'[When]... King's book, The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, [2000] finally hit... bookstores, Geffen ...[was] beyond offended. He's furious, with King "and with himself," says Terry Press, his right-hand person at DreamWorks. Splashy excerpts in the Wall Street Journal and People have done little to improve his mood. The way Geffen -- one of the most feared and powerful men in Hollywood -- sees it, Tom King seduced him, wooed him with "promises and lies," then went about blithely assassinating his character in 688 pages.'
We may contemplate assassination upon finding that Geffen has been accused of not providing a working environment safe from sexual harassment, recently. Still, we assassinate nothing by mentioning that Geffen was a producer of Broadway musical, Cats.
Vanity Fair expands our picture of Geffen with an essay on his art collecting. We excerpt:
'Last year [1994]David Geffen was asked to go onto MoMA’s select Painting and Sculpture Committee, which advises on acquisitions. It was another step up in a phenomenally rapid rise that has made Geffen the most talked-about collector today. Since 1990, when he walked away with $710 million from the sale of his stock in MCA, which included Geffen Records, to Matsushita, the 52-year-old multimedia mogul has bought large chunks of S. I. Newhouse’s and Charles Saatchi’s Abstract Expressionist and Pop art, no doubt with the assistance of Larry Gagosian. Geffen also sought advice from Thomas Ammann right up until the Swiss dealer’s death in 1993, and it is believe he has snared one or two gems from the late Marcia Weisman’s collection.
'Le tout Hollywood is aching to see Geffen’s collection at the housewarming party he is rumored to be giving this spring at the former Warner estate, which he bought for $47.5 million in 1990, ....(Ironically, the only paintings the late Jack and Ann Warner had were a pair of Dalí portraits of themselves.) The public will see the collection in 1996, when it is shown at MOCA in an installation designed by Richard Meier.
.....
'“I started collecting a long, long time ago,” Geffen says. “There was a time when I was interested in Tiffany lamps, and I had a big collection of them. There was a time when I couldn’t afford to buy really wonderful paintings, so I bought prints, and I was perfectly happy to live with beautiful prints. In the early 70s, I got really interested in David Hockney’s work. I’ve always been collecting. I’m still collecting. I collect mostly paintings from 1945 to 1965—de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Lichtenstein, Warhol. I like all the Abstract Expressionists through Pop and contemporary artists. I’m interested in what’s going on now. I love to go to galleries to see it. But I don’t collect it.”
'“Geffen is the greatest collector today? Who are we kidding?” says a cutting-edge New York dealer, criticizing Geffen for not supporting cutting-edge artists. “By virtue of the fact that he has almost unlimited funds, he is getting some terrific paintings. But that is the most boring thing in the world. It’s not a great vision.”
'Geffen himself is opinionated and convincing when he talks about the artists he likes. “There are very few artists who are at the absolute top of the pyramid for long, long periods of time. Picasso. Matisse. Of American painters, de Kooning. Jackson Pollock wasn’t around long enough, but surely there was one of the great artists of the 20th century. I think Twombly was great in the 50s, great in the 60s, and did great work in the...70s. Warhol, in the 60s, was in the forefront of what was one of the most significant times for American painting. He didn’t stay there for very long. I mean, there are a lot of Andy Warhols that are just dogs.”'
....
Dogs.
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