The bargain hunter

NEW YORK -- Art collectors rarely speak above a whisper as they walk through the hushed galleries at Christie's. Except for Scott Black.

He's making a November visit to the auction house at an exciting moment, a few days before Christie's will hold a record-setting sale featuring a Gauguin that could fetch $45 million, a group of Schieles, and a set of eye-catching Klimts.

But the Boston-based collector has his eye on another picture, one more in his price range: The 1929 Picasso "Buste de Femme," estimated to sell for $1.5 million to $2 million. The painting is a twisted, surrealistic portrait of Olga, the artist's wife, loathed by him at the time. In the picture, Picasso has sliced the woman's head in two. Each side of Olga's head is armed with a sharklike tooth.

"It's referred to, in the textbook, as vagina dentata, which means tooth vagina," Black bellows, his thick local accent booming through the gallery.

Heads turn, but he doesn't hush. He's talking art, a favorite subject. And he's right. Harry Cooper ,the modern art curator at the Harvard University Art Museums, discussed the artist's complicated love life in a course taken by Black's wife, Isabelle.

"He had castration problems," says Black of Picasso, drawing out the word.

George Shackelford, the Museum of Fine Arts curator, stands beside him. In marked contrast to Black, Shackelford speaks softly, as if keeping secrets from the paintings in front of him. He has come to New York to accompany Black on his pre-auction visit.

They may operate at different volumes, but they share a love of Monet, Picasso, and many of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century artists in Black's collection. They also need each other. Black, 59, founder and president of Delphi Management Inc., consults Shackelford when he's considering a purchase. Shackelford borrows paintings from Black, an MFA overseer, for museum exhibits, and he makes presentations to the collector, who sits on the MFA collections committee.

"He's a brilliant scholar. I have the utmost respect for George," says Black.

"Scott is among the most passionate museum supporters I've met," says Shackelford, returning the compliment.

This month, Black's relationship with the MFA takes another turn. The museum has opened "The Romance of Modernism: Paintings and Sculpture from the Scott M. Black Collection." Shackelford curated the exhibition, writing the show's 136-page, hardcover catalog.

Black's excited about the MFA show, but he's not about to break the bank to add to his collection. As the founder of Delphi, a small financial-management firm that specializes in value investing, he has enough money to build his collection. But he's no Steve Wynn, David Geffen, or Bill Koch. When it comes to his art, Black has to do his own research, through art history books and talks with experts such as Shackelford.

The collector has rules: Buy what you like. Don't buy art as an investment (he's never sold any of his works). Set spending limits for every auction.

"I'm not a hedge fund," Black says. "It's hard-earned money. If you're going to do this, you ought to know what you're doing."

His calculating approach to collecting stands in contrast to the passion behind it. Black traces his love of art to childhood. When he was growing up in Portland, Maine, Black was surrounded by art. His mother, Selma, couldn't afford to buy originals, so she hung framed reproductions of Monets, Picassos, and Gauguins. She also took her children, Black and his younger sister, Barbara, to local museums and the MFA.

Black never studied art, choosing to earn an undergraduate degree in math and economics from Johns Hopkins University and a graduate degree from Harvard Business School. In 1985, at the age of 38, he bought his first painting, a work by Pierre Bonnard . A year later, he purchased Monet's "Monte Carlo Seen from Roquebrune" for $770,000. It was a dramatic decision. At that point, he was worth only about $1 million.

Since then, Black's company has made him wealthy, and he's bought more than 40 other paintings. But he has never moved away from his approach as the ultimate bargain hunter.

"When the Japanese were in the market in the 1980s, and the Monets and Renoirs were going to the moon, I said, 'Look I can't afford it,' " he says. "So what I did is I bought the best of the next tier. Théo van Rysselberghe is not a great painter. I have "The Regatta," probably the single best painting he ever painted. I bought a good Leger of 1929. I bought sculpture. I try to concentrate on what is good at the top of the second tier."

He applies his philosophy as a businessman to art: He won't get swept up by trends or the emotions of the market.

"It's like people chasing stocks in a bubble," he explains, "like buying Cisco and Dell in 1999 and 2000 trying to chase performance. Those people got killed. When the market goes down, people get nervous."

