W “WHAT TO SEE WHAT NOT TO SEE” is written in blue neon on the side of Marc and Jane Nathanson’s white Spanish house in Holmby Hills. Not a question, not quite a statement, it’s an installation by Maurizio Nannucci; an electrifying sign of what’s inside. The thing is, you’ll want to see it all. You’ll want to see the Lloyd Wright house with its architectural garden featuring boxwood globes and a giant metal Calder sculpture; you’ll want to be greeted by Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Jeff Koons in the foyer, view Jasper Johns’ Target and Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Campbell’s Soup Can in the sunroom, enjoy the James Rosenquist Portrait of the Scull Family in the upstairs gallery, and see Damien Hirst’s epic Blue on Blue circular painting of butterflies adjacent to a Picasso portrait, which hangs among a Basquiat, a Rauschenberg and another Lichtenstein in the dining room. And of course there’s the Matisse from Jane Nathanson’s parents’ collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, hung quietly over the fireplace in the library. That’s just upstairs. The art gallery is actually on the floor below. The Nathansons are devoted not only to their impeccable collection of contemporary and pop art, but also to displaying it in a home where it more than just complements the decor, it is the decor. In fact, it’s impossible to separate the house from its holdings. “I feel art creates space wherever it is,” says Jane Nathanson, “It married the house. The marriage of contemporary art and 1920s design makes the architecture and the art stand out.” The Nathanson residence was built in 1927 as the show house for the Holmby Hills area. “Everyone lived in Hancock Park then,” says Jane. “Beverly Hills was considered the country.” As a real estate broker in the 1980s (she’s now a practicing psychotherapist), Jane was showing the house, complete with orange and green carpeting, to clients “who just couldn’t imagine what it could be.” She and her husband, then a cable-TV executive, decided to buy it and restore its architectural integrity, returning the moldings and fireplaces, along with the ceiling height, to their origins. She leveled the terraced rose CONTINUED ON P. 136
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FROM TOP Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s GE Tobacco Section and Jeff Koons’ Seal Walrus (Trashcans). Upon arriving at the Nathanson house, the Maurizio Nannucci blue neon installation is a wry foreshadowing of what awaits visitors inside.
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