The Eunice and Hal David Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Works on Paper

Artists' collections often provide fascinating insights into the creative process. Knowing it internally, the collecting artist has an acute sensitivity, respect, and love for this mysterious phenomenon-its origins, its exploratory twists and turns, and its sometimes daunting standards of perfection. This yields a particular relationship between the collector and the collection-not one of subject to object, but rather a sympathetic and delighted dialogue between personalities bent on...
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Artists' collections often provide fascinating insights into the creative process. Knowing it internally, the collecting artist has an acute sensitivity, respect, and love for this mysterious phenomenon-its origins, its exploratory twists and turns, and its sometimes daunting standards of perfection. This yields a particular relationship between the collector and the collection-not one of subject to object, but rather a sympathetic and delighted dialogue between personalities bent on creativity. The collection of Eunice and Hal David instantly bespeaks this artistic rapport. Filling most of the walls in their airy home-where views encompass inviting couches and chairs, contemporary sculptures, and a baby grand piano-are drawings by many of the individuals who have shaped the course of nineteenth-and twentieth-century art - from Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, and Gustav Klimt to Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney. The Davids have always lived with their collection, and seeing it in their home and talking to them about it, one is struck by their ongoing pleasure in it and its integral relation to their own creative world of music and lyrics. So many of us have been moved by Hal David's lyrics: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love''; "What's it all about, Alfie?"; "Raindrops keep fallin' on my head." That he doesn't shrink from acknowledging the difficulties that are inherent to our emotional and creative lives is evident both in the recurring themes of heartbreak and pain in his song lyrics and in his frank acknowledgment of the creative blocks that he has confronted (it took him two years to find the lyrics for "What the World Needs Now Is Love").' Yet Hal is overwhelmingly life affirming, both as an artist and as a person. One sees this as well in the collection of drawings that the Davids have assembled, which includes so many works that testify to the creation of art as a form of affirmative connection. Connection is indeed the operative word when it comes to the collection, because it is nothing if not the expression of the intertwined lives of two people, Eunice and Hal. As they will confirm, it is a direct outgrowth of their lives together.