Russian perspective on art collecting

On the JetBlue flight out to California, I tore a page out of the May 29, 2006 New Yorker. The item, by Lillian Ross, is about Roustam Tariko, a Russian guy who was rumored, inaccurately, to have been the purchaser of a Picasso painting that sold last month for $95 million at Sotheby’s.

“Italian aristocrat with big gallery in London calls to sell me paintings. So I escape in my Boeing Business Jet [ed: 737 airframe with fancy interior], converted, with expensive everything. I live mostly in my plane. I go and go and go in freedom. .. Art dealers from all over world are now asking me to buy Picassos, other Impressionists. … But I do not buy them. I’d rather invest in my freedom, rather than in my walls.”