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Press:
COLLECTING CELEBRITY ART
by Baird Jones
I have spent over $1 million on my celebrity art collection, buying works by everyone
from Bob Dylan to James Dean. Some of these objets d’art were made as afterthoughts,
done as scribbled drawings in the margins of a celebrity autograph. Others are legitimate
artworks made by celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash, who despite their
accomplishments in their respective fields still turned to fine art to establish
their true creativity.
A handful of celebrities have made serious money in the art biz. Red Skelton sold
some of his paintings for as much as $80,000 a canvas, and some of these were clown
paintings on velvet -- if any artist can do clowns on velvet without irony, it would
be Skelton. Sinatra’s art prices also became astronomical. David Byrne and Martin
Mull have managed to enter the contemporary art mainstream, at least somewhat.
But celebrities like these are the exceptions. When Sotheby’s auctioned off a trove
of Muhammad Ali memorabilia five years ago, everything went wildly above estimate
-- except for Ali’s artworks, which fell significantly short of their presale evaluations.
The people who take art seriously are rarely the same people who care about celebrityhood.
Galleries that specialize in celebrity art, typically located in tourist-trap areas
like Las Vegas, Beverly Hills and Hawaii -- and now, like SoHo in New York -- tend
to be insanely expensive. Among the wares are works by the likes of Richard Chamberlain,
Marcel Marceau and Anthony Quinn, interspersed with art by noncelebrity artists
like Peter Max and assorted questionable works by Salvador Dalí and such.
I can recommend two galleries that often have celebrity art for sale at reasonable
prices, however. The first is Image Makers Art Gallery of Stars in New Hope, Pa.,
where I bought a work by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. The website is at www.imagemakersart.com.
The second gallery is Robert Rogal’s Ro Gallery, which conducts an extensive business
in lithos and other artworks at www.rogallery.com. My acquisitions there included
works by Ali and actor Jeff Bridges.
Other celebrities sell their own artworks on their own websites. Peter Falk sells
his impressive lithographs -- academic-style figure studies and comic drawings,
in editions of 300 or more -- at
www.peterfalk.com. Prices are only a
few hundred dollars each. One of Falk’s assistants told me that the actor enjoys
the idea that his fans can buy his work, but that the website isn’t really a money-making
enterprise. Celebrities are so used to sending autographed photographs to their
fans for free that they continue this goodwill attitude in the pricing of their
artwork on their websites.
Comic screenprints by Kurt Vonnegut are available at www.kurtvonnegut.com
for bargain prices. A signed and numbered two-color print, measuring about 11 x
15 in., showing a falling blue bomb inscribed with the words, "Goodbye Blue Monday,"
is $275. Vonnegut also offers an aluminum cutout sculpture, showing a nude from
behind, for $1,800.
Another good online buy was an awesome Marilyn Manson self-portrait lithograph --
as an amputatee baby -- which I purchased from his website for a bargain: $150.
Generally speaking, Manson is hip to the art world, and his art can be quite expensive.
Even after his death, Buddy Ebsen’s "limited edition lithographs" were still available
on his website -- "Uncle Jed Country" -- for only $150 for a "framed, signed and
numbered Artist’s Proof, edition of 100." Spring Bath, for instance, measures
18 x 24 in. and features Uncle Jed taking a bath in the water trough while his bloodhound
Ol’ Duke looks on.
I don’t have to tell you that an artist’s prices can soar after his or her death.
For instance, I bought a number of paintings directly from rock star Dee Dee Ramone
for $200 each in order to include them in an exhibition I was organizing at the
Paterson Museum in New Jersey. Only a few weeks later, poor Dee Dee died after a
heroin overdose, and paintings like the ones I had bought were being bid up into
the thousands on eBay.
Many people assume I have bought much of my celebrity art on eBay. In fact, eBay
has its problems for a celebrity-art collector. The general celebrity fascination
in our country brings competitive, savvy bidders to eBay in droves, and they often
push up prices during the final minutes of online auctions. I’ve only purchased
about five percent of my collection on eBay, including works by artists like Dr.
