Hey, badass. Looking for a romantical gift? How about his and hers Bonnie and Clyde guns, seized at the outlaw couple’s Joplin hideout in 1933 after a shootout. The rare weapons are going up for auction in Kansas City this month. Read more »
It’s only going to cost you half a thousand, no biggie. At the Dec 1-2 Julien’s Hollywood memorabilia auction, they’re selling all kinds of stupid crap — teenage pre-Marilyn Monroe bikini pics, a Law & Order dead foam rubber body with body bag, an Edward Scissorhands prop robot from the cookie factory scene at Vincent Price’s lab oh wait what oh my god oh my god gimme! Also, the costumes from The Big Lebowski, from the Dude’s casual bathrobe ensemble to Julian Moore’s frilly swingerie. Ready to thoroughly authenticate that role play, sexy nerds?
“It’s just as absurd as the banking crisis,” said the best-selling, beloved artist Gerhard Richter at a press conference for his Tate Modern retrospective, whose Kerze (“Candle”) is about to fetch $9-14 million at Christie’s in London. “It’s impossible to understand and it’s daft.” Is there an anti-art market movement a-brewing? Read more »
No One Bought the Marilyn Monroe Porno
There were zero bids for the so-called “Marilyn Monroe stag film” at its auction in Buenos Airies. The grainy, black-and-white 8mm clip shows a buxom blond smiling through a myriad of x-rated activities. Though surely Marilyn-esque, Marilyn she’s not. At least, not one of the prospected bidders thought so, after Monroe’s Estate has simultaneously cried that it’s fraud, copyright infringement and “underage” material. Read more »
Tuesday afternoon, Artnet’s “Urban Scrawl: Graffiti and Street Art” week-long online auction ended, having attracted twice the traffic of its predecessors. Among the hot-ticket items and highlights: the staple bunch of Banksys and Harings, FUTURA’s Untitled for $17,250, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Cabeza for $19,550 and COPE2′s recently “appropriated” subway sign Church Av Station to Flatbush Av only (2010) sold for $2,530.
Today in ridiculous auction news, a 132-year-old, two-by-three-inch tintype of exaggerated outlaw Billy the Kid was purchased for $2.3 million plus fees at the 22nd Annual Old West Show & Auction in Denver… by a Koch. Read more »
An anonymous Monroe-lover just dropped $4.6 million plus a $1 million commission fee on the dead star’s signature ivory dress that blew up tantalizingly in The Seven Year Itch… or, as it appeared in 1955, when the saucy starlet straddled a NYC subway grate in an “outrageous” public act of exhibitionism. Read more »
Unless you’re excited by lots of olde tyme bottles, June 15 Fine Glass Crap auction at Bonhams is zzzzz. They do have this unusually fancy, monogrammed glass in a gilded, red-leather carrying case. Its origins “circumstantially” yet “strongly suggest” it was Napoleon’s. It will run you $3K-$5K. Perfect for sipping very old shipwrecked champagne — recently bought by an anonymous internet bidder for $78K — or ornately disguising your alcoholism.
Ireland wins! This auction item is crazier than Marilyn’s vag-bones sprinkled with Elvis hair wrapped in a Unabomber sweatshirt. A rotting skull of St Vitalis of Assisi is being auctioned next weekend. Young Vitty over here was a licentious fuck-a-lot deviant who repented, became a Benedictine monk, was venerated as the patron saint of venereal diseases and has been sitting in a display case in someone’s hallway. Read more »
Who Wants the Titanic’s Plans?
If you want to know how not to build a cruise ship, there’s a 300-lot auction at Henry Aldridge & Son in UK on May 28th where you can buy a 32.5-foot-long cross-section of the Titanic. Also, some “keys to first-class lavatories,” dead people’s diaries, “a framed and glazed life jacket presentation” and a mixed collection of morbid, erm, pardon… “modern ephemera.” Read more »
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