I first heard about the Allen paintings from a friend at a dinner party. “Paintings of Woody Allen?” I asked.
“No,” she whispered. “I’m talking about paintings by Woody Allen. You can’t even see them. They’re under wraps.”
Two days later, a woman I’ll call Mrs Purdy greeted me with a conspiratorial smile at the door of a large East Side apartment. “It just arrived yesterday,” she glowed. The Purdys own Allen Number Nine, the ninth in a series of 18 original oil paintings by the sexagenarian auteur. She led me into the living room, where it was hanging above the couch. I should say it was mounted over the couch, using four quarter-inch steel bolts.
Allen #9 measures 56” by 42” and is completely wrapped in brushed stainless steel sheet metal. According to Mrs Purdy, it weighs over 140 pounds. Two stainless steel belts cross at the center, where they are secured by a polished stainless steel lock, which is the work’s visual center of attention. The lock’s keyhole is sealed with red sealing wax. The enclosure is so well made and finished that it looks stunning above the black suede couch (and the faux-zebra rug Mrs Purdy confesses to having bought over the weekend). A nearby stainless-steel binder contains the painting’s documents.
According to the Purdys’ agreement with the Mind/Field gallery in Chelsea, the painting is to remain locked in its protective case as long as the artist is alive. The Purdys cannot attempt to open or discover what the paintings look like using “any technology either now known or unknown,” according to the contract. There is no mention of the colors or content of the painting, other than to say that Mr Allen himself painted every brushstroke and his signature is in the bottom right corner. There is a certificate of ownership, signed by Mr Allen, but it’s been torn in half. The Purdys only own one half of this document.
Upon notification of Mr Allen’s death, the gallery will confirm that the painting is still under wraps, after which it will present the Purdys with the key, instructions for removing the covering, the other half of the document (conferring legal title), their $500,000 deposit (with interest, less a management fee), and a statement for tax purposes.
Mrs Purdy explains how they acquired the piece: “It was a private Internet auction. We had no idea who we were bidding against. The first painting went for $1.7 million. That surprised us. Number three went for $1.2 million. By number eight, the prices became more reasonable, so we started bidding. These are the only paintings he’ll ever paint, you know. That’s part of the agreement.”
The next day, I met Jordan Field at his gallery in Chelsea. He reported that the auction had brought in a total of $14.8 million. I asked if he had seen the paintings.
“Absolutely not,” he huffed. “No one has seen them. That’s the point. This series is very personal, private, and introspective. More than any other paintings I’ve ever sold, these paintings make you think. They stretch your imagination, blurring the line between life and death as they blur the line between painting and sculpture. Woody Allen is the one person in America who truly represents our collective morbid fear of death. This is as close to true salvation as you can buy and hang on the wall.”
Allen #1, wrapped in black Kevlar fiber, is already nicknamed “Darth Vader.” It’s a graphite box that weighs a scant 80 pounds, with a black box on one side. The black box contains an electronic lock that will release the Kevlar front and rear plates, exposing the painting. Opening the box requires the entry of a password kept by the gallery.
Allen #2 is covered in copper with two large belts criss-crossing the front and a hand-hammered copper lock. As the painting ages, the copper will turn green.
Allen #3 is cast in concrete the way you would encase a body before sliding it into the East River, just a stone's throw from Mr Allen's apartment on 5th Avenue. It's a full base, not unlike a wide tombstone, that holds a painting - entirely cast in Qwik Crete - at a gentle angle for viewing. At Mr Allen's death, a small crew will come chisel the concrete away from the front of the painting, exposing the precious painting buried underneath. At just over 1800 pounds, Allen Number Three is by far the heaviest of all the Allen Paintings.
Allen #4 is encased in rare Bubinga and Sapele woods, using no nails or glue. It has a clever traditional Japanese fastening system that uses handmade cords to secure the wooden pin. The cords are woven around a steel cable and lock, hiding them from view.
Allen #5 is a large square painting with a painted gray metal box around it. The box has ridges that suggest the language of the kind of box used to store reels of film. The square reel box, secured with nylon seat-belt webbing around its perimeter, is itself a piece of pop art.
Allen #6 is wrapped entirely in fire-retardant linen, hand-sewn in minute detail. The release on the back is a set of cabled metal “claws” that radiate out from the center in a semi-circle, holding the fabric together in back, leaving a smooth light-green finish across the front.
Allen #7 is covered in shiny black Astroturf.
Allen #8 is the second heaviest, at 610 pounds. It’s encased entirely in quarter-inch-thick steel plates that have already begun to rust. It has to be mounted to a masonary wall by a crew using hammer drills, drop-in steel anchors, and a fork lift.
“Why eighteen paintings?” I asked Mr Field. “I have no idea,” he puffed, smoking a cigar and typing away on a manual typewriter. “You’ll have to ask Horowitz.”