Seuss, Charles Schulz and Mel Blanc (who are actually legitimate cartoonists, of
course, only needing a slight adjustment to transition into the "artiste" category).
And while caricature self-portraits by celebrities Art Carney and Jimmy Stewart
can be found cheaply on eBay, such wares are also offered at even lower prices on
autograph auction sites. At Signaturepieces.com, for instance, a search under "sketch"
can turn up autographs that have been accompanied by a doodle or a caricature. With
eBay, authenticity can be an issue, while good autograph auction houses like R&R
Enterprises in Amherst, N.H. (and online at
www.rrauction.com), have staff to vet
the material pretty closely. I have bought half of my collection through rrauction.com,
which publishes a lavish catalogue every month -- though it features only a few
good art items each time around. Among the works in my collection are captivating
self-portrait sketches by Vincent Price, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Astaire and George
Takei, all purchased for less than $25 because most people considered them only
minor autographs that just happened to include a doodled image.
"Celebrity" is a broad term and one peculiarly active area among collectors is art
by serial killers and infamous murderers -- not least of all Adolf Hitler. On the
specialist website
www.murderauction.com one can find all manner of drawings by condemned
killers. Authenticity can be a problem but with prices as low as $25, the risk is
limited. My purchases from this site have included small drawings by Richard Ramirez
(the Night Stalker) and Ottis Toole (the friend in the movie "Henry, Portrait of
a Serial Killer"). Expensive paintings by Charles Manson are regularly featured
here.
Another macabre addition to a celebrity collection are signed and numbered posters
by "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian, available at the Ariana Gallery in Royal Oak, Mich.
Last I looked, these posters were only $200 each.
Charity auctions often include artworks by celebrities, and the interested collector
should keep an eye out for these kinds of art benefits. Some years ago I paid $700
at Marianne Boesky Gallery for a Lou Reed photograph of hazy New York skyline, a
work that I treasure, and about ten years ago I scooped up a Rudy Giuliani photograph
of the Twin Towers for $400 at the Leica Gallery on Broadway, an image that recently
went for $4,000 at Sotheby’s. I also acquired a painting by Congo the Chimp for
a $200 donation at an animal rights benefit, and a slightly claustrophobic litho
by Merce Cunningham at a dance benefit.
I have a weakness for postcards and notecards designed by celebrities, which aren’t
signed, of course, and consequently are very inexpensive. The art is terrific, in
any case. An organization called Kids Art collaborated with the Pediatric Epilepsy
Project at UCLA to produce an amazing series of postcards by celebrities -- ranging
from David Arquette and Laura Dern to Matthew Broderick to Don Rickles -- which
are for sale at
www.kidsartinc.com. Similarly, at
www.angelwear.com, I paid $4 for
a set of ten postcards by Keanu Reeves, Diane Keaton, Sly Stallone and others. And
at the website of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network -- www.rainn.org -- I bought
postcards by Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe and Cyndi Lauper.
And last but not least, Long Island Cares and the Harry Chapin Food Bank is offering
a series of ceramic tiles imprinted with doodled self portraits by Dion DiMucci
(of Dion and the Belmonts), Phyllis Diller and Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin,
among others. They are $15 apiece and are very handy around the house.
BAIRD JONES reports on art and celebrity in New York.
Link to the Artnet article
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What An Artist Should Be
"Why do people go to museums?"
Baird Jones asked. The question was rhetorical, offered up as he
whisked The Transom through a
private tour of his extensive collection of celebrity artwork, which crams the
walls and fills the closets of his two-bedroom East Village
apartment. "Isn’t the real purpose entertainment?"
Mr. Jones, a fixture on the
downtown
New York
scene since his days as a doorman at Studio 54, continues to be a ubiquitous
presence at events where celebrities, real and purported, collect. He started
collecting their arts and crafts more than 20 years ago and recently put
together an exhibition entitled Star Art, currently on display at the
Chelsea
Art Museum.
