Beyond art by the yard

摘要

After retail real estate developer Tony Green berg and his wife, Anne, moved into a 7,000-square-foot contemporary home in Westport, Conn, in 2008, they started to fill it with the quirky modem art they love. Up went the op art paintings and prints Tony's grandmom collected in the Sixties-pieces he had rescued from his mother's basement Then the Greenbergs, both 36, started adding to their collection of pop surrealist works They spent $5,000 to $9,000 each for three plastic "dissected companion" sculptures (with x-ed-out eyes and visible internal organs) by street artist KAWS. Finally they splurged on "Flower Hairpins," a 5-by-6.5-foot painting of an Asian waif by Thai artist Sung. Tony won't say what they paid, but Sung's large paintings now start at $75,000. "I look at it as part of our alternative investments allocation," he says. Buying art by emerging artists is always a gamble, but who knows? Whether you're a young entrepreneur with big ambi tions and big walls to fill or an empty nester looking for that perfect piece for a downsizing condo, buying original art can be fun—and addictive. First it's a hobby, then a collec tion and then an alternative investment.