'Herb and Dorothy': You Can't Spell Heart Without Art

The works, by Richard Tuttle, Carl Andre and Joseph Kosuth, respectively, are part of the more than 4,000 works that Dorothy, a 73-year-old retired librarian, and her husband Herb, an 85-year-old retired postal clerk, have collected. They started buying minimal and conceptual art in New York in the early 1960s, living on Dorothy's salary and spending Herb's on art.

A documentary about their love affair with art, "Herb and Dorothy," screens tomorrow and Saturday at the Silverdocs film festival.

Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki met the Vogels in September 2004 at an event honoring the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The idea of a modest-income couple with thousands of artworks stashed in their one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment intrigued her.

But about six months into filming "Herb and Dorothy," her first documentary, she hit a wall with her subjects.

"They didn't articulate why they like this particular artwork, why did they collect a certain artist," Sasaki says. "The only thing they said was, 'It's beautiful. I like it.' How can I make a film about art collectors who don't talk about art?"

Sasaki had resigned herself to making a 20-minute short film until an interview with Italian artist Lucio Pozzi convinced her that part of the beauty of the Vogels is that they aren't so academic about what they like. They act on intuition.

As Tuttle puts it in the film: "Something goes from the eye to the soul, without going through the brain."

From then on, Sasaki instructed her camera operators to get close-ups of Herbert Vogel's eyes whenever he looked at art. His eyes intensify and light up when he likes something. This happens in a scene filmed in James Siena's studio. Siena, a Washington native, shows the Vogels his new paintings.

"They're very enthusiastic," Siena says. "It's pretty obvious in some way. Sometimes they say things like, 'James, I think this is a very important drawing. Very, very important and I'd like to add it to the collection.' "

Siena says the Vogels have the eyes of artists or curators, rather than collectors. They don't chase trophy pieces, partly because they can't afford them. They buy small works that will fit in a taxi and then in their apartment.

They stay loyal to the artists they adore and collect their work aggressively for decades. Most notably, they're not interested in turning a profit. Despite their priceless collection, they live simply; Herbert wears the same green sports jacket in footage from the '70s and 2007.