Buying American

"European painting is studied and tired, missing the freshness of spring." says Belgian Industrialist Philippe Dotremont. "American painting bursts forth from the ground like flowers, disengaged from tradition and the past. If a man moves by plane rather than oxcart, why must he prefer Rubens to Pollock?"

With this philosophy. Dotremont has made himself Europe's leading collector of American art: 40 of his 140 paintings are from the U.S. His made-in-America flower bursts crowd the walls, halls, ante rooms and garage of his cubist suburban Brussels home. This week 85 that had been on loan for a one-collector show at Basel's Kunsthalle were back where dapper, 63-year-old Dotremont could vibrate to them. In addition to European moderns such as Dubuffet and Mathieu, there was a great acreage of Americans, notably Mark Tobey, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Joan Mitchell, Dotremont's canon: "Every painter turns out hundreds of works in his lifetime. I try to pick the masterpieces.

"I'm not like collectors who buy as if they're acquiring a postage-stamp series or a packet of shares on the stock market. I don't understand a collector who buys 25 Picassos or 50 Klees. Is it love of art, or interest in speculation and social standing?''

It took Dotremont double courage to buy American. He had to fight Europe's hostility--the conviction that Paris produces art while New York produces only artifacts. And because he has never visited the U.S.. he has to buy paintings on the basis of color transparencies sent by galleries. Such hazards do not faze him.

"I never read art critics, and I never listen to anybody's advice. For a canvas to interest me. I must feel the chill in my back. And I'm no Rockefeller." says Dotremont, whose money comes from sugar and construction. "Sometimes I go into debt. If you're faced with a good painting, what can you do?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.