Enough Material for a Few Sequels

Eleven years ago, when film director and writer Billy Wilder was a mere 83 years of age, he took his classic Picassos, Braques, Miros, Legers and Klees off the walls of his Wilshire Boulevard apartment. Down, too, came Egon Schiele’s wickedly erotic drawings of neurotic nudes, Fernando Botero’s pale-pink painting of a bloated bathing beauty and Balthus’ full-length portrait of an adolescent girl, ominously naked except for her white knee socks and red slippers. Wilder also removed sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, Gaston Lachaise and Aristide Maillol from their pedestals. Then he shipped the whole lot--93 paintings, drawings and sculptures in all--to Christie’s in New York.

On Nov. 13, 1989, at the peak of the art market, the auction house sold 86 artworks from his collection for a total of $32.6 million. Most of the pieces were drawings or small works, purchased when that was all Wilder could afford. But such is the magic of his taste and name that seven pieces commanded more than $1 million each and records were set for 12 artists.

Now Wilder is at it again--albeit in a much smaller way, financially speaking. A series of three auctions at Christie’s in Beverly Hills, which began last month and continues Wednesday and June 13, is expected to bring a total of about $1 million in sales of artworks and other objects from his collection.

The first of these events, a sale of 20th century decorative arts May 18, racked up $102,000 for Wilder’s designer furniture, posters and memorabilia--with most prices reaching or exceeding the auction house’s estimates. A photograph of Marilyn Monroe by Milton H. Greene, valued at $2,000 to $4,000, brought the top price of $9,988. A variation of the familiar image picturing the actress with the skirt of her white dress swirling around her waist, this shot is a rear view, inscribed “Dear Billy, I love you forever, Marilyn.”

“They are crazy about Marilyn,” Wilder said of the auction crowd and the unidentified buyer.

“Unfortunately, they are not so crazy about bentwood furniture,” he growled, bemoaning the fact that two Austrian chairs and a mirror with bentwood frames went begging.

Nonetheless, he was pleased that the first auction did as well as predicted. He was also delighted that aficionados of Modern furniture designed by his good friends Charles and Ray Eames and architects Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen didn’t hesitate to pay higher sums than expected for examples of their work in his collection.

“This is my second post-mortem,” Wilder said of this spring’s round of auctions. But it’s only beginning. Now he’s looking forward to the next event, a sale of 20th century art on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

Roving around Christie’s sale room in his wheelchair, he watched the installation of a pre-sale exhibition featuring the 23 drawings, paintings, sculptures and photographic works he has consigned to this week’s auction, along with a dozen prints that will go on the block June 13. Wending his way around the room, he took a long view of big, bold prints by the late Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein leaning against the walls, then squinted at tiny drawings by Picasso and sculptures by Botero, Robert Graham and Tom Wesselmann spread out on tables.

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The priciest items in Wednesday’s sale are a 1902 self-portrait of Picasso at the beach in Barcelona, a 1912 drawing of two nude women by Schiele and a 1949 mobile by Alexander Calder--each valued at $100,000 to $150,000. Among other star attractions is “Reclining Figure,” a 22-inch-long bronze by Botero, which is expected to bring $80,000 to $120,000. For collectors with smaller pocketbooks and different tastes, there’s a vividly colored painting of toothbrushes by Wayne Thiebaud ($50,000 to $70,000), a photographic collage of Wilder lighting a cigar by David Hockney ($15,000 to $20,000) and several sculptures of fanciful figures and animals by Niki de Saint Phalle ($8,000 to $18,000).

In the final auction, June 13 at 6:30 p.m., lithographs and etchings from Wilder’s collection will go on the block in a sale of 20th century prints. His consignments include three images of domestic interiors and a Chinese-style landscape by Lichtenstein ($10,000 to $16,000) and a unique, hand-painted lithograph by Hockney, “Two Vases of Cut Flowers and a Liriope Plant” ($30,000 to $40,000).

In art collecting, as in movie making, Wilder appears to have a remarkable lack of sentimentality. Before the 1989 auction, he shrugged off regrets about parting with the core of his collection by saying he had “a whole new team [of artworks] sitting on the bench, and a third team after that” to fill the empty spaces in his apartment. “I’ve got my French primitives, my Saul Steinbergs, my African collection, my pre-Columbian things, so you will never know that anything is missing.” What’s more, he said, he wanted to have the fun of watching his auction, rather than leaving that experience to his heirs.