Nathan Horowitz is a 30-year-old genius who spends most of his time playing bridge on the Internet. He’s tall and wiry, with a nest of brown hair and boyish, prep-school looks. He invited me to his estate in the Hamptons, where I found him in a room surrounded by computers, playing bridge as he talked to me. There were chess trophies on the wall, along with what seemed to be several shelves of screenplays.
Horowitz got his PhD in astrophysics at Princeton, but after graduating he was recruited to help start a hedge fund that became quite successful. Four years later, at the age of 30, he retired to pursue other projects. Besides playing bridge, he is currently building the world’s largest terrestrial telescope using a huge dish of spinning liquid mercury as a mirror. “The mercury,” he explains without ever using a first-person pronoun, “takes a perfect parabolic shape when spinning – avoiding all the lens-grinding imperfections that plague most large telescope mirrors. Using 600 tons of mercury! Superconducting bearings, fuzzy-logic software, atmospheric telemetry. Project is a total nightmare, but should be able to resolve a golf ball on the surface of Mars.” He won’t say where his telescope is located but says he has a team of 12 working around the clock. He even showed me live images from the construction site on his computer screen, which he monitors as he continued to play bridge. I will add that the cup of coffee his house staff brought me was one of the best I have ever tasted.
Nathan Horowitz is the only person to have seen any of the Woody Allen paintings. They were his brainchild.
“Always been a huge fan of Woody Allen’s” he bid, looking up from a glowing screenful of cards. “Called his manager, said we could make a few million bucks together. She hung up on me. Finally offered him two thousand bucks for a fifteen-minute phone conversation, paid in advance. Few days later, assistant called and said where to send the check.” After an hour of listening to Horowitz, I started to think without using first-person pronouns myself.
“Phone con took place while he was on a movie set last fall,” he giggled, as he managed to force an ace from one of his on-screen opponents. “Explained my idea. Told him I would hire a painting coach, pay all expenses. Split profits fifty fifty. Told him he could paint anything he wanted – no one will know the difference until he’s gone. He coughed severely, followed by a long silence. Thought he might have hung up. Finally, asked if he could specify the caterer.” And so the unlikely deal was struck, with pastrami and caviar as the tipping point.
I asked Horowitz to explain the process. “Sessions took place over six weeks last April. Rented a studio in the East Village and filled it with a couple grand worth of paints, canvases, tools. Made sure there was plenty of natural light and a good CD player. He said everything was fine and insisted on being alone. He brought his own music – Rachmaninov.
“That week, had some artists work on concepts for the boxes. Went back and saw three paintings. Blew me away. Very cool shit. Showed him the cover comps. He hated ‘em. Said the project is over and walked out. It was cold that afternoon – he forgot his coat. Chased him down the street. Asked him if we could compromise, split the boxes. Took an extra twenty grand to convince him, but he said okay. Square film box idea was mine, but he hated it. Final nine were all his.”
Allen Number Ten is a shiny black lacquer-coated box with a long chrome-plated piano hinge creating a door that will swing open once the padlock is removed. It has the feeling of having been made by Steinway. Its padlock, also painted gloss black, with a dark red wax seal, hangs neatly in the center at the bottom, below a gold “10” in italic numerals about an inch high. I’m told the interior is in dark red velvet. Except for their sizes and numerals, the rest are all identical.
Horowitz recalls the day he went to see all 18 paintings completed. “Woody put his brush down. Said, ‘Chagall, I’m not.’ Loved that. Loved the paintings. Helped him wrap them in burlap so they could breathe while boxes were being constructed. Closed each one with thread and a lead seal, so to be sure they’d remain unseen while they spent the next six months locked in the studio, curing. Then ate pastrami sandwiches and celery tonic. Remember him telling me that celery tonic is the only civilized thing to drink with pastrami.” I left Horowitz to his bridge buddies and his instant messages, imagining how the food may have influenced the paintings.
Curious about the market, I called a few of the owners and asked if they planned to open their boxes when the time came. And this is the interesting part: the six owners of the first nine paintings I contacted said they would open them as soon as they got the word. And the five owners I contacted who bought paintings in the second group all said they planned to keep their paintings just the way they were, at least until they passed on. Bruce Willis, who bought number 8, agreed to let me quote him, saying, “I wish I’d thought of this. It’s a great idea. I can’t paint worth shit.”
I asked Horowitz whether he had kept one of the paintings – perhaps number nineteen? Horowitz said no, he’d done it to collaborate with Allen, and he’d done it for the money, which was much more than either of them had expected. It buys him a few more scientists for his telescope. I asked whether he thinks anyone will remember him when it comes time to send out the eighteen keys, the certificates of ownership, and $9 million worth of deposit money (plus interest). “News of Woody Allen’s departure will be front-page news everywhere in the world,” he said, “but for the owners of those eighteen paintings, it will be a day of especially deep reflection. That’s what our customers are really paying for – a small piece of the big puzzle.”
© 2003 David Siegel
