Broke former art mogul whose social-climbing antics shocked Manhattan compares herself to STEVE JOBS as her Hamptons compound is sold for $89M, leaving her millions in debt

Former art magazine publisher and collector Louise Blouin will still be millions in debt after her Hamptons estate was auctioned for $89 million, but she remains undeterred.

Blouin, 65, and her second husband acquired the sprawling Gin Lane estate known as “La Dune” for $13.5 million in 1998, establishing her reputation as a player in New York society.

Last week, she appeared as her own attorney in federal bankruptcy court in Central Islip to argue against the $89 million sale price reached at a January auction, including $10 million in fees, as too low.

“I didn’t make many mistakes,” Blouin said in his defense in an interview with the New York Timesfor a profile on Wednesday about her stunning rise and precipitous fall.

‘You can’t judge someone because he or she has a problem once in their life. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t have a perfect track record,” she added, comparing herself to Apple’s legendary co-founder.

While Blouin’s total debt on the property is unclear, the sale price remains $7 million to $15 million below what she owes to creditors, John Isbell, attorney for creditor Bay Point Advisors, told the Wall Street Journal.

Isbell said in court that Bay Point may consider suing Blouin as it seeks ways to recover the unpaid balance of debt on the properties.

La Dune, which includes two homes on more than four acres, was initially listed at $150 million in 2022 and has been on and off the market for years as Blouin struggled to pay off debt on the property.

Blouin bought the publishing houses Modern Painters and Art + Auction in the 2000s, but had a notorious history of not paying journalists and outsourcing her art media empire to India, according to the New York Post.

In 2016, her name was mentioned in the Panama Papers – a leaked set of documents that revealed the names of hundreds of the world’s richest individuals with offshore accounts.

The painter Ross Bleckner, a friend of Blouin for 20 years, told the Times that her downfall came because “she wanted to be a mover and a shaker in the art world.”

Bleckner recalled that Blouin would once sprinkle prominent figures with invitations to lunches or dinners in the Hamptons, including financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, diplomat Henry Kissinger and fashion designer Calvin Klein.

He said the invitations were impossible to refuse because Blouin invariably gave five available dates from which to choose.

“Me and Calvin would be hysterical if we laughed about it,” he told the Times. “How do you get out of five dates? What were we supposed to say, ‘I’m going away all summer’?’

“She was fun, she was beautiful, she was a wonderful hostess,” Bleckner said. “Of course I never really understood where the money came from.”

Bankruptcy filings clearly show that while she lived in the center of Manhattan’s high society, her properties in the Hamptons were heavily mortgaged.

Blouin placed the entire Hamptons estate under bankruptcy protection in 2022 to avoid foreclosures resulting from multi-million dollar mortgages on the property.

One of the homes on the property was bundled into foreclosure proceedings over an unpaid $26 million mortgage, which has risen to $40 million in recent years.

The other home was placed under bankruptcy protection in 2022 to avoid a foreclosure resulting from an unpaid $15 million mortgage.

The former publisher, reportedly in tears after the hours-long auction on Wednesday evening, expressed hope that the judge would dismiss the sale so she could refinance or sell the property privately.

“I’m totally disheartened,” she said, adding that she believed the property had been offered for $100 million.

An unnamed buyer has agreed to pay $40.5 million for the traditional clapboard-style mansion, built in 1892, and $38.5 million for the second home built in 2002. The total sale price includes about an additional $10 million in auction fees.

The property was also listed on the open market for $150 million with co-brokers Harald Grant of Sotheby’s International Realty, Tim Davis of the Corcoran Group and Cody Vichinsky of Bespoke Real Estate.

Blouin also chose to rent out her palatial home in the summer of 2016 for $1 million per month, increasing the monthly rent to $1.2 million in 2022.

Taxes on the property alone are estimated at approximately $130,000 per year.

There are two swimming pools, an all-weather sunken tennis court and security gates leading to a wide gravel driveway.

The main residence, built in 1897, is a four-story mansion with a gym, cinema and sauna.

Designed to look the same as the other, the second house also features dark polished wooden floors and a mostly white interior, complete with detailed moldings, coffered ceilings and French doors.

The property has 120 meters of beach frontage. Between the two homes, La Dune features 22,000 square feet of interior space. The couple has a total of 19 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms.

In bankruptcy court, Blouin made it clear that she expected the property to sell for more than the $89 million it fetched at auction, and tried to oppose the sale.

According to the Times, Judge Alan S. Trust was unsympathetic when Blouin, who represented himself at a Feb. 13 hearing, pressured him to block the sale.

Trust was unimpressed when Blouin waved documents not entered into evidence, urging her to wait until closing arguments were completed, asking to “say a few things” in the middle of the hearing.

Trust ultimately determined that the sale of La Dune had been fair and approved the deal, saying, “The market has spoken.”

“There are people who are so rich or think they are so rich that they don’t understand the reality of what it’s like to actually do the work,” Ben Davis, former editor-in-chief of ArtInfo, told the Times.

“Louise believed that everything good that happened was because of her, and she thought that everything bad that happened was a plot to get her.”