rarely do anything halfway. Cindy Levy, a University of Southern California MBA, played on the pro tennis circuit before moving to New York to work as an investment banker. Paul Levy, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, cofounded Rational Software, then took it public before it was acquired by IBM. The morning of their Napa Valley wedding, they ran a marathon.
The Levys approach their current interest, contemporary painting, with equal gusto. Before marrying, each had sampled the New York gallery scene, and the success of Rational Software propelled them onto the international art circuit. “It motivated us to start collecting,” says Cindy Levy. As did the purchase of a residence in Rancho Mirage, California.
Built in 1969 by Lawrence Lapham, with interiors by Stephen Chase of Arthur Elrod Associates, the “desert modern” concrete house melds Frank Lloyd Wright influences and Mayan allusions. The 8,000-square-foot one-story plan is more or less a rectangle, with canted granite walls rising to meet a tiered ceiling with wood-framed floating planes covered in rattan.
Interiors need work but not demolition. The 2,000-square-foot public zone incorporates living, dining, work, and den areas arrayed along a 100-foot-long front-to-rear axis – an arrangement that the couple left virtually intact, down to the original sectional sofa and its cotton upholstery.

Perhaps as expected, the Levys trusted their own eye exclusively when it came to developing the art collection. “The house had a lot of wall space to fill,” Cindy Levy points out. “Still, it’s never about, ‘Would this go there?’ It’s whether it’ll last for the long run.” Working in primarily with Modernism and Hackett-Freedman galleries in San Francisco, the Levys found themselves drawn to work by California artists that the couple could meet in person.
Across the tiled runway, the living area displays three paintings with intentionally disturbing narratives. “They’re more complex,” she continues. “For my children to understand art, I needed some difficult pieces.” “American Prayer” – one of a half dozen paintings by Gottfried Helnwein, whom the couple discovered at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia – shows a boy with prosthetic arms praying to Donald Duck. “This Disneyland view of America symbolizes, to us, optimism for the future,” she says. Adjacent, the Andy Warhol-esque “Earth Angel” by Jerry Kearns pictures Elvis as a cowboy hero, backed by historic images of the Kent State University shootings and napalmed Vietnamese Children. “Disenchantment,” a Mark Stock oil of a troubled woman, hangs near the fireplace’s bronze hood.

(excerpt)

Countless discussions about Gottfried Helnwein's oil on canvas American Prayer and Jerry Kearns's oil on canvas Earth Angel.

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