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Wife banned masterpiece from house
IT was an impulse buy. Let me make that plain from the start.
I didn't go to Christie's auction house with the intention
of purchasing anything remotely like this.
I'm not talking about the grand piano, by the way. I've had
my eye on one of those for a long time and, when I spotted
a glorious Bechstein on display in Manchester, I had to have
it.
It's a beautifully refurbished piece, a century old and taking
pride of place in our entrance hall now.
The acoustic is wonderful - the expanse of marble floor gives
a swimming echo, and when I close my eyes
I imagine I'm giving a recital in a Buddhist temple carved
from a cave in Elora. I play by ear and I know that my renditions
of Chopin will never challenge my old friend Byron Janis,
the concert pianist.
He has made the study of Chopin his lifelong quest - I take
about 110 seconds to play the Minute Waltz.
The real pleasure is being able to sit down at the keyboard
whenever the mood takes me.
While I was locked away in Channel Five's studio house for
the Back To Reality show, I found I missed music even more
than I missed books, which were banned from the set.
I can understand that it makes boring TV to see a celebrity
with his nose in the latest David Gemmell for hours on end,
but we should have been allowed to take in a handful of our
favourite CDs.
Even castaways are allowed music . . . on Desert Island Discs,
at least.
On my release - my escape, in fact, since I walked off the
show - I made up my mind to fill that piano-shaped gap in
my life and buy a concert grand.
I also decided that life was too short to count every penny,
and that I was going to indulge my inner shopper for a while.
I've lived sensibly, even frugally, for many years, though
it hasn't always been that way.
In the Seventies, I went on a mission to burn my millions
faster than anyone, even J Paul Getty, could earn them.
I was inspired to my spending frenzy by the excesses of Mexico,
where I was a guest of the presidential family.
They kept their purchases in warehouses, buying so much -
and receiving so many gifts - that they didn't have time to
unpack the bags from the trunk of the Cadillac before the
next spree began.
I was awestruck by their profligacy, and for a while I kept
pace, wearing a row of watches on each arm and throwing away
my silk and linen shirts twice a day instead of washing them.
That kind of wanton waste gets boring pretty quickly, though.
I will never forget standing in the luggage department of
a Cannes store, ordering multiple sets of baggage in different
colours, and suddenly catching the eye of my wife Hanna.
Her face said so plainly: ''Uri, there must be more to life
than sets of suitcases.''
We burst out laughing, walked away from the store and started
living saner lives. I have no intention of returning to that
madness, but it's fun to let rip once in a while, and Christie's
is the place to do it.
The date had been in my diary for weeks - a massive sell-off
of Poole Pottery's back catalogue, since the firm had hit
a sticky financial patch.
For years I've been designing my own range of bowls, or chargers,
for the firm, and I know how valuable they can be as collectors'
items.
Here was my chance to grab some bargains that would pay handsome
dividends in the future.
I snapped up a scene of 17th-century London, painted on tiles,
for under £300, and one expert told me later: ''That's
a steal!''
But the purchase which caused problems was more expensive.
I paid £1,000 for a Madonna And Child. It's a gorgeous
piece of ceramics, created by Ron Goodwin around 1960, with
a heart-melting Mary and baby Jesus blessing St Dominic and
St Catherine of Siena.
A wonderful Christian artefact . . . as my wife agreed when
she told me, deadpan: ''Uri, you're Jewish.''
''It's a spiritual icon,'' I insisted. ''It crosses all religious
divides. Mary was Jewish, wasn't she? Jesus was Jewish, for
that matter.
''He was taken to the Temple as a baby. It's just a nice
little portrait of a Jewish family.''
I didn't sound very convincing. Hanna wasn't convinced. ''What
about the saints?'' she asked. ''They're Jewish too, are they?
We're not having it in the house.''
''I paid a fortune for that,'' I exploded. ''It'll go where
I say it goes, and I say it's going in the sitting room.''
''Fine,'' said Hanna. ''You can explain it to your mother
then.''
So we wrapped it up carefully and placed it in our garage.
I expect I'll donate it to a Christian church, if I can find
one where the existing art will be complemented by a masterpiece
of post-war English ceramics.
Or I might give it to my friend Robin Gibb, whose Elizabethan
mansion features a chapel on one wing.
He has a statue of Jesus and Mary there, though it's more
of the Mel Gibson variety, with the mother lifting her son
from the cross.
When I was last there, Robin and I saw a tear drip from the
figure's eye, one of the most profoundly unsettling phenomena
I have witnessed in a lifetime of weird apparitions.
Even weirder, though, would be if my mother spotted my Madonna
and said nothing more than: ''That's nice, Uri.''
It's got to go!
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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