On the evening of September 28th and into the dark morning of the 29th, 2018, East Hampton firefighters worked tirelessly to put out a fire in the Georgica Pond home of Ron Perelman. Through their valiant efforts and those of the illiquid billionaire’s minions, most of the most valuable artworks in the house were saved.
Well, actually, Joseph Beuys’ 1974 blackboard painting, Chikago, which Perelman had just acquired in 2017, did suffer some water damage. And I can’t figure out what happened to the Franz Kline evacuated to the home’s detached home theater, surrounded by a bunch of Prouvé that, I assume, became part of the nearly $200 million insurance payout for furniture.
But Perelman’s 1971 Twombly, his Warhol Elvis and Soup Can paintings, and his two Ruschas, which were also in the library and dining room, and which were also evacuated to the home theater, survived unscathed. Perelman had been worried, as any good steward of artworks would, of course, that these five significant pieces, which he’d insured for $410 million, well above their market value, might have been damaged or diminished in some way, even invisibly, by the fire, or their association with it. Perelman only “collected masterpieces,” his risk manager testified. And the value of a masterpiece can only be determined by the owner of a similar masterpiece, and “if we have to go and buy it off Steve Wynn’s wall, we’ll pay his asking price.”
And so Perelman suggested that instead of possibly embarrassingly realizing a loss of value, his insurance companies should just pay him $205 million, and—by tautological virtue of remaining in his collection—the artworks would remain masterpieces.
And when his insurance companies insulted them by declining to pay, he sued, putting the integrity of these artworks to the courts to decide.
And last week, a NY State Supreme Court judge declared that indeed, Perelman’s paintings were not damaged, their honor was not besmirched by the light patches of soot on the edges of their frames, and they were as valuable and certifiable masterpieces as they were the day before the fire.
What a relief that must be for an artlover like Ron Perelman, that his Twombly had not, in fact, “lost its ‘oomph,'” and what a victory for art.