Tom Levine’s collection is one of varied mediums, styles and memories. Among them are a Picasso pitcher and graphics from some of his mentors: Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and particularly, Jasper Johns.
Tom Levine Oil Painting on Canvas "Monologue"
Raised in Cincinnati, Tom Levine studied English at Miami University, psychology and consumer behavior at the University of Denver, then spent a year at the Art Academy in Eden Park, and two years completing an MFA at the University of Cincinnati. He moved to New York in 1974 and “Ran out of money quick,” he recalls. To cover expenses, he took a job as a waiter at the Waldorf Astoria, where he waited on Andy Warhol, among other prominent diners. Months later, he wound up at the same dinner table as the Pop artist. Levine was amused at the capacity for path-crossing in Manhattan. “In the late 1970s, the New York art community really was quite small.”
Levine’s own work has received recognition, having been shown in several exhibitions over the years, and has been collected by The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery in Washington. In Levine’s loft, pottery and ceramics dot bookcases and kitchen shelves, much of it made by Karen Karnes, with whom he would often have lunch when she visited from Vermont. “During her last visit, I discovered she didn’t really care much about lunch – she just wanted to see what work of hers I had acquired that she could borrow for an upcoming museum retrospective! “She was a brilliant potter, one of the first artists who went to Black Mountain College during the well-known period that Josef Alberts was there,” he says. “I acquired work of Karen’s, from the early 1950s, many with exquisite salt glazes.”
Read more of Tom Levine’s story, and shop his original artwork and his extraordinary art collection including works from Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein any many more!
