Search - The Collector: Allan Stone's Life in Art on DVD

Rare, intimate look into the contemporary art world

Margot Magowan | San Francisco, CA United States | 02/29/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was fascinated watching this documentary on the life of Allan Stone. This film is poignant, funny, personal, and an important contribution to the history contemporary art. I loved going into the mind and life of a famous art collector from the point of view of his daughter, meeting his family, the artists he represented, the careers he launched, all giving you such a rare and intimate look at the art world. Visually, this film is beautiful-- the art work, the shots of the collector's house and all his bounty. The film is so rich with images that when I watched it a second time, I saw paintings and art works I had completely missed originally. I highly recommend The Collector to anyone interested in art or psychology or how to give up everything to follow your passion."

The Collector is an eye-popping banquet of art and personali

colby chester | Seattle, WA. USA | 02/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For anyone with even a passing interest in 20th Century/contemporary art, this film is a banquet for the eyes. Director/creator Olympia Stone takes us into the unique, zany, brilliantly cluttered world in which she grew up, offering a very personal glimpse of her remarkable father, Allan Stone. Stone was a collector of art as well as one of New York's most successful and mercurial gallery owners. He gave wings to numerous contemporary artists, most famously Wayne Thiebaud, with whom he had a lasting and deeply personal friendship. A former Harvard grad, lawyer-turned-art dealer, Stone amassed a collection of art over a period of nearly 50 years that would be the envy of most museums in the world, if they prized such things as vintage tobacco store Indians, classic automobiles, jars of pickles sculpted into penises, life-size bovine display signs, and some of the finest work by such giants as Joseph Cornell, Willem DeKooning, John Chamberlain, Franz Kline and Wayne Thiebaud (to literally name just a few!) Add to this some of the most remarkable primitive 19th and 20th century African folk art, a pair of authentic shrunken heads, furniture by the automobile visionary, Ettore Bugatti, objects created by Barcelona's visionary Antoni Gaudi...
But what makes this homage to her father so compelling is Ms. Stone's personal touch, reflecting both awe and ambivalence regarding her famous father. He was addicted to collecting, as we readily see from the wonderfully intimate clips of him guiding us along narrow footpaths through his home, where some of the collection resides and where Ms. Stone spent her childhood among myriad phantoms of inexplicable size and mystery. Yet her father's addiction was anything but arbitrary, and we readily see that he knew the exact placement and provenance of every single object in his vast trove, as well as having deep feelings for the even the slightest of them.
The film is filled with humor and respect, and will appeal to art afficionados as well as people with only a passing interest in the countless ways human beings have found to express their joy, sadness, curiosity and passion through the creation of art. The greatest artist of them all, we soon realize, was perhaps Allan Stone himself, who managed to compile this startling collage."