On that newsworthy occasion, Wilder lived up to his word by sitting with the crowd in the sale room, instead of retreating to a private observation deck, as is customary. And when auctioneer Christopher Burge cracked the final gavel at the sale, Wilder pronounced the experience “less nerve-racking than a film preview.”

This time around, Wilder--who will celebrate his 94th birthday on June 22--is even more matter-of-fact. Asked why he is letting go of the rest of his collection, except for the French primitive paintings and a number of pieces that have special meaning or that he thinks are unsalable, he had a quick answer.

“I’m just closing up before checking out. I do not want to burden my wife with things to sell or give away. I just want to help her,” he said of Audrey, his wife of 50 years.

Wilder is far from the only Hollywood luminary to collect art. Almost as long as the film industry has lined the pockets of producers, directors, actors and talent agents, there has been a tradition of Hollywood folks using some of their expendable income to buy art. Often--in Hollywood as elsewhere--the urge to collect is nothing more than a means of decorating a mansion or buying a social position. But the entertainment community has spawned serious, well-informed collectors, including actors Edward G. Robinson, Steve Martin, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester; executives Ray Stark, Douglas Cramer, David Geffen and Dean Valentine; and talent agents Michael Ovitz and Philip Gersh, with his wife, Beatrice.

There’s also a history of Hollywood collections ending up on the auction block. Robinson sold his cache of Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings to Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos at auction in 1957, as part of a divorce settlement. A 1988 sale of 28 Impressionist and Modern artworks from the estate of producer William Goetz and his wife, Edith Mayer Goetz, the daughter of film mogul Louis B. Mayer, brought a whopping $85 million.

Still, Wilder stands alone as a collector of Modern and contemporary art because of his distinctive taste and the length and breadth of his passion. “Other people may get their kicks from smoking marijuana or taking cocaine,” he said. “I get my lift from paintings.”

If he could live his life again, as the son of a wealthy man, he would buy “every single Fauve painting in the world,” he said. “I have always loved Fauve painting, especially the color.”

As it happened, he has acquired quite a variety of art over the years, from pristine geometric abstraction to gloomy Expressionism. But the heart of his collection--like his films--is characterized by surreal twists, unabashed sexuality, zesty wit and, above all, an irreverent take on the human condition.

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Although he’s known as a sophisticated collector of high art, Wilder calls himself Lord of the Tchotchkes. That’s because of his penchant for picking up odd little gadgets, doodads and pieces of folk art--some of which find their way into assemblages created with other artists.

That little-known side of Wilder was revealed in a 1993 exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, then located in Beverly Hills. As curator of the show, Wilder not only selected an eclectic assortment of pieces from his collection, but also collaborated with artist Bruce Houston to create a series of painted plaster busts of Queen Nefertiti in the styles of prominent Modern and contemporary artists. The series was inspired by Wilder’s love of a famous Egyptian sculpture at a Berlin museum, but with Wilder, nothing is sacred.

He began collecting, “as most people do,” he said, by buying posters. In his case, it was Toulouse-Lautrec posters in Berlin, but he had to abandon them in 1933, when he fled Nazi Germany and went to Paris. He frequented a few galleries there, but immigrated to the United States and took a train to Los Angeles the following year.

As soon as he had a steady income, he began to buy art. “My good luck was in all those years I never bought racing horses, I never had a yacht, I never bought a Ferrari. I have no villa in St. Tropez. I cut down on my ballooning in Bavaria and I stayed away from junk bonds. I just buy nice things and sometimes swap them for better ones,” he said in a 1989 Times interview.

Wilder also has been quoted as saying, “I wish I’d collected more and directed less.” Does he still feel that way? “Sure,” he said, without a second’s hesitation. And despite his bravado at dispersing his collection, he finally confessed that putting things on the block isn’t easy.

Looking over a group of drawings and prints by Hockney, Wilder grew wistful. “Hockney is a wonderful man and a great artist. He’s one of the best artists around, in every way,” he said. “But what am I going to do with his work after I’m gone?”

But his mood shifted as he turned to a Hockney drawing of a blue director’s chair with a script on the seat and Wilder’s name on the backrest. It was on view at Christie’s not as part of the sale preview but for a private reception in honor of the Wilders.

“This is not for sale. This I keep,” he said.

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Christie’s, 360 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. (310) 385-2600. An exhibition of works in Wednesday night’s sale will remain on view until the conclusion of the auction. Works in the June 13 auction of prints and multiples will be exhibited from Friday until that sale ends. Hours: Sundays, 1-5 p.m.; sale days, 10 a.m.-noon; other weekdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.