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Norman Lear was best known for what he created on television, but he also appreciated the kind of art you can hang on the wall and collected his fair share over the years.
Lear died in December at 101. On May 16, his wife, Lyn, is selling seven of the producer’s prime pieces of artwork at Christie’s with a total estimate of more than $50 million.
The artworks will be featured in the auction house’s evening sale of 20th-century art, with additional works offered in the postwar and contemporary art day sales and subsequent auctions.
“It will be like letting go of old friends and moving on to make new friends,” Lyn Davis Lear said in a telephone interview, adding, “Norman’s philosophy was buy what you love, don’t buy anything thinking you’re going to make a lot of money.”
Norman Lear — whose string of hits included “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Maude” — mostly collected works from the 1950s through the 1980s and was particularly drawn to artists who blossomed in California, as he did.
“This is where he really flowered and was able to express himself,” Davis Lear said. “There was freedom about being in L.A.”
The Lears built a whole wall in their former Brentwood home to accommodate their Rauschenberg spread painting, Davis Lear said. And Norman gave her a painting by Mark Rothko for her birthday 20 years ago.
As for her late husband’s memorabilia, Davis Lear said she plans to sell that in future auctions.
The Christie’s sale includes David Hockney’s “A Lawn Being Sprinkled,” estimated at $25 million to $35 million, and Ed Ruscha’s “Truth” (estimated at $7 million to $10 million) as well as works by Ellsworth Kelly and Joseph Cornell.
“There is a pretty tight, fascinating link between the pictures and artists that Norman and Lyn gravitated toward and the shows he created,” Max Carter, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st-century art, Americas, said in an interview. “They’re about big ideas like truth and memory and time.”
Davis Lear said Norman particularly loved Ruscha’s “Truth,” since that was such an important theme for him. “Everything he did in television and in politics was all about finding meaning,” she said, “what was true and what wasn’t.”
Norman Lear’s early purchases were guided in large part by the producer and collector Richard Dorso, whom Davis Lear described as an “art mentor.”
“They would go around to the galleries,” she said, adding that her husband “just chose pieces that he loved.”
Also for sale is Roy Lichtenstein’s collage “I Love Liberty,” which the artist made to help support People for the American Way, Norman Lear’s liberal advocacy organization.
Davis Lear said that she looks forward to having their artwork enjoyed by others, particularly the pieces they didn’t have space to display. “I can’t bear for art to be in storage,” she said. “I just think it should be out there and be seen.”
Proceeds from the sale will go to the Lear Trust estate, Davis Lear said, as well as to his children and the funding of future art purchases. “I want to buy new artists that we can fill the walls with,” she said, “because I think there is such joy in that.”
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