ARTS Specialist collectors, steeped in one particular sliver of the arts, whether it be high-flying Warhols or arcane 17th-century English embroidery, are common enough. And then there's New Yorker Bob Rubin, who founded the AIG Trading Group, a subsidiary of American International Group.
Before you say, "A financier collector - aren't they a dime a dozen?", know this: three years ago in the midst of a mid-life crise de coeur, this bespectacled figure left his Wall Street position and enrolled in Columbia University's doctoral programme for a degree in the theory and history of architecture. At the same time he put his collecting of three French modernist design titans - Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier - on to fast mode.
It was both a deeply serious (as opposed to wannabe) pursuit, and unusually prescient.
A decade ago, Prouvé, who had neither garnered an architectural degree nor an engineering one, never even made it into standard design textbooks, and Rubin's peers were spicing up their homes with haute dix-huitième siècle boiserie and super-gilt Louis Louis. Now, of course, the designer is a favourite of such aesthetic connoisseurs as Tom Ford and Azzedine Alaia, and is generally hot property.
James Zemaitis, Sotheby's 20th-century design expert, sees Rubin as a decidedly individual character.
"He's a one-man academic, curator and financier who added an unprecedented level of academic support and integrity to the field," says Zemaitis. (Indeed, Rubin curated the exhibition Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, which ran from September 2003 to April 2004.)
For those who want to judge for themselves, a chunk of Rubin's treasures go under the hammer at Sotheby's New York on Saturday; the collector has shifted his Prouvé passion in a different direction.
"I've decided to concentrate on the travelling exhibition of Jean Prouvé's tropical house," explains Rubin. When the aforementioned property starts its journey around the world, it will become the first exhibition of its kind. The house, the iconic La Maison Tropicale, is considered the ultimate "prefab" trophy, and hails from Brazzaville. Its inception dates to 1949, when the French government sponsored a competition to design inexpensive housing for its African colonies. Prouvé and his brother Henri snared the prize.
Rubin restored the edifice, what he calls "the purest Prouvé building extant or little Brazza".
Rubin's penchant for collecting began early. He grew up in scrappy Perth Amboy (to the non-cognoscenti that's off the Jersey Turnpike) and at age 11 pursued baseball cards with a pre-adolescent passion. At 18, "He was collecting $40 first editions, and then he graduated to mechanical toys, wine and more over the years," says Frederick Caxton, managing partner of Caxton-Iseman Capital, a private equity arm of one the world's largest hedge funds.
Along the way discriminating dealers began to praise Rubin's efforts. American dealer Leigh Keno still extols Rubin's colonial antiques collection, most of which was sold in January 2003.
"Collecting is a way of learning," says Rubin, whose personal dress (fatigued orange T-shirt emblazoned with Donald Duck, scruffy jeans, white socks and black sneakers) bears all the hallmarks of a scruffy East Village denizen, even if his collecting habits do not.
The house show, for example, is no standard one-stop event. On February 14, the exhibition (entitled Jean Prouvé:ATropical House) opens on the Yale University campus at what Rubin refers to as the "hallowed ground" of modernism: inside Paul Rudolph's brutalist art and architecture faculty and also outdoors on a vacant lot soon to be Richard Meier's new art school. Meanwhile, directly across the street sit two Louis Kahn edifices: the Paul Mellon Center for British Art and the Yale Art Gallery.
Rubin is in the midst of negotiations with a west coast fine arts institution to travel with the exhibition. After that, La Maison Tropicale is heading for Japan.
"It's very time-consuming," says Rubin, who spent months researching the best way to pack the house into two shipping containers.
Rubin's role models for collecting? Surely John D. Rockefeller Jr, who rescued Williamsburg from oblivion, or tobacco heiress Doris Duke, who plucked up 82 colonial homes in the then somewhat tacky town of Newport, R.I. Also vintage racing car enthusiasts. "I've dealt with things that did not have a long history of being treated as art objects, so therefore precedents were thin on the ground," he says.
He spent 25 years sourcing rare racing cars and snared Alfa Romeo and Ferrari prototypes. At that point his research mode was firmly off the beaten track, scrutinizing factory records and racing car magazine literature while pinpointing grapevine sources. That led him to track down a Bugatti once owned by the illegitimate son of the King of Belgium. Among his other collecting coups is a front-wheel-drive Miller 91 race car, which he restored and donated to Washington's Smithsonian Institution.
"It wasn't that big a leap to modernist examples," says Rubin. "Both specialties are industrial artifacts."
Those seeking a memento of Prouvé's masterpiece can consider snapping up a pair of surplus wall panels made for the Brazzaville project at Sotheby's that retain their original paint as well as fiberglass insulation.
But don't expect dumpster-like prices. When a pair of Prouvé aluminium door panels were under the hammer at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg two years ago, they reached a record $254,000, so Rubin's Prouvé doors are bound to soar over their $60,000-$80,000 estimate.
And after all that? Perhaps on to his Paris abode - the Palais Royale apartment that once belonged to Jean Cocteau - for some rest.
Brook S. Mason is chief correspondent of Art & Antiques.
