LOS ANGELES — Police in Los Angeles are offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of a multimillion dollar collection of original Andy Warhol artwork stolen from a West Los Angeles home. The family’s longtime nanny arrived at the home Sept. 3 to find the color screenprints missing from the walls. She immediately went to a neighbor’s house and called police.
Eleven artworks, each 40 inches square, were stolen. Among the stolen items were images of O.J. Simpson, Muhammad Ali, soccer star Pele and tennis champion Chris Evert. A portrait of Weisman was also taken.
It’s not known exactly how much the collection is worth, but Weisman tried to sell it in 2002 for $3 million.
Meh…I’ll give ’em five bucks for the lot.
Art: “A conspiracy of rich people and artists to make poor people think they are dumb.” Kurt Vonnegut. From Ice-9 or Cats Cradle I think.
Art? – – Really? hah, hah.
That is worth $3 million? [sarc]I am going to take something out of my cupboard and paint it. Saying goodbye to my day job really soon.[/sarc]
#3 As many people as think Capote and Hemingway is literature.
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Agree to all above. I saw a lot of his crap in museum in Pasadena, pure crap
Art is worth exactly as much as you can con someone into paying for it and not a penny more. I bet they’ve got this crap insured for far more than anyone would be willing to pay. They say they tried to sell it in 2002 for $3 million and apparently had no takers. Maybe because you can go buy a real can of tomato soup at the grocery store for .60 cents and have it be actually useful.
“… longtime nanny arrived at the home Sept. 3 to find the color screenprints missing”
Doesn’t to find something missing mean you found it?
I read an article years ago about how ROCKEFELLER bought up all kinds of African Art, might have been specifically Mask Art, and having CORNERED that market, the art form became “popular” or “sought after” and Rockerfeller sold his collection back into the market he created. Not silver or gold but a total manipulation. Then he did the same with some kind of abstract BS. And so on.
One of the very few activities that is and should be totally free market activity–other than authenticity I suppose.
Never have understood how/why Denmark supports artists by buying their art work. They have warehouses built to house the crap. Much better to use the American Farm Subsidy approach===pay them not to paint. Everyone benefits.
Paint your own crap and hang it on your wall. Express Yourself. Be Bold.
Hmmm… I wonder if the owner had this art heavily insured? This would be a quick way to raise a lot of cash for an asset that now worth a lot less than you paid for it.
Yard sale next weekend!
#9 Ron L. Exactly, nobody has a collection like this without having it heavily insured. The insurance would require serious security measures. Smells like a bad whodunnit!
#1 Bobbo – Now what the heck do you have against art? Surely you’re not suggesting that art is something we should do without. If Mr. Warhol isn’t to your liking, I can understand that, I prefer surrealism or impressionist myself. But I’d thought you to be a tasteful person, by the way you express yourself. Don’t you ever go to art museums?
Art schmart.
#12–amodedoma (The Tenth Muse)==I have been to all the art houses of the world. 99% b-o-r-i-n-g. Like Zoo’s, I spend more time admiring the architecture than the stored objects de interest. I think the last “piece” I saw that I liked was in NYC Mona “The Tree of Life” or whatever==a tree that when closely inspected was made of contorted human figures. Impressionism was the last “school” of art that I appreciated. But if you go to Monet’s house, he did nothing but paint what he saw–same with Gaugain, yellow headaches and all.
I can’t call photography “art” even though it is almost always more “moving” and can involve many of the same creative impulses.
So–much better to learn to draw yourself, study the color wheel, do some sculpting. You will not only appreciate the good works of art you come across, you will not “be teased by eternity, and that is all ye need know of beauty.” Paraphrasing/corrupting for my own artistic pleasure, yeats or keats or one of the boys in the band ((Inspector Lewis, sic)).
