An artist thinks about culture through visual means.

“Whereas academia is based on rational group-think. There is a magic and an alchemy to art, but academics are always suspicious of the guy who stirs the big black pot.”

The Nahmad family reputedly once owned 20 percent of the world’s privately held Picassos, but they now buy huge quantities of contemporary art.

“For an artist, the most important thing is to entertain yourself on a daily basis. And you want to be able to sustain a level for a long period and actually get better.”

interests with tenacity, quirkiness, and confidence.”

“There are learners and there are the learned,” he explains. “The former like contemporary art, living artists, the art of their time. The latter like the art of the past.”

fighting over it. Second, a collection is a personal vision. No one can steal your vision.”

On the secondary or resale market, the risk is lower, because the work has been market-tested.

On the topic of what makes a good artist, she was willing to point to perfectionism: “For me, you care one hundred percent about what you do. You can’t say, ‘It’s okay like this but it could have been a different way.’ You have a total vision of how things have to be—it has to be just right.”