House Tour: Inside An Art-Filled Hollywood Hills Home

Renowned Art adviser John Wolf recently paired up with an old friend and designer, Adam Bram Straus, to revitalize his own home located in Hollywood Hills, California. As you can imagine, the home is an art-filled and luxurious residence. 

John first met Adam almost two decades ago. At the time, Los Angeles-based John Wolf lived in a midcentury Hollywood apartment, which he remembers as a friendly and jovial small complex. When Wolf lived there, he was drawn to another tenant, Adam Bram Straus, who was a former investment banker turned interior designer. Adam’s apartment was one of the trendiest in the complex and the two quickly became friends. Later, when Wolf moved to a new apartment, he would ask Straus to handle the interior design of the space.

Together the pair seemed to promote and assist one another in the design world. Straus would often recommend Wolf as an art adviser to some of his clients, and shortly Wolf was picking up his clients, including renamed designers.

Fast-forward to the present, Straus’s design firm and John Wolf Art Advisory & Private Brokerage are succeeding, and the two friends and collaborators concluded their third LA home for Wolf.

From random to purposeful

Situated in Hollywood Hills, this 1971 luxury home boasts generous outdoor spaces and alluring views of the city. Wolf purchased the property from a Texas oil and cattle heiress with idiosyncratic tastes. Says Straus, “She did a huge investment into the infrastructure of the house, but the finishes were just random and trippy.”

Outside the 1970s home you’ll find a chain sculpture, cacti in ceramic pots, and a custom bench that lines the swimming pool’s perimeter. It also overlooks Nicholas Canyon beach in Los Angeles.

Keeping some quirky additions

Wolf decided to keep some of the previous owner’s quirky additions to the home. The perfect evidence is the powder room with a Star Wars-themed flocked wallpaper and its display of wall-mounted vanity mirrors on top of the sink. He also decided to keep the dazzling mosaic tilework. This storm of psychedelic glass pixels lines the shower and tub in the primary bath.

Set against this neutral backdrop is a mix of pieces by young designers. One of Vincent Pocsik’s Lamp Beings as well as a Haas Brothers Akira Hex stool is paired with vintage gems such as the Jorge Zalszupin cocktail table in the living room. A floating burled-wood Pace Collection console sets the tone in the family room. And multiple Angelo Mangiarotti marble tables add elegance here. The muted mise-en-scène also gives Wolf’s art collection, which he is constantly rotating, a chance to breathe.

A living record

“So many people work relentlessly to get the hot name, but I go with what I love and follow my gut,” he says. “I like to collect artists I’ve worked with.”

The home is a living record of those relationships: filled with works from shows he has curated at the Tom of Finland Foundation and the Spring/Break Art Show. He also has works from the “Human Condition,” a sprawling survey of art that explored what it means to be human, which he masterminded in a derelict LA hospital space in 2016.

This is certainly a deeper look into an artist’s world and mind. Joining pieces by such celebrated names as Nicolas Party, Nan Goldin, Tony Matelli, and Lita Albuquerque are works by now in-demand emerging artists like February James, Alannah Farrell, and Jean-Marie Appriou, who is represented by a sculpture of an astronaut intertwined with a dragon-like creature, or, as Wolf puts it, “a futuristic, alien-meets-medieval, time-space-warp entity.”

He acknowledges that collectors like him “are glorified hoarders,” who need to be reined in, noting, “That’s where Adam shines. He’s like a therapist for the living space.”

Via