This High-Flyer Funded His Art Habit with Per Diems

There aren’t many places that artwork by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol jostle for space with that of Canadian art stars like Ian Wallace and Ken Lum. But at the Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver, you’ll find a veritable cornucopia of extraordinary work, all from the collection of one man named Gerd Metzdorff.

Metzdorff began buying art as an air steward for Canadian Airlines and Air Canada with his per diem money — regular allowances that cover costs for employees while working away from home. His profession took him to the art capitals of the world, but as his friend Grant Mann explains, Metzdorff was equally happy to visit artists in their studios as much as discover their works within the glittering confines of worldly art fairs.

With more than 70 pieces on display at the Griffin, there’s a lot to look at. Turn this way, and you’ll find a series of Jeff Koons’ pop confectionary prints, cartoon bright and high on silliness. Turn another, and you see a knotted gritty sculpture by Lynda Benglis that looks like it just emerged from an underground cavern.

The Griffin show only represents a fraction of the work Metzdorff collected over the years. Another show featuring Canadian artists and large-scale work is planned for 2023.

Curated by Griffin director Lisa Baldissera, the collection is a testimony to the deeply personal approach employed by Metzdorff. In addition to his collecting trips to Dusseldorf, Cologne and New York, undertaken when he was flying certain routes, Metzdorff was active in the local cultural community, introducing many international artists to Vancouver as well as helping found the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.

Metzdorff passed away in 2020, leaving his collection to Mann, a long-time friend. Originally from Winnipeg, Mann struck up a friendship with Metzdorff when he first moved to Vancouver and the pair were close for decades, giving each other art. Two of Mann’s works are included in the show.

Born in Germany, Metzdorff moved to Burnaby in 1952. He lived with his parents when he began working for the airlines and saving his per diem funds in order to buy art.

When Metzdorff later moved to Vancouver’s West End, the confines of apartment living required some unusual storage methods. Prints were stowed under the bed, and other large-scale pieces, like a fluorescent lighting tube sculpture by New York artist Dan Flavin, remained in their packing crates, unopened for years.

As Mann explains, when the box was finally opened and the work installed in the gallery, Mann was just happy that it still worked.

In the years that Metzdorff lived in his apartment, there was a total of five floods. Water damage on the frame of a work by Andreas Gursky is still visible. But having work in his home, on the walls and part of the daily conversation was important to Metzdorff. As Mann says, “Art needs to be seen!”

Looking at the painting, prints and sculptures on display, the word that most comes to mind is idiosyncratic. A sense of humour and a certain kind of obsessiveness are also apparent in many of the works in the exhibition.

An example is a drawing by Vancouver artist Ben Reeves that depicts the Tower of Babel. Although Reeves works mainly from memory, the central image of the cacophonic tower, drawn on paper in precise, almost torturous detail, speaks to a level of discipline and controlled chaos. The tension between the two is enough to blow your hair back.

Another piece that displays a similar compulsion to detail is Vija Celmins’ Waves. Celmins’ engravings and prints often depict things like spider webs, the spangled expanse of the night sky and water. Waves captures oceanic movement, bestilled in black and white marks. It’s impressive not only on a technical level, but as a testimonial to the richness and complexity of natural systems.

Other pieces are marked by irreverence, perhaps none more so than Jason McLean’s Pennies in a Stream, filled with primary bright figures and wrapped in a personal iconography as strange as it is funny. The drawing took pride of place in Metzdorff’s dining room.

Metzdorff’s collecting habits were often as curious as his taste.

He was once invited to a dinner party in New York City where Andy Warhol was in attendance. On the way, Metzdorff stopped off at a grocery store and bought a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup. Warhol signed the label and the piece entered the collection, although as Mann says, the label had to be removed from the can as it had started to leak.

As a cross-section of both international and Canadian artists, the show is a curious continuum, moving from the iconic (one of Cindy Sherman’s early film stills) to the deeply idiosyncratic. An artist like Robert Smithson, renowned for his large-scale land art projects like Spiral Jetty, is represented in the show by a simple drawing entitled LA Sprawl.

Beyond Cindy Smith, other women artists were also prominent, with work from Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Kate Craig, Lynda Benglis, Judy Pfaff, Louise Bourgeois and Judith Shea, among others. Metzdorff was happy to collect the work of emergent artists, often attending the Emily Carr University grad show to check out new work.

As Mann explains, sourcing the provenance of certain pieces for the Per Diem exhibition wasn’t always a straightforward process. Even determining some of the artists was an undertaking. Judith Shea’s work Very Far East, a silk organza sculpture, was one work that required some serious sleuthing.

With the art market currently raking in record amounts of profit, collecting has become increasingly the purview of the extremely and obscenely wealthy.

That an ordinary person, not a billionaire or oligarch, could accrue a collection through passion and dedication is a timely reminder that art is more than merely another form of asset, something to park your money in. It’s a way to live one’s life.

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'Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection' runs from Feb. 4 to May 8 at the Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver.