Jeffrey Deitch’s Party House

AGE: 59

VOCATION: Former contemporary art dealer from New York; most prominent gallerist to direct a major museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles.

MISCONCEPTION ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART: That it is inaccessible. Part of my agenda has been to support art that engages life with people.

STUDIO TO MANSION: I lived for years in a New York studio, so the house is a wonderful experience. It’s a small hotel where friends are always welcome. We can have 100 people over comfortably.

HIS PARTY ROOM: In the center is this outrageous sofa by Gaetano Pesce, which is a fusion of a salmon, a bear and a toucan. I was furnishing with Spanish Revival furniture, but I was getting bored.

FAVORITE PLACE IN HOUSE: A balcony off the upstairs bedroom with the best view possible of the Hollywood sign.

SURPRISING HOUSEHOLD OBJECT: The Michel Gondry piano. When you push down the key, it plays a videotape with audio of someone playing that note in 88 locations around the world, one for each key.

SIGNATURE SPECS: They’ve become my trademark. They’re an adaptation of the classic, Modernist architect’s glasses, two circles connected by a line. I have them made in a workshop in Germany from buffalo horn.

WHAT WARHOL WOULD THINK: Andy thought of business as a potential art medium. He would have been fascinated by my appointment as director of MOCA.

BEST WARHOL CHAT: The first one. Until then I had only heard him speak in monosyllables. I invited him to Hong Kong in 1982. Andy just started talking. It turned out Andy was a great raconteur. His typical monosyllabic answers were his way of dealing with all the people who asked him for stuff.

FAVORITE LOCAL CELEBRITY SIGHTING: My friend, the former Interview magazine associate publisher Paige Powell, comes to visit. She’s been friends for many years with Gus Van Sant, who lives up the street, and we get together.

MOST ANNOYING ARTSPEAK: When people refer to an artist’s “practice.” Would you refer to Rauschenberg’s work as his practice?

LARGEST WORK IN HOUSE: An installation by Chris Johanson adapted from the even-larger version he showed at the Whitney Biennial. Chris had the installation brought to my living room. It is a street with shop fronts, autos and pedestrians.

WORST ART TO LIVE WITH: Definitely sound installations. Sometimes you do a sound installation, and the first day or two it is very exciting. Then you are hearing this every day for a month, and it becomes like a torture.

MEMENTO: The announcement card for my first exhibition, “Lives,” signed and dedicated to me by the artist Joseph Beuys. The show was about artists who use their lives as their medium. The card just arrived one day in the mail.

STRANGEST ARTIST INTERACTION: When the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik spent two weeks in my gallery as a dog. He was in character from the moment he got off the airplane. We rented a station wagon and put him in back as a dog on all fours.

PIECE HE WON’T SELL: I’m not that attached to objects. The collection is a project. The totality of it matters.

TOP 5 WORKS TO SEE: Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” c. 1500. Titian, “The Flaying of Marsyas,” 1575-1576. Goya, “Saturn Devouring One of His Sons,” 1821- 1823. Manet, “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” 1882. Duchamp, “Étant donnés: 1 La chute d’eau, 2 Le gaz d’éclairage,” 1946-66.