9 Leading Celebrity Art Collectors, from Alec Baldwin to Oprah
It can be difficult, with many millions of dollars at hand, not to drop some of them—speculatively or not—on fine art. The opaque market, prices shooting up and down at the drop of a hat, the rush of bidding on the floor of Sotheby's auction house. Not to speak of how buying art is a tangible expression of one's own exquisite taste. Why should celebrities be immune to such enticements? Here are the stars with the most enviable art collections.
Photo: Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Getty Images1/9John McEnroe
The famously short-tempered tennis star began gallery-hopping in New York's SoHo in the 1980s, he told The Telegraph. There, he adored the work of Chuck Close but found it too pricey, instead nabbing more affordable works from photorealistic painters Audrey Flack and Tom Blackwell. While he owns mostly figurative pieces, he reportedly has made an exception for "several Basquiats." Perhaps his most notable acquisition, which was later offered at auction with an estimate around $700,000, is the portrait of himself and then-wife Tatum O'Neal by Andy Warhol. McEnroe won a charity auction for the honor in 1986; the painting cost him a mere $30,000.
Photo: Paul Zimmerman/WireImage2/9Mary-Kate Olsen
The designer and onetime actress has a deep fondness for art and those who make it. She's dated the artist Nate Lowman, a contemporary of the late Dash Snow, and once told Elle that works by the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, known for his S&M suggestive shots, hang near her while she slumbers. She reportedly also owns several Warhols, while works by Man Ray and Basquiat adorn her and her twin sister's townhouse cum boutique design outpost for their line, the Row, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Photo: Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images3/9Cheech Marin
Unlike the bulk of celebrity collectors, the actor/activist best known for his pro-pot films does not collect blue-chip art or appear in socialite shots snapped at Art Basel Miami Beach. Marin is one of the most serious collectors of contemporary Chicano painting, owning such works as Frank Romero's City at Night, Chinatown, and The Arrest of the Paleteros. Marin frequently lends part of his collection, arguably the best assemblage of Chicano art in existence, to museums around the country.
Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for NBC4/9Alec Baldwin
The 30 Rock actor made waves last year when he sued dealer Mary Boone for selling him a different version of Ross Bleckner's Sea and Mirror than the one he intended to buy. This was four years after he told The New York Times, "I love this thing," about the abstract painting, for which he paid $175,000. And that wasn't his first art misadventure. In 2015 he told Artnews that he'd accidentally bought a Pat Steir painting at auction for $95,000; he was bidding it up, thinking that a certain collector would surely offer more.
Photo: Monica Morgan/WireImage5/9Oprah Winfrey
The media baroness recently sold Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, the Gustav Klimt painting that is the sequel to the iconic first portrait of the Austrian socialite, oft referred to as "the Viennese Mona Lisa" and an addition to many a dorm-room wall. The work, which Oprah had owned since 2007, sold for $150 million to an unidentified Chinese buyer via über-dealer Larry Gagosian. The entrepreneur has eclectic taste in art: In 2013 she auctioned a portrait of herself with two dogs on her lap (one of many portraits of her in the sale), and she is thought to have discovered painting wunderkind Akiane Kramarik, who was on her show at age ten and has gone on to enjoy a wildly successful career.
Photo: Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Getty6/9Marc Jacobs
John Currin, the painter of saucy, overblown figuration, is a well-known favorite of Jacobs. The fashion tycoon owns Currin's The Bra Shop, The Go-See, and Gold Coast, as well as a Gerhard Richter, several early Richard Prince pieces, and Ed Ruscha's She Gets Angry at Him. His four Andy Warhol flower paintings adorn his dining room above the serving area, according to Jacobs' art-heavy Instagram account.
Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images7/9Kanye West
The rapper's interest in art actually sprouted well before his wealth grew to its now-untold sums, starting when he attended the American Academy of Art before famously dropping out. Not only did he commission work by George Condo and Takashi Murakami for his album covers, he's collaborated extensively with Italian conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft and is known as a serious, if secretive, collector. Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, also art adviser to Jay-Z, works with West, who owns, among many things, a work on paper by Australian artist CJ Henley that shows his own face on a $100 bill.
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images8/9Sofia Coppola
You'd expect the director of such visual feasts as The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette to have an eye for art. Coppola has long collected photography (Richard Prince and Tina Barney), paintings (Elizabeth Peyton), and works on paper (Tracey Emin) and is reportedly friends with Donald Judd's daughter, Rainer. Artspace reported that Ed Ruscha, whose "embrace of Hollywood vernacular" may be an inspiration for Coppola's own nuanced takes on the City of Angels, is her "favorite artist." A print of Ruscha's Cold Beer Beautiful Girls reportedly hangs in her office.
Photo: Ben Stansall/Getty Images9/9Madonna
The Material Girl lives up to the name—her massive fine art collection is estimated to be worth $100 million. She bought a Picasso called Buste de Femme à la Frange at auction for $5 million in 2000 and reportedly owns two Frida Kahlos: Self Portrait with Monkey and My Birth. Madge also has contemporary art, such as multiple photographs by Marilyn Minter, and she's rumored to own a Damien Hirst. Madonna even dated Jean-Michel Basquiat, the man many credit for the popularity of graffiti art. She might have made a mint on the pieces he gave to her alone, had she been able to hold on to them—he "made her give them back" after their difficult breakup, she has repeatedly said.
