Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation Los Angeles Ca
A Bigger Closet for Their Art
LOS ANGELES — The Estimate wearable headquarters downtown hither — in one case a apprehensive distribution center, where stonewashed jeans were shipped around the country — looks more like an art gallery these days. Paintings past luminaries like Sterling Red and Carroll Dunham hang beside the famously sexy Guess billboard ads. And Mr. Ruby even stopped by to install a sculpture personally.
At that place is much, much more art at the nearby homes of Maurice and Paul Marciano, two of the four brothers who founded Guess in 1981. Afterwards several years of frenzied buying, they accept run out of space to brandish their growing fine art collections.
"A lot of art nosotros have in storage," Maurice Marciano said, laughing and shaking his caput, "which is not the best thing at all, definitely not what you want."
Having transformed workaday denim bluejeans into must-take items of high fashion at Guess, Maurice and Paul Marciano are now seeking to remake their own legacies as pre-eminent patrons and aggressive collectors of contemporary art.
Last month, the Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation paid $8 one thousand thousand to buy an opulent one-time Masonic temple on Wilshire Boulevard, which they plan to plow into a individual museum. In addition to housing their drove, Maurice Marciano said the museum would also host exhibitions by local artists with the hope that they will design work especially for this space. And piece of work infinite may be created for an artist in residence.
"In that location is such a vibrant, vibrant fine art customs in Fifty.A., with then many artists living here," Mr. Marciano added. "Artists who would not necessarily take a big exhibition at a well-established museum. That really inspired united states of america to have a space where we could requite a forum to these young artists to exhibit their fine art."
With some of the peak fine art schools in the country, a forgiving climate, cheaper rent than in New York and a quality of light that has enticed creative types for decades, Los Angeles has in recent years get a hub for young artists.
The museum is a announcement of the brothers' growing ambition and influence in the metropolis's fine art scene — a bold footstep for the family unit, which has shunned the limelight in recent years (Paul Marciano would not speak for this article), following an ugly fight with investors over control of Gauge in the 1980s and prolonged public criticism of the visitor's labor practices in the 1990s.
Prototype
"Los Angeles has this astonishing creative energy right now, and Maurice's project is going to exist office of it," said Jeffrey Deitch, who recently resigned as the managing director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. "I think this will become ane of the most important spaces for contemporary art in the whole land. This is making a large statement about our fourth dimension."
Certainly, the space will exist a hitting improver to the contemporary art landscape in Los Angeles. The Masonic temple was designed by Millard Sheets, the Southern California architect and muralist. It served the Masons from 1961 to 1994, and has been on and off real estate market since. With ninety,000 square feet over four floors, information technology is almost as big as the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The brothers hope information technology tin be open within xviii months, in one case they have finished renovating the first floor of the building, which fell into disrepair.
But who volition exist able to visit the Marciano museum, and when, remains unclear. At least initially, Maurice Marciano said, it volition not be open to the public daily, which would crave a sizable staff. Instead, he said, the museum might exist open past appointment.
Despite general enthusiasm here well-nigh the prospect of another major contemporary art space, several artists and collectors expressed concern about the growing prevalence of private institutions, which are harder for the public to access.
"I think it's slap-up — or potentially great," John Baldessari, a venerated Los Angeles artist and sometime teacher at the Academy of California, Los Angeles, said of the Marcianos' project. "Information technology might be a neat identify for young artists to get exposure. I hope that happens."
But he added that he hoped the Marcianos' space would not become a trend among Los Angeles art patrons.
"We'll see if it sets off a chain reaction, and more than people start to practise that," Mr. Baldessari said. "Then I recall it'due south non such a good thought, because these individual institutions all have atmospheric condition on going into their spaces."
Pam Smith, the chairwoman of Fellows of Gimmicky Fine art, a nonprofit devoted to helping Los Angeles artists, said a tendency toward private institutions was already under way. They include the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, the François Pinault Foundation in Venice and the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Fine art in Seoul.
Paradigm
"We're seeing a very dissimilar philosophy than nosotros did, for example, in New York when all the major museums were founded," Ms. Smith said. "People are looking for different ways to preserve and show their art than they e'er accept in the past. If they donate to a museum, that's it. They've given up all control."
The four Marciano brothers were built-in in People's democratic republic of algeria and Morocco just grew up in 1950s Marseilles, France, in a devoted observant Jewish family. Their father was a rabbi, equally were a granddad, and a not bad-grandfather. The Marciano brothers — Georges and Armand, forth with Maurice and Paul — began a very unlike kind of family unit concern, moving more than iii decades ago to Los Angeles, where they founded Guess.
Maurice and Paul began collecting art effectually 1990. They started with Impressionist pieces merely soon moved to the contemporary art marketplace and sold the older works.
"If nosotros had nerveless only Impressionists, today nosotros would have only a few pieces, instead of hundreds of pieces," Maurice Marciano said.
They ain about ane,000 works, among the brothers' personal collections, the joint drove they share, the Guess collection and, now, their fine art foundation'southward collection. Merely who's counting?
Apparently non Maurice Marciano, who estimated that he and Paul owned only half equally many works as they in fact exercise. (His assistant corrected him.) He said they view their collections as largely shared.
But friends beyond the Los Angeles fine art world said it was Maurice Marciano who had driven their button to collect.
"I do most of the inquiry, because he's decorated running the company," Maurice, who stepped down from daily Judge operations last year, said of Paul. "For 80 per centum of the collection, he is on board, but I recently bought some pieces that he said, 'Eh, don't count me in.' "
Paul Schimmel, the vice president of the Hauser & Wirth gallery hither and the former primary curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, said Maurice Marciano'south interest in art was revived when he toured a Takashi Murakami show at the museum in 2008.
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"For Maurice, I know that show really reignited his interest," Mr. Schimmel said. "He feels a very deep connexion to the art being fabricated at present."
Later on that, Maurice began buying pieces from Mr. Murakami and other giants of contemporary art, also as investing in emerging local artists, like Analia Saban. He as well began taking on a more public role in the urban center's art community. He joined the Museum of Contemporary Art'southward lath last year, and has donated work to the museum, including one of Mr. Ruby'south stalagmites. (Another one juts upwardly from the floor at Guess.)
Several people noted his strong rapport with artists. He often stops by local studios, and Thomas Houseago, a British sculptor based in Los Angeles, recently visited Mr. Marciano'southward domicile to option out the right spot for one of sculptures. (They decided the front yard would be best.)
"Twenty years ago, they were collectors," Mr. Schimmel said of Maurice and Paul Marciano. "Now they are existent patrons. I remember they see their role every bit more borough and comprehensive at present."
This year, Alex Israel, a local artist, suggested the Marcianos look at the abandoned Masonic temple, just up the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
"Information technology was a beautiful building, simply we were completely overwhelmed," Maurice Marciano said of his commencement trip there with his brother. "We left proverb, 'No manner.' "
Over the next few months, though, they decided they could renovate the building in stages. They plan to start with the start floor, which will become gallery spaces. The 2nd floor will have offices and a library.
They gave some of the furniture the Masons left backside to artists, hoping they could use information technology in their work and so might one day return to the museum.
"I don't think they see the stop every bit a major museum with their proper name on it," Mr. Schimmel said. "I still don't retrieve they know what the endgame is, and I find that very exciting nearly them."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/arts/design/maurice-and-paul-marciano-of-guess-jeans-plan-a-museum.html
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