DENIS MAKSIMOV

Interview with Walter Vanhaerents

Walter Vanhaerents

The Vanhaerents Art Collection is a family collection of contemporary art containing works from the 1970s until today. It contains works from emerging young artists with those of more established artists by whom they were inspired. Belgian Art Collector Walter Vanhaerents manages and curates this vast collection of masterpieces.

Denis Maksimov: Do you have a strategy for collecting art? 

Walter Vanhaerents: There was never really any strategy. I just follow my heart. 

DM: Where did you spot the art you wanted to purchase? 

WV: I went to galleries as there were very few art fairs back when I started. There were just Art Cologne and Art Basel. There was no market - private collectors were kind of walking around. 

DM: How did you start to collect? 

WV: It was sort of a hobby. From an early age, I had to be very engaged in the family business. Later I started to look for something different to do in order to find a good balance in my life. Some people do sport for example. I found art collecting to be my “thing”. I was also very interested in architecture and that became a starting point. I started buying a number of pieces, without an investment perspective in mind. Creating a collection was not the purpose in the beginning. I was simply interested in artists who are making pieces that are larger than life. Life is three-dimensional and I wanted to surround myself with embodiments of this idea. I have always loved the medium of film. At the end of a film, I always forget what it was about because I focused so much on how it was directed and created. I was very interested in Warhol movies - many forget that he actually did his society portraits and prints in order to fund movie productions. They never made money themselves and the whole factory was a machine – generating revenue in order to fund film production. 

David Altmejd & Michelangelo Pistoletto works

DM: What is curation for you? 

WV: Due to my technical background, I feel very connected to installation works in open spaces. Placing a show together - that is curation for me. Who is a curator? Everyone can be a curator. There are too many curators, there is no curation standards. I am focused on visual sensations. I never did a curation elsewhere apart from my own space but I love to collaborate on the arrangement of my own collection with other curators. I like the idea of having two pieces next to each other in order to create a certain emotional tension. It is all about how you use the space. I think a lot of curators don’t understand the space enough. They don’t “feel” space well enough. Staying in the space, sitting in the corner there, understanding it - it’s very important for putting on the show. I also like to give the freedom of organising my space to external curators. It creates completely different perspectives on my collection. I don’t want to be a collector who is defined by a particular style. I like to show different facets of my interests and topics that are close to me.

DM: Where do you go to spot new talents? 

WV: I often go to East London in the younger galleries and I go to Paris. I develop a certain program for a trip and personally meet the people. It’s not possible to do that at an art fair. Fairs are just a way of presenting – and there is a lot of pressure. I never go into competition to buy. Once, at a fair in New York, a guy assured me that he gives me first reserve on a piece but then sold the piece before I came back at the agreed time, as he was afraid that I wouldn’t come back. Since then I told to myself that I won’t be doing purchases on fairs anymore. 

DM: How do you see contemporary art and the market now?

WV: There is so much choice in the market. I wouldn’t say there are any particular tendencies in contemporary art now. There is a lot of repetition which is definitely very common. It feels somehow muddy. It’s popular among the street artists for example. Sometimes works are so nihilistic. It’s just boring and it’s not new, these ideas were shown before. For me, it is important to try and find new perspectives and look for more depth. I decided initially that I will never go back in time with my collection. I am always looking for something new. Conceptual art is 60 years old - it’s not new anymore, but people still discuss it. It is not an interesting discussion anymore. DM: In the current climate of increasing cultural budget cuts, do you think private collectors can step in, in order to keep public institutions ‘contemporary’? WV: I am open to work together with museums concerning my collection. Stedelijk Museum in the Netherlands has already offered me a cooperation and I look forward to it. But here in Belgium it is difficult. Belgian museums don’t have funds to buy new art - their budgets are too small. At the same time, they don’t have good ideas about privatepublic collaborations yet. Sometimes I lend pieces from my collection, that’s all for now. DM: Do you think Jeff Koons and similar ‘celebrity artists’ still express something actual through their art? WV: That’s difficult to say - Koons is a lifetime career artist. He has said what he had to say. But you know - I thought Damien Hirst was a bubble, but I was wrong. The last pieces Koons made were clay, plasticine towers in Whitney. That is something he has never shown before. But James Ensor for example was drawing the same things after he turned 30. Murakami as well. I got several early sculptures of him for nothing and that’s it, I had no intention of buying more. Now he is still a hit, despite repetitiveness. 

published in The Brussels Times Magazine, February/March 2015