Entrepreneur Grant Cardone said collecting and displaying art gives him greater satisfaction than investing.
Grant Cardone
Millionaire Grant Cardone, who has been collecting art for about 15 years, says he's a spontaneous buyer.
“I don't consider myself a connoisseur. I'm very new to the art world. If I like it, I'll buy it. I don't care who did it,” he told CNBC. Along with the pieces displayed throughout his home, Cardone also has an art gallery to house his extensive collection.
CNBC spoke to Cardone via video call — behind him in his home office in Miami was an untitled piece by American graffiti artist Retna that Cardone had bought at an online auction.
“I clicked the button — I didn't really do any research… and I got the piece… and I got here and I absolutely loved it,” he said. He said he paid “maybe $140,000” for the work.
A piece titled “The Time Is Now” by Fringe, appears in the Grant Cardone House Gallery.
Grant Cardone
Along a corridor in Cardone's home are two pieces by American pop artist Burton Morris, both of which depict red Coca-Cola bottles lined up in a repeating pattern called Coca-Cola 50A and Coca-Cola 50B. “I bought this from Tommy Hilfiger…it reminds me of the importance of size,” Cardone said. Fashion designer Hilfiger is the previous owner of the house.
Cardone, a real estate investor and author of “The 10
“(Followers) are starting to see the art and they're saying, hey, you know, (was) that good for you? And I'm like, yeah, it's good for me… It's better than the dollar or the euro… The stock market's not giving me That is, satisfaction, so I do not go back and look at my situation apple Shares and feel good about it. But I walk into my gallery or into the kitchen or into my office and I see a piece and I'm like, 'Man, that's pretty cool.'
The exhibit is at Grant Cardone's home in Miami. A print of Basquiat's piece is shown at bottom left.
Grant Cardone
Inside the Cardone Gallery — complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and a security guard — is a work by contemporary American artist Kenny Scharf titled “Blipsibshabshok” (1997), an abstract painting featuring colorful futuristic symbols. Cardone owns a second Scharf, “Controlopuss” (2018), a stunning portrait of a multi-legged red creature, which he acquired for $279,400 from Phillips Auctions.
“This is Basquiat right here. The original will be worth $45 million,” Cardone said, pointing to an edition of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work titled “Flexible” (1984/2016). The original Phillips auction house sold for $45.3 million in 2018. He said: “This piece I bought with the house,” referring to a work by Basquiat entitled “Read More” by contemporary American artist Basir Holly.
Grant said he chooses the pieces he buys out of instinct. “I'll try to stay away from it. And if I keep seeing it, or keep thinking about it, I'll come back and say, 'Okay, I'm supposed to have this,'” he said.
“I plan to never sell any of this stuff. It's really for my own enjoyment. And you know, art makes me happy,” he said.
Feminist art in Florence
Former investment banker Christian Levitt has a different approach. He has been collecting art for nearly 30 years, starting with ancient paintings and Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities before moving on to pieces by female Abstract Expressionist artists.
Art collector Christian Levitt gives private tours of his home in Florence, Italy. His collection consists largely of abstract expressionist works by female artists.
Christian Levitt
Aside from owning an art museum in Mougins, France, Levitt gives tours of the artworks on the walls of his home in Florence, Italy, where he lives for six months of the year — you could say his entire house is an art gallery. “It's kind of a museum with a private tour,” Leavitt told CNBC by phone.
Located near the city's famous Ponte Vecchio bridge, the Levitt House features 20-foot ceilings, original frescoes and two floors of artwork, all made by women. The collection consists largely of Abstract Expressionist works by artists such as Impressionist Mary Cassatt and Surrealist Dorothea Tanning.
Once or twice a week, Levitt invites small groups to see his collection, and often gives tours himself. The groups are sometimes made up of students from American colleges with outposts in Florence, such as Harvard University and New York University, or they come from museums or patrons' collections.
He said that a painting by the American artist Joan Mitchell dating back to 1977 is one of the most prominent possessions of the Levitt Collection. The large piece titled “When They Were Gone” is approximately 240 cm long and 180 cm wide, and it hangs in his dining room.
It was acquired by Levett for approximately $2.8 million in 2015.
Christian Levit turned from collecting antiquities to working for women artists, as seen here at his home in Florence.
Christian Levitt
“It's probably a $15 million to $18 million painting at auction…Mitchell has always been one of the most important female painters of the 20th century,” Leavitt said.
He also praised Elaine de Kooning's oil painting of John F. Kennedy, commissioned as part of a series of portraits of the former US president in 1963. Levitt purchased the artwork in 2020, paying about $600,000.
Leavitt said he opens his home to students in part because doing so might spark interest in supporting art in the future. “Students… are the core of the art world,” he said.
Levitt focuses on the work of women artists, and is scheduled to reopen his museum in France as the Mougins Museum of Women Artists on June 21. He is currently selling the museum's former collection of art and antiquities through a series of sales at a London auction. Christie's, which has been valued at nearly £9.5 million ($11.9 million) so far.
Cellar art
The home of Christian and Karin Boros is located above the bunker that houses their private art collection, the Boros Collection, in central Berlin, Germany.
John McDougall | AFP | Getty Images
In a unique art space in Berlin, married couple Christian and Karin Boros live in a 6,000-square-foot penthouse above their private collection. The Burros Collection is housed in a former World War II bunker, a spacious high-rise building that the couple acquired in 2003 and spent several years converting into a five-story exhibition space, their home on the sixth floor.
The bunker housed up to 4,000 people during the war, and was later used as a tropical fruit storage facility before becoming a nightclub. According to Raoul Zollner, director of the Boros Foundation, 450 tons of concrete ceilings and walls were removed during its conversion into an exhibition space and a home.
Artwork by Cyprien entitled “Gaillard Lesser Koa Moorhen”, 2013, part of the Boros Collection.
Boros Collection, Berlin | no she
Christian, an advertising entrepreneur, bought his first work of art – a shovel by German artist Joseph Beuys – when he was 18, he told the Financial Times.
“The bunker is not a museum,” Zoellner said. “But it is an extraordinary project started by a passionate pair of collectors who could not have imagined how many diamond saws it would take to tear down dozens of the bunker’s walls — or what that would initiate.” Statement via email.
Karin and Christian Boros live in a penthouse above their art collection in Berlin.
Max von Gumbenberg
Nearly 600,000 people have taken guided tours of the bunker since its conversion in 2008, with pieces from the Boros collection on rotating display, Zoellner added. There are currently 114 works on display, with a “focus on the human body in multiple poses,” Zoellner said. “The business is based on the constant compulsion to gradually improve the adaptation of our bodies to technological devices,” he said.
