If we were to pick the one investment most likely to outperform all others over the next hundred or even five hundred years, it would be a painting by Andy Warhol. The artist’s soup cans, Brillo boxes and Marilyn Monroe silkscreens will probably be as recognizable centuries from now as they are today, powerful icons of an age in which beauty itself came to be repudiated by artists and disdained by dealers (if not necessarily by their clients). Perhaps centuries from now, historians and art critics will have a better idea of how this came to be, and how even prestigious museums like the Whitney got hooked on trash. The longer these disturbing trends continue, however, the greater will be the dollar value of Andy Warhol’s works, since, even in their own time, his paintings forcefully evoke a civilization that ran amok aesthetically and morally.
Meanwhile, Warhol’s reputation and collectibility appear rock-solid even in hard times. Amidst a deepening global recession, buyers turned out at Sotheby’s last week to bid his paintings into the sky. The featured work, “200 One Dollar Bills,” one of the artist’s first silkscreen paintings, sold for $43.7 million. (I have not reproduced this painting because it is neither more nor less than you might have inferred from its title.) That was more than three times its high estimate of $12 million, and it helped push the auction to an impressive total of $134 million. Other less-prized Warhol works auctioned that night fetched similarly stunning prices. A sketch of roll of cash with a high estimate of $3.5 million drew a winning bid of $4.2 million, and a self-portrait with a top estimate of $1.5 million sold to a London collector for $6.1 million. Can you think of any other market as hot as this one? If Warhol is knocking ‘em dead as the Second Great Depression comes bearing down upon us, just imagine how his works will fare during the next boom perhaps 150 years from now.
Leckie’s Virtues
An appealing aspect of Warhol is that his works are relatively affordable compared to, say, a Rembrandt, Goya or Monet. Few collectors can touch works by those artists, but some of the best and rarest paintings by Warhol can still be had in these hard times for a mere $10 million. Even better news is that works by artists far more talented than Warhol – paintings like the one above, done by my college roommate, Geoffrey Leckie – remain within the reach of art lovers who value beauty over status. Indeed, the main reason for owning a Warhol is to tell the world you can afford one. Although this will always be part of the artist’s appeal, it fortunately will never negate the possibility that other artists will be more quietly appreciated many years from now for their painterly virtues.
“Even now, there is a debate in the art world over whether restoring the cow carcasses, which have begun to rot, would compromise their integrity as “art”.
That is hilarious, had not heard that before.
Talk about overintellectualizing idiocy.
Comparable to that is discussing whether moving Beuys’ putrid mountains of rancid tallow would destroy the art.
As a kid, I remember the stink in the Guggenheim during the large retrospective and not getting the fat/felt/copper thing.
Call me ignorant, but I still don’t.
BTW, two other American artists who you may find interesitng:
a)
Anthony Triano, who was professor of art at Seton Hall U. (died 1997, see http://www.anthonytriano.com) — esp. the human forms from early 80s and the later flowers
and
b)
Holmead (Charles Holmead Phillips), so little known in the US, though a PA native (worked mainly in Europe), that there is not even a wiki entry. He was an American expressionist, died in the early 1970s. Great landscapes, the portraits take some getting used to. pix on http://www.holmead.de, and a few more landscapes on artnet.
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Thanks for the recommendations, Chris. I’ll check them out. RA