Collecting For Now: The New Way To Build An Art-Filled Home

“I need to be challenged on an emotional level. When I’m looking at a work of art, I need to feel something,” says Harry Weller, creative director of Tracey Emin Studio and the artist’s longtime confidant.

After nearly two decades working in the trenches of one of the most emotionally exposed artistic practices in the world, Weller has little patience for art that is dull, purely decorative, or – worse – insincere. “It’s not about matching a sofa, armchair or carpet,” he says. “I want to walk into a room and have something be stirred within me.”

With such an involved hand in Emin’s creative process, Weller might seem like an outlier in his appreciation. Traditional collecting, particularly at the highest end, has often been driven by two parallel ambitions: investment, where the work presents value that accrues over time, and status, where the work functions as a ‘trophy’ or social signal. Both still exist, but neither feels especially contemporary. What Weller articulates is actually aligned with a broader shift in the market, towards greater interiority in how and why we acquire art. As he puts it, “Collecting should be an extension of your psyche.”

“That idea of ‘art as an investment’ feels increasingly outdated,” says Madeline Lissner, executive vice president for the Global Fine Art Division at auction house Sotheby’s. “People buy art because it resonates with them.”

That doesn’t mean the stakes are any lower. If anything, they are higher. “Collectors today talk about stewardship, legacy and the stories behind the works they live with,” Lissner continues. An artwork’s value, beyond its price, is now tied to its provenance, intellectual alignment and even a sense of responsibility to the work itself and the life it will have beyond us.

For interior designer Christian Bense, the answer for how to approach art in private spaces is in considered freedom. “There’s still this phrase, ‘start with art,’” he says. “I’ve always felt that that takes away from this opportunity where art is an organic curation.” Instead of building a room around a single piece, he advocates for more fluidity: “You can buy things you love and you can grow your collection, and you don’t have to worry about how that impacts the scheme you then created.”

He’s not asking you to completely abandon structure. “It doesn’t just mean buy and hang whatever you want, that’s not a helpful idea.”

Bense suggests a few helpful edicts for thinking about how art that you love fits into interior design. “Focus predominantly on proportion and scale,” he says – in the first instance – and what’s going to make a room feel involving, expansive. Beyond that, he talks of various purposes art can serve. In one apartment, a lack of external views prompted Bense to install a hyper-realistic photograph of a Capri beach: “To give you that picture window.” Elsewhere, he counterbalanced an off-center fireplace with an asymmetrical arrangement of works, distracting the eye from architectural foibles.

Often, he goes on, we’re now using art to be disruptive – even in the home. Bense recalls a study, in a Georgian townhouse. The room’s design was upscale and sophisticated, if perhaps a little austere for that particular client. Together they introduced a giant painting of a rooster sourced from a Bali street vendor. “In many ways, it was a completely hideous piece of art,” Bense says, “but it took the edge off. It created a moment for people to feel, ‘oh this is a fun room.’ It’s whimsical.”

Which brings us back to where we started: with a feeling. Beyond investment, showmanship, or a home’s design scheme, the way we’re collecting art now is so much more about us as people and how we want to be moved.