Louise Blouin and her then-husband John MacBain made a fortune in the rather unglamorous classified ad biz. They started out in Montreal with a car listing publication, and took it from there.
Soon enough, the MacBains were sending invitations to prominent figures, including the financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, the diplomat Henry Kissinger, [painter Ross] Bleckner and the fashion designer Calvin Klein. (Source: NY Times)
And who doesn't like a free meal served up at a splosh house on Long Island? Thanks to their largesse, the MacBains became salon-istas.
But snobs are snobs, and Ross Bleckner - and I'm betting some of the illustrious others they tried swanning around with - were a bit snarky about the parvenu MacBains.
Mr. Bleckner noted that it was hard to say no to these luncheons and dinners, because Ms. Blouin would provide a list of five available dates.
"Me and Calvin would be hysterical, laughing about it,” Mr. Bleckner said. “How do you get out of five dates? What were we to say — ‘I’m going away for the whole summer’?”
Note to Mr. Bleckner (who claims to be a friend of long-standing to Ms. Blouin): look down your nose all you want at Louise Blouins unsophisticated, perhaps even crass, beginner's invites, but "me and Calvin?" Seriously, "me and Calvin?" Tsk, tsk.
The MacBains ended up splitting, but Louise Blouin went deep into the art world, getting involved with art aucitons, art consulting, art publications. She set up the Louise Blouin Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to creativity and the arts.
Post divorce, Blouin became romantically and professionally involved with one Simon dePury, a Sotheby's alum setting up an art consultancy+. He admits he was enamored in part by her moola, but, like Mr. Bleckner, Mr. DePury had a bit of the snide in him.
“Her power and success, not to mention the Marie Antoinette splendor of her lifestyle, were aphrodisiacal,” he wrote
With friends like this...
Anyway, it was pretty heady stuff. All this hobnobbing - artists! machers! oligarchs! - and a "net worth [which] was once estimated by The Times of London to fall between those of Madonna and the Queen of England."
And then, all of a sudden, it was all arse over teakettle, and Louise Blouin found herself tumbled into bankruptcy court, ordered to get rid of her Long Island manor, site of so many of those Marie Antoinette-y parties.
La Dune, which sits on four acres along Gin Lane in Southampton, N.Y., comprises two grand houses, a sunken tennis court and two swimming pools. It has a combined 22,000 square feet of interior space, with 19 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a home cinema and two gyms.
The property had grown in value over the years, and Blouin had added to it, tearing down a modest guest cottage and building a new one that gave the main manse a run for its money.
Blouin was hoping La Dune would go for a figure well in excess of $100M. (A comparable property had just sold for $112M). You might be asking yourself why a property that was purchased in the lates 1990's for $13.5M would need to sell for an order of magnitude greater, but there was the tab for the guest cottage and other property improvements.
Alas,Blouin had taken out mortgages on it to fund her art world ventures. So she owed a ton o' money.
The judge order her to take an offer of $89M - buyers sure can smell desperation - and she's now underwater on the property.
Given the opportunity to continue to dish, Bleckner had more to say about Louise Blouin:
“She was fun, she was beautiful, she was a great hostess,” he said. “Of course, I never really understood where the money was coming from.”
Meow!
“I haven’t made many mistakes,” Louise Blouin said soon after her compound in the Hamptons was sold out from under her in a bankruptcy auction. “You can’t judge someone because they have an issue once in their life. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t have a perfect track record.”
Well, it doesn't sound like her issues were all of the "once in a lifetime" variety. A decade ago, an art publication she helmed was failing and she was sued by a couple of employees she stiffed. She lost the suit, but has only paid them ten percent of what they're entitled to. Blouin also lost a suit brought by a printing company she failed to pay. And the there's a teensy problem with the IRS.
Given her general attitude towards business, it's not all that surprising that Blouin has gone bankrupt:
“The arts, for me, is philanthropy,” Ms. Blouin continued. “It’s not a business. So that’s how I perceive it. It’s helping others. It’s philanthropy, helping others through the arts. How do you use the arts for the creative process? How you use the arts for neurology and the development of your senses and all these things? It was never a business.”
"It was never a business?" Tell that to your creditors and the IRS.
We hear yet again from the talented Mr. Blackner, this time about Blouin's attitude towards money.
“She never seemed to be stressed. There are people who can live with a crushing level of debt and it doesn’t seem to bother them, because they just keep borrowing other people’s money to make more money. But in this case, that didn’t happen.”
For her part, Blouin claims that she's been victimized by predatory lenders, et al.
“This story actually needs to be told,” she said, “not for me, but for others, because it’s becoming more of a sport involving people that make money and work hard for it and others that steal money and work less hard for it.”
I suppose you have to have (metaphorical) brass balls to forge your way to the upper echelons of the cut-throat NYC art world, not to mention the cut-throat social world of the Hamptons. And Louise Blouin seems to be endowed with quite a set of (metaphorical) brass balls.
To hell with bankruptcy, her failed businesses, the IRS.
“I am one of the most successful women in the world,” Ms. Blouin said.
Is it me or does she sound like the Trump on the art world?
No comments:
Post a Comment