And that's when someone like him can pick up a good value.

"A good example is [the French painter Paul] Signac," Black says. "The Signac I bought, 18 months before I bought it, a German man named Schnabel set a record. He paid $2.2 million. The painting came back on the market 18 months later and I bought it for $600,000 plus the 10 percent on the hammer. The painting looked the same."

Black doesn't apologize for being blunt. At the MFA, that approach has turned off his colleagues at times. Tough. It pains him, he says, to know that there are board members -- which ones, he's not saying -- who are not familiar with what the MFA has on the wall. He hasn't hesitated to speak up at board meetings about acquisitions: How do you know what to buy if you don't know what you've got?

He's also not interested in using the museum as a social club. In fact, for the opening of his exhibit, Black had a choice: A large cocktail party full of MFA board members (there are a total of 288) or a small dinner hosted by the museum. He chose the latter, the seats around the table filled by friends, family, and art historians.

"He speaks so loudly, so passionately about his art, I think he rubs some people the wrong way," says Sandra Lane, one of just eight board members at the dinner. "It can be a hard voice to listen to. But for me, it's wonderful to see the light in his eyes when he talks about art."

Black is also passionate about making sure people can see his art. He and his wife, who grew up in Austria, keep none of their art in their Brookline home. Most of the works are at the MFA and Maine's Portland Museum of Art, where he serves as a trustee and underwrites the exhibition program.

"He's the only collector I know of whose entire career in collecting has been in partnership with institutions," says Daniel O'Leary, the Portland museum's director. "He buys a painting and it comes here or it goes to Boston."

So where will the pictures ultimately end up? Black hasn't decided.

"I'm still alive," he says. "I'm not in a position to give it away. What if the stock market tanks and I have my own money in stocks? I'm not Bill Gates."

"Besides," he says, "I'm still building the collection."

At Christie's that afternoon, Black and Shackelford look into every corner of the showrooms.

They stop and stare at the stars, the 1903 Picasso and 1912 Klimt, each estimated to sell for as much as $60 million. They walk past pictures priced, Black says, too high. He shakes his head at a Renoir, waving at it as he groans, "No way, no way." Black sees a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec estimated to go for $1.2 million.

"This is more money than I spent for mine when I bought it, and this is no comparison," he says. "This ought to tell you where the art market is today."

Black snickers at a late-period Picasso, a messily stroked painting from 1967.

"This may not be his opinion," he says, nodding toward Shackelford, "but all these late Picassos, if you gave one to me, I'd just give it back. I'm sorry. It's just commercial. Nobody in his right mind should buy these things. Most of this stuff is not good quality. No Picasso retrospective would ever hang this stupid painting, or any of these. It's ridiculous."

Black's tone softens when he spots works he does like.

He steps close to a pair of smaller paintings, a Georges Seurat image of a shirtless farmer at work and an Edouard Vuillard portrait of the artist's mother, both estimated to go for no more than $1 million.

Then there's Picasso's Olga.

No serious collector would purchase a painting without closely examining it, Black says. So he and Shackelford, helped by a Christie's worker, take the Picasso off the wall and into a back room. Black kneels with a hand - held ultraviolet light so they can examine the picture in the dark. This will reveal most tears and repairs.

"You never buy damaged goods," he says.

Black and Shackelford determine that the Picasso once had a tear the size of a thumb, and though the painting has been nicely repaired, it's enough to dissuade Black from making a bid.

And high prices will stop him from closing the deal on the two small paintings that captured his interest.

At the auction, Black takes his customary seat near the front of the hall. As the bidding gets underway, he makes offers on the Seurat, but drops out after making a bid of $1.15 million. (The painting sells for $1.36 million.) He bids on the Vuillard , though his final offer, just over $1 million, doesn't come close to the $2.65 million sale price.

Back in Boston, he says he wasn't frustrated to miss out on the paintings. That's the art market.

"I own 43 paintings already," Black says. "So if it's not this year, it gives me a rest, to save my money for something next year. I bought two wonderful paintings last year. The year before I bought a small one. If it wasn't meant to be, it wasn't meant to be."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. For arts news, go to boston.com/ae/theater_arts/exhibitionist.