saab when he came across Davis. Gruft laughs to recall Davis's remark: "God, are you out of your fucking mind? You spent eight grand on my talking stick and you're driving this piece of shit?"
In collecting, as in life, it's all about priorities.
Spring 2004
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