"I think my promotion of
celebrity art makes me more lethal to the art world. What museums want is
celebrities," boasted the multi-talented Mr. Jones, who aside from his work as a
curator is a contributing writer for artnet.com and moonlights as a nightclub
promoter for (among others) Webster Hall, pumping the venue’s name by dishing
his celebrity scoops to the city’s gossip columns in exchange for being credited
with the unseemly byline "Webster Hall curator Baird Jones."
Mr. Jones says he’s spent over
$100,000 framing the collection, which includes over 500 works, from an
illustration of bullfighters by James Dean to an acrylic battle scene painted by
Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin, James Earl Ray. The collection blurs the line
between high art and low as much as it does the difference between celebrity and
notoriety. Many of the pieces are little more than doodles. Some are merely
signed posters; others are intricately composed paintings. But all visibly bear
signatures, an essential component to the value of a celebrity work, according
to Mr. Jones, who likes to read "Ph.D.-level art criticism" and sees a big
future in his enduring obsession.
"The thing about celebrity art
is that it’s the next movement. Graffiti was the first step, where they saw the
signature as a statement. But then something has happened—I think it’s related
to internationalism and the way New York has been robbed of its prominence.
"And so there’s an ironic
statement that’s been going on that is now going to make celebrity art the new
groovy thing."
Regardless of where the art world is headed or what the far-reaching effects of
"internationalism" may be, Mr. Jones—who likes to say he’s "a wealthy guy"—isn’t
in this for the money. He merely wants to let others experience the pleasure of
celebrity art, and he dreams of sending his exhibit on a national tour.
The reception on June 2 wasn’t
quite the celebrity hoedown Mr. Jones had hoped for.
"When you see David Bowie walk
through the door, it’s because David Byrne just walked in before him," Mr. Jones
had advised The Transom before the show. (Works by both Mr. Bowie and Mr. Byrne
are in the show.) But it wasn’t a complete flop either: Featured artist Victoria
Gotti Sr. turned up, Sopranos bit player Oksana Lada made an appearance,
and "Hoop"—renowned about town for his van plastered with clocks, which he calls
the "Time Machine"—was there from start to finish.
Mrs. Gotti had five pieces on
display, most of which draw on her favored panther theme. "I equate the panther
with a beautiful woman—smart, sleek, sexy and deadly," she said. More generally,
she takes inspiration from the work of Claude Monet. "He’s just my idea what an
artist should be," she said.
The creative widow of the Teflon
Don, who tries to paint "a little every day," is prone to sounding a bit like a
goodfella herself. "I came here as a respect to you," she told a beaming Mr.
Jones, who was clad in his traditional uniform of preppy attire topped off with
a Yankees cap. And when The Transom put foot in mouth, having let slip that
Muhammad Ali’s painting of a jet was its favorite, Mrs. Gotti raised an eyebrow
and asked, "You want me to smack you now or later?" But her tender side shined
through as she gazed at her portrait of a woman on a dock. "She’s waiting for
her man," she offered.
The civilian turnout was more
impressive. While opinions varied on the artistic merits on display, most of the
fairly packed crowd in the Project Room section of the museum acknowledged a
certain level of curiosity about celebrity artwork. The crowd’s attention,
however, was divided between Star Art
and the works of "urban surrealism" by
Damon Johnson, the 26-year-old son of Page Six gossip columnist
Richard Johnson, who was having a simultaneous opening, also curated by Mr.
Jones, on the other side of the room.
(Mr. Jones and Richard Johnson
are themselves old friends.)
Proud Papa Johnson, who plans to
purchase some more of Damon’s art before the "prices get too high," had some
insights into the celebrity mind.
"I think a lot of people who do
one sort of art think that they are multi-talented." Assessing the celebrity
artists on display, he added: "Some of them are dilettantes, some of the are
just bad artists, and some of them are not."
Mr. Jones, for his part, had
mixed feelings about the success of the show. "I was very pleased, because
nothing was stolen," he said. "Lots of times, celebrity art gets stolen because
it brings out the crazy element. I felt a lot of people were laughing at the
art. They seemed to be ridiculing it. I noticed the Buddy Ebsens were a great
source of guffaws. They weren’t really giving the art a chance. Everybody was
there for girls first, the booze second and maybe mingling with Victoria Gotti
third. Even with celebrity art—which draws more attention than any other kind of
art—people don’t pay that much attention to the art."
