The Latecomer

Art plays a strong role in the Oppenheimer family, and this motif will run throughout the generations, playing an important part in several family members’ lives. Art has always been a part of Salo’s life—he was surrounded by it in his parents’ home. However, to them, art was an investment, “an established tradition within the Oppenheimer family […] Art was also an acknowledged part of the apparatus of wealth, indeed, a not unuseful vector for acquiring wealth” (22). However, Salo’s instinctive connection to art will shift his entire family’s relationship to it.

When Salo first sees the Twombly painting, the first art that he will personally acquire, he has a visceral reaction, and the experience changes his life. Salo’s passion for art also facilitates his reconnection with Stella. He centers his life around art, withdrawing completely from his family and, by the end of his life, establishing a world-renowned modern art collection.

Later, Sally will have the same reaction when she discovers the Shaker furniture exhibit: “She only knew that this object, so unadorned and yet so clearly contained by its purpose, its basic and primitive purpose of enabling a human body to relieve itself of its own weight, was a pure expression of beauty.