Inside Thaddaeus Ropac’s Paris Apartment, Where Warhol, Duchamp & Basquiat Hold Court

Sitting in his Paris apartment, in an 18th-century building with views of the Seine and the Louvre Museum, Thaddaeus Ropac is discussing his lifelong passion: art. Born and raised in Austria, and now a quite youthful 65 years old, he is wearing his uniform of an impeccably tailored dark suit and a crisp white dress shirt. Since opening his first gallery in 1983, in a modest space in Salzburg, Ropac has championed leading contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Alex Katz, Lisa Brice, and Elizabeth Peyton. “We have worked with some of the most important artists of our time, and this needs to be documented,” says Ropac. “The gallery is a footnote, in a sense, but the art will remain.”

That long, meaningful engagement has also encouraged Ropac to assemble his own collection, the breadth of which is dizzying. In the entrance of the apartment, there is a massive Andy Warhol silkscreen of the Statue of Liberty; an Antony Gormley sculpture of a tiny male form; and, in the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling, a Marcel Duchamp “readymade” of a metal bottle rack (most of the handful of other examples in existence are in museums around the world). The living room has a massive canvas by Warhol and Basquiat, an important early Baselitz, and a small self-portrait by Basquiat that is one of the most forceful and emblematic of his career. “It is constantly lent out to Basquiat exhibitions, and it often makes the catalog cover—it’s really one of the highlights of my collection,” Ropac says.

Ropac’s pied-à-terre has the handsome details typical of old Parisian buildings: hardwood floors, carved marble fireplace mantels, ornate plaster moldings. He was first invited here in the 1990s by the flat’s previous owner, Tom Ford. When the designer decided to move, he called Ropac. “You’ve always liked this apartment,” said Ford. “Would you be interested in it?”

At that time, the floors were stained black and the interiors filled with sleek contemporary design. Working with the dealer Éric Philippe, Ropac turned instead to inviting Scandinavian furniture. One dramatic wingback sofa, in light grained leather and oak, is a 1934 piece by Frits Henningsen. A desk in polished gray birch, circa 1928, is by Axel Einar Hjorth. “Scandinavian designs are slightly minimalist, but with a certain touch of eccentricity,” says Ropac. A generously proportioned sofa and matching armchairs, in a rich tobacco upholstery, are 1955 designs by Frank Lloyd Wright and are part of an almost complete set that Ropac says came from an apartment in Chicago.

The gallerist’s first foray into collecting design was centered on early-20th-century Viennese furniture, and he still has some major examples. The massive dining room table and chairs are by Otto Wagner, and there’s also a Wiener Werkstätte masterpiece: the Sitzmaschine, or Sitting Machine, by Josef Hoffmann. “It may be the single most important piece from the Vienna Secession period,” he says.

Despite his quiet start in Salzburg, which was most definitely not an art destination, Ropac currently leads a global empire. With a staff of 150, he has built a roster of more than 70 artists, organizes over 40 exhibitions a year, and has about 130,000 square feet of gallery space. He has a 19th-century town house and a converted industrial building in Salzburg; four floors of a historic structure in the Marais, in Paris, and a former ironworks factory in the Parisian suburb of Pantin; a five-story historic mansion in London’s Mayfair; and two stories of a modernist building in Seoul.

This September, he is unveiling a brand-new space in Milan, in the 18th-century Palazzo Belgioioso, an imposing neoclassical landmark. The palazzo’s rooms feature period decorations, including frescoes by Martin Knoller and stuccos by Giocondo Albertolli; in Piazza Belgioioso, the public square beyond the palazzo, Ropac plans to exhibit sculptural works. The gallery’s opening exhibition pairs Baselitz with the Italian-Argentinian master Lucio Fontana. “I have always dreamt of having the ultimate European gallery, and Italy has always been missing,” says Ropac. “And in contemporary art, Milan is the only place. It was home to all the great movements after World War II, and to current artists like Maurizio Cattelan. So Milan is the avant-garde, where Italy is so strong and inspiring.”

Ropac’s journey to the top of the art world began in 1979, after he saw Basic Room Wet Laundry, by Joseph Beuys, at the contemporary art museum in Vienna, the Palais Liechtenstein. The installation originated from the German artist’s observation that the baroque building where he was exhibiting was not good for displaying art. Instead, Beuys suggested, it should be used for drying laundry. He placed about the space two old black tables and a chair, a giant ball of bundled clothes, a few metal gutters, and a bare light bulb hung over a rusty bucket with broken pieces of soap. “On a school trip to Vienna, I stumbled over this installation, and our professor said, ‘Oh, you can just ignore this—it is a scandal that the Austrian Republic even put up money to buy this crap,’ ” recalls Ropac. “But I thought that there had to be something behind it. The next day, I went back to see it again on my own, and I just couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

Ropac began reading about Beuys and going to hear him speak, and eventually volunteered to work with his team in Düsseldorf (“I was an assistant to an assistant”). In 1982, for the “Documenta 7” show held in Kassel, Germany, Beuys presented a work titled 7000 Oaks. It involved planting thousands of trees in the city, each with an accompanying basalt stone—Ropac was one of the volunteers out planting. Later that year, Beuys was the central figure of “Zeitgeist,” an important exhibition in Berlin, in a historic building next to the heavily militarized zone at the Berlin Wall. Ropac also worked with the artist and his team on that project.

After “Zeitgeist,” Ropac told Beuys that he intended to go back to Austria and open a gallery, and hoped that he would be able to exhibit the artist’s work. Ropac also said that he was planning a trip to New York and asked if Beuys could make an introduction to Andy Warhol. “He took a napkin and wrote, ‘Dear Andy, please meet this talented young man. Joseph.’ And that was my ticket to America.”

Ropac met Warhol—and, through him, Basquiat—in the winter of 1982. The two artists would be key for him as a dealer and as a collector. “In the beginning, I could not really collect because the gallery barely survived,” recalls Ropac. “Then I started trying to keep one piece from each exhibition, sometimes with the arrangement that I would pay over many months. At the beginning, I wanted to have works that I could live with—I never dreamt of being an actual collector.”

Ropac opened his second gallery, in Paris, in 1990. Suddenly, the young dealer was in an art capital that was beginning to boom. As his reputation expanded, so did his vision for collecting. “At one point, it became more of a conceptual project,” he says. “The collection should reflect the artists I’m working with, those that I believe in, and their entire universe. It is important to collect them throughout their careers.”

In his Paris apartment, the two main salons are anchored by fireplaces at either end. Ropac points to the groupings he has placed on each mantel—one by Marcel Duchamp, the other by Man Ray—which he calls his “altarpieces.” The Duchamp objects, over half a dozen, are incredibly important, including a pair of bronze sculptures of a penis and a vagina. “There is a radicality to Duchamp’s work,” says Ropac. “He took a urinal or a bottle rack and said, ‘This is sculpture.’ People were shocked, but it was a concentrated redefinition of what art can be.” The Man Ray mantel contains seven objects, including a photograph that the artist took of one of the Duchamp bottle racks, and Indestructible Object, a metronome topped with a photograph of the eye of Lee Miller, Man Ray’s studio assistant and lover at the time. Next to the fireplace is a chess table also created by the artist.

Throughout the apartment are significant works: a dramatic red and black Gilbert & George from 1978, a powerful abstract painting by Cecily Brown, and a bold portrait by Elizabeth Peyton. The dining room is dominated by a massive, dark piece by Anselm Kiefer, showing a churning sea and a three-dimensional boat. “For me, this is Kiefer as a painter and a sculptor,” says Ropac. “Because the apartment is not so big, I like having one work with both, because I definitely wanted to have a sculpture.”

In thinking about the overall intent of the collection he is building, Ropac nods once again to Duchamp and Beuys. “They are the key artists who influenced me the most in the beginning, the two figures I felt I needed as a historical reference,” he says. “Both of them bring everything into question. They were redefining the 20th century.”

Ropac has a sincere enthusiasm and a sense of humility about what he does, qualities that are not always associated with the high-stakes art market. “You know, it’s about much more than just selling art,” he says. “I have been really lucky to build incredible relationships that have lasted for decades. Sometimes, when we open a new show with an artist, we count how many we have done, and it’s very moving. Often it becomes a friendship—you enjoy things other than speaking about their careers, their projects. These friendships have enriched my life tremendously—that’s been the best part.”

Photo Assistant: Elie Delpit.