Hmmm, it seems that many here don’t appreciate 2 dimensional art. Do you also prefer the look of a Lada over a Lamborghini? Most 3D objects we cherish started as works of 2D art and then back to 2D… as an object of your desire does from 2D images to production and then back to a 2D image… as a photo or drawing your unattainable desire hangs in the den. Form follows function… as in the Lada… but then great works of art can follow form. A Lamborghini doesn’t have to look the way it does, and neither does the best architecture, or any of your favorite and often most expensive things, otherwise all we would create is various boxes and blank packaging with black typographic labels. We all choose and buy art (mostly reproductions) in many forms all the time, you just don’t realize it.
Do I think the Campbell Soup can is worth 3 mil? Not to me, but I do consider it art and an important example of the era it represents. This is best summed up by Worhol himself in his comment…
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
#15–Jim==hah, hah. All you did was describe consumerism==not art. And Worhol laughed all the way to the bank having gotten another one over on the poor people.
Maybe Vonnegut was only half right and the artists are having the joke on both the rich and poor with just the rich being able to corner the market now and then for their own little bit of puffery.
Improb is right on this one. There is art. Then there is schmart. And con men above, under, to the left, right, and all around.
This is a picture that Andy did of me just after I became a nun. I think it makes my ass look big. That fucker tried to charge me a boatload just for a print.
http://tinyurl.com/qxhduy
Bobbo, Describing consumerism through art was just part of my argument… the rest you chose to ignore because it showed thr error of your sweeping anti-art remarks?
I guess you are so schmart you buy unbranded bulk or unadvertised brands and not get taken in by the schmazze of brand name anything in pretty packaging,eh? And you would buy a Lada and gladly pay the high price tag of a Lamborghin if it had the same mechanical engineering specs, eh? Riiight.
BTW, Worhol got $1500 for his tomato soup… probably bought by someone as an investment. Whoever bought it was pretty schmart… don’t you think?
Am I the only one who thinks that a 1 Million reward for info too much for a collection worth only 3 Million? There’s something fishy on this…
And yes, Andy Warhol is waaaaaay overrated, as most pop artists.
#18–Jim==more consumerism? I left the comeback in defense of ART wide open and you go for the ad hominem on someone you don’t even know?
You know, with Andy Warhol, there was art, and then there was “pop art.”
Go back and try again. Defend Soup Cans as “art” as opposed to pop art, consumerism, the most obvious of social commentary.
The highest form of Art, the only kind of art worthy of the name some would argue, is that which teaches, informs, motivates the recipient to new levels of awareness/feelings/insights.
Visual arts hardly ever do that. Arts and Crafts. Play time.
Takes a novel. Just a different cut at the subject.
Soup cans, as an idea created at the time of pop art consumerism is art. It might seem blazĂ© to you nowadays, but that doesn’t diminish it’s value in the evolution of visual arts. In it’s day it had emotional value rather than beauty… still art… unless you don’t understand the meaning… then it’s just stuff, or awful stuff. Do you like Jazz?
Your very narrow definition is just one way of looking at art… although extensive in your demands, a simple abstract that instills emotion or even in a very direct way is simply beautiful is enough for many to enjoy as art.
The definition of art is much simpler than you imagine. If so little visually affects you in a positive way, or gives you pleasure, I imagine that your walls are bare (metaphorically).
I like to read as well.
#22–Jim==excellent response. Yes, emotion has value. I grit my teeth saying “even emotions from a soup can” but Marilyn worked for me. My walls are completely covered with books and poster sized photographs I took myself. One of my favorite photo’s is of a single tree on a hill taken once a month for a year. Can’t deny it was Warhol that inspired that. Art? No. But emotive for me.
Warhols fits a few exception a few times to the general rule that art is overestimated for its worth. The exceptions even reinforce that view. Thanks for going until you hit paydirt.
Re: #23 “excellent response.”
I must be hallucinating. đ
(G’night)
If by some chance I’d ever owned them I’d have sold them.
Okay I might have thrown them out with the trash. I can’t always tell which crappy looking junk is worth a lot of money and which is just trash.
#25 That movie was meant to be seen in 3d after eating a tab of LSD, preferably the night of halloween, it’ll change your life! HAR!
I’d bet a quarter that today thousands of art collectors are being approached (psst! wanna buy some hot art?) by con men.