Cart
Introduction
This is not a book about Alice Cooper. Nor is it a book about Andy Warhol. I Sold Alice Cooper’s Andy Warhol is about how the contemporary art scene evolved from the art world to the art market. It’s filled with stories and information that you won’t find anywhere else. Like any field, the art world has its own set of rules and industry standards. Some are legal, some fall into a gray area, and some are downright dishonest. Regardless, what “goes on” is vastly entertaining and the art itself can be truly inspiring. As they say, great art gets you to see the world differently. To truly understand the art scene you have to have lived the life. And I lived the life.
To be successful in any business you have to completely immerse yourself. Sometimes you do things that you end up looking back on and remarking, What was I thinking? You also have your share of victories. Though they come infrequently, you find yourself living for those moments. The high you get from discovering a great artist—like the first time I laid eyes on Bill Traylor’s work—was a high I couldn’t get anywhere else. Ditto for closing a major deal, like the time I got on a plane early one morning, flew from San Francisco to Dallas to swap a Joseph Cornell Penny Arcade collage for a Cornell Sun box with the chair of the Southland Corporation (they own all the 7-Elevens), and flew home later that day with the box resting on my knee. Placing the Cornell box on a shelf in my apartment felt like taking home the trophy from Wimbledon—it meant that much to me.
In 1972, the rocker Alice Cooper received one of Andy Warhol’s classic Little Electric Chair paintings as a gift, unknowingly putting into motion a saga that would take fifty years to play out. Before going on tour, Alice rolled up the unstretched sheet of red canvas, slipped it into a long cardboard mailing tube, stashed it in his garage in Scottsdale, Arizona—then promptly forgot about it. At the time, the painting was worth $2,500. Today, an authentic Little Electric Chair could be worth as much as $7 million.
I Sold Alice Cooper’s Andy Warhol will take the reader on a long and winding road to validate and sell Alice’s painting. Along the way, you will discover how the art authentication process works and why it matters. You will also learn about Andy Warhol, Alice Cooper and his manager Shep Gordon, Dennis Hopper, Richard Prince, and the cross-pollination between artists and musicians.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses how Alice Cooper came to own an Andy Warhol and the initial efforts to authenticate it and sell it. Part II goes back in time to experience what the art world was like in the heyday of the 1970s and ’80s. Part III focuses on what ultimately became of Alice’s Andy Warhol. It also concludes the story’s journey from an art world that revolved around the art itself to an art world obsessed with money.