Max Carter, Tobias Meyer, and Alex Rotter<\/p>\n
<\/span>Photographer OK McCausland<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n The whole collection is like this, Meyer explained, never the easy works, always the tough ones, the ones Si could get passionate about before anyone. Bill Acquavella struggled for years to sell a late Lucian Freud, a nude self-portrait, a tough one. When Si saw it, he pounced, and it\u2019s still in the collection, one of the many knockouts yet to come to market.<\/p>\n What\u2019s remarkable is that Si did<\/em> sell so much of the collection while he was alive\u2014he basically cleaned house in the \u201990s when he moved apartments (David Geffen scooped up the big ones), simply because they couldn\u2019t fit on the walls of the new place. He consigned to auction and to dealers, letting Larry Gagosian<\/a> put stuff discreetly on the market, floating things out there.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the interesting part that we haven\u2019t talked about, Si\u2019s editing\u2014the ability of the pen to cross out a paragraph,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cHe was absolutely unsentimental about selling things. I once stood in front of a Rauschenberg with him in a Rauschenberg exhibition at The Met, and he said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a good painting.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, you used to own that.\u2019 He said, \u2018I did?\u2019 Completely uninterested in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Next to the Pollock was a Picasso that once hung in the Paris salon run by Gertrude Stein, who held onto it until her death.<\/p>\n \u201cHe owned, as I said, Jasper Johns\u2019s Out the Window<\/em> and then False Start,<\/em>\u201d Meyer said. \u201cHe owned the Pollock that I sold for David Geffen. He owned the Orange Marilyn.<\/em> He owned the bunny.<\/a> He owns this<\/em>\u2014he owns Gertrude Stein\u2019s Picasso from 1913 that she bought from him.<\/em> This is not any Picasso, this is her Picasso.\u201d<\/p>\n
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