Steven A Cohen's collection goes on show at Sotheby's

Art collector Steven A Cohen exhibits some of his most prized possessions at Sotheby's, New York. But is the show just a vain attempt to stimulate the art market?

By Colin Gleadell 
Last Updated: 5:26PM BST 06 Apr 2009

Van Gogh's Portrait of a Young Peasant Girl: Cohen acquired the painting for around $80 million

For someone who guards his privacy assiduously, the American hedge-fund billionaire Steven A Cohen has had his fair share of publicity. It was Cohen, for instance, who bought Damien Hirst's $12 million (£6.5 million) pickled shark four years ago and had to replace it because it was disintegrating. And it was Cohen, a year later, who was ready to buy a $139 million Picasso before its owner, the famously colour-blind Las Vegas hotelier Steve Wynn, inadvertently stuck his elbow into it.

Now, 52-year-old Cohen is in the limelight again as 20 paintings and sculptures of women from his collection with an estimated value of $450 million are on display, though not for sale, at Sotheby's in New York.

It is the first public glimpse into the largely unknown holdings of a secretive, very rich art lover who has been one of the most potent forces in the art market for a decade. Naturally the show has aroused intense curiosity about how much the works cost, where they had come from, and what Cohen's motives were for exhibiting them.

The son of a dress manufacturer, Cohen showed an aptitude for making money long before displaying an interest in art. In 1978, aged 22, he made an $8,000 profit on his first day trading options. In 1992 he formed his own company, SAC Capital, with $25 million under management and nine employees. By July last year, SAC had $14 billion under management and 800 employees, with Cohen ranked as America's 36th richest man, worth $8 billion.

His art collecting started with Impressionism, and a taste for the best money could buy. One of his first purchases was a self-portrait by Manet for which he paid $18.7 million in 1997, the second highest price for the artist.

The earliest purchases in the Sotheby's exhibition date from 2001 when he bought a famous Munch painting, Madonna, for a reported record $11 million from New York dealers Mitchell-Innes and Nash, and a Matisse bronze, Figure decoratif, from Sotheby's for $12.6 million, close to the record for a Matisse sculpture.

Turning to contemporary art, he compiled a breathless catalogue of stunning record prices – mostly paid privately. In 2004, he bought Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez from the artist's estate for $16 million, sparking a dramatic surge in Bacon prices; Andy Warhol's Superman, from German playboy Gunther Sachs, for around $25 million; and a Jackson Pollock drip painting from Hollywood entertainment mogul David Geffen for $52 million.

Employing a team of specialist art advisors, Cohen targets private collections without waiting for auctions. Masterpieces in the Sotheby's show by Yves Klein from the collection of film director Claude Berri, and Gerhard Richter from Christie's owner François Pinault were both acquired this way.

In 2005, Cohen entered a truly purple patch when, following his acquisition of the Hirst shark, he acquired Van Gogh's Portrait of a Young Peasant Girl, on show at Sotheby's, for around $80 million from Steve Wynn. Then, in the run-up to the November 2006 auctions, he bought two de Kooning paintings from Geffen, including Woman III for $137.5 million. The prices were leaked to the press and the auction sales that month hit an all-time peak.

Recently, however, the hedge-fund industry has been rocked by the credit crisis. According to Forbes, Cohen's net worth was down to $5.5 billion last month, though SAC is no less aggressive in its financial dealings. Just as the Sotheby's exhibition was being organised, Cohen upped his stake in the company from 4.7 per cent to 5.9 per cent, making him Sotheby's third-largest shareholder. However, most experts believe he is not so much interested in owning the company as simply making a shrewd investment. Cohen clearly believes in Sotheby's ability to remain profitable during the downturn and in the longer-term prospects for the art market, and since upping his stake, Sotheby's share price has risen from $6 to $10.9.

But is the exhibition just a vain attempt to stimulate the market by reliving the art boom in the run-up to the all-important May sales in New York?

Certainly, it is effective PR for both Sotheby's and Cohen. But, as a show which is as inescapably about money as it is about art, it may fall between two stools. In his scathing Channel 4 programme The Mona Lisa Curse last year, Robert Hughes argued that successive art booms had made it difficult to look at art without thinking about how much it was worth. Now we are officially in a recession, the issue for those who are concerned about such things is to wonder how much less that art might now be worth.