—Spencer Morgan
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Link to the Observer Article
N.Y.
/ Region
About New York
He Knows Art ... and Larry Hagman's Hat Size
By
DAN BARRY
Published:
April 15, 2006
IT takes hard work for you to be informed that RICHARD BELZER dislikes being
mistaken for HENRY WINKLER, or that BAI LING loves J. LO's "curves," or that
LAUREN HUTTON's favorite hobby is "digging up weeds," or that ANDIE
MacDOWELL wants it known that she is not, not, the illegitimate daughter of
Charlie Chaplin (whose right to BOLDFACE treatment died with him).
Celebrities must be
willing to share their innermost inane feelings. The gossip columns must
measure public interest through a complicated calculus that factors wattage,
cleavage, latest development deal, substance-abuse history, embarrassment
quotient and, of course, the variable known as canoodle.
And someone must be willing to dedicate his nights — his life, really — to
attending book parties, gallery shows and other promotional affairs where
the air is kissed and authenticity is absent. That someone is BAIRD JONES,
who has earned uppercase status through his long obsession with, and desire
for, that fleeting state in the human condition: fame.
Rarely a week goes by without Page Six or Rush and Molloy or Cindy Adams or
Lloyd Grove publishing some gold-plated nugget mined from the celebrity
slurry by Mr. Jones, who is usually described as "Webster Hall curator" — an
inside joke of an identification that actually should say he is a promoter
for the Webster Hall nightclub in Greenwich Village.
But who is Baird Jones, really? And why has he made this his life's work?
He answers the door to his 22nd-floor apartment in
Greenwich Village
wearing a double-breasted blue blazer and a Yankees cap shoved over his
stringy, rust-brown hair. The cap, ever present, is central to his signature
look.
He insists on showing off his collection of what he calls celebrity art,
which he says has cost him more than $1 million. Framed paintings,
lithographs, sketches and doodles by the famous and infamous cover nearly
the entire wall space of his spare gallery of an apartment, with more
stacked in closets and on the floor.
A
JONI MITCHELL self-portrait. A DEBBIE REYNOLDS scrawl of a spider. Works by
PAUL McCARTNEY, Alfred Hitchcock, GLORIA VANDERBILT, John Gotti, LOU REED,
Fred Astaire,JACK KEVORKIAN, Evel Knievel; a green room of the living and the
dead, careerwise and otherwise. "MARCEL MARCEAU over there," he says,
pointing to some stacked paintings. "I've got SALLY STRUTHERS behind that."
On a table, he has set aside an envelope that contains his "press kit." The
return address reads: Baird Jones, B.A., J.D., M.S.W., M.A., M.A. In
addition to reflecting the extent of his higher learning, these letters also
summon three more: W.H.Y.
The envelope contains 50 pages of photocopied news clips by or about Baird
Jones dating to the early 1980's, carefully arrayed several to a page, as
well as his résumé (winner of the Extracurricular Reading Prize, Groton
School, 1971) and his family's listing in the 1983 Social Register,
featuring an enviable Upper East Side address.
The clips reflect the arc of a life. First as a privileged preppie who held
dozens of parties at Studio 54 for the similarly blessed, then as a party
consultant, then as a critic and curator intimately familiar with the East
Village art scene, then as a collector and promoter of celebrity art — and
oral celebrity kitsch.
Peering from under the brim of his Yankee cap like a pitcher trying to read
a catcher's signs, Mr. Jones alternately answers and evades questions about
his life.
He is wealthy, but he does not want to discuss money
because "it's just going to ruin my mood." He was born in
New York
but conceived in Rio de Janiero, he says, "So I've always considered myself
Brazilian. That's very important to me."
He says that he attends events just about every night of the week. He
carries a tape recorder, waits for an opening and then pounces, often asking
questions that demonstrate he has done some homework on the celebrities he
approaches. Then he forwards the items to various gossip columnists and
hopes one of them bites.
Mr. Jones is asked again why a man with wealth and many postgraduate degrees
would spend his nights finding out that LARRY HAGMAN has a huge hat
collection, or that RACHEL WEISZ attributes bushy eyebrows for her sometimes
being mistaken for BROOKE SHIELDS.
"I do think about it — the trivia," he says after a pause. Another pause
follows, after which he says that his art criticism balances things, "so it
doesn't really bother me."
It's nearly 6:30; time to hit the galleries. Fame is out there somewhere.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
New York/Region
Street Level
In
Club
Land, 'Neighbors' Doesn't
Mean Nearby
Hiroko Masuike for The New
York Times
Crobar, early March 18.
By PAUL BERGER
Published: March 26, 2006
A STEADY line of cars,
mainly yellow taxis and white limousines, crawled eastward through the night
past the floodlit entrances to two of
Manhattan's best-known nightspots, the strip club
Scores and the nightclub Crobar. Each time a car stopped for more than a few
seconds, a driver impatiently honked his horn. It was 2:30 a.m. on a
Saturday in West Chelsea, and the party was
in full swing.
This is the heart of New York club land, a hodgepodge of former
warehouses and factories that by day is busy with gallery hoppers and by
night becomes an adult playground. In five years, nightlife capacity has
increased to 10,000 people from 1,000, and the area bounded by 10th and 11th
Avenues and 24th and 29th Streets is home to a score of clubs and bars.
The nightlife, while
helping reinvigorate an area once troubled by prostitution and crime, has
brought its own problem: noise. Not from the well-soundproofed clubs, but
from the irritable drivers and boisterous revelers, a noise that seems to
peak around midnight and again between 2 and 4 a.m., according to Michelle
Solomon, acting district manager of Community Board 4.
Starting two years ago,
Crobar on West 28th Street, the area's largest
nightclub, with a capacity of 3,000, has tried to make friends in the
community by opening its doors and bar to neighbors once a month. But its
definition of "neighbor" is broad.
Last Friday Crobar, a
former metal factory, was doing a brisk trade at the unusually early hour of
11 p.m., with free entry and a "sponsored" — a k a open — bar between 10
p.m. and midnight for anyone who had replied to a "Get to Know Your
Neighbor" party invitation. Although the front bar was crowded with people
trying to make themselves heard above the music, West
Chelsea neighbors proved elusive.
Max Erickson, a record
label owner who lives on the Upper West Side, said he had been invited by Baird Jones,
a gossip writer who used to organize parties at Studio 54. Mr. Jones, he
said, was having a party to celebrate the 73rd birthday of
Andy Warhol,
although, as it later turned out, Mr. Warhol's 73rd birthday was actually in
August 2001.
"Really, it's my 73rd
birthday party," said Ivy Nicholson, who was wearing a silver crucifix and a
Gothic-looking black top.
"I was born on February
22, 1933," added Ms. Nicholson, who was featured in Mr. Warhol's 1967 movie
"I, a Man," "and this is the fourth birthday party my friends have thrown
for me."
Also present was Robert
Capria, a video editor. Mr. Capria, 35, who lives in Bushwick,
Brooklyn, said he had come for the Warhol party to meet
well-connected filmmakers but had been disappointed to find the bar filled
mainly with what he called "the bridge and tunnel crowd."
There appeared to be no
sign of the 800 or so people who live in residential pockets in the
neighborhood, or of occupants of the 1,100 public housing apartments nearby.
Some residents of surrounding neighborhoods showed up, but they turned out
to be friends of club managers. The only other neighbors were the invited
employees of nearby businesses such as Chanel, whose
SoHo store manager, Irma Segal-Gebski, could be found dancing in
the V.I.P. room.
Explaining the paucity
of local folk, Tim Bauman, Crobar's strategic marketing director, said the
club viewed its community as wide: "We include neighborhoods like the
East
Village, the
West
Village, SoHo and Chelsea. We invite the retail stores and the
art gallery owners. It's not residential here; it's commercial mixed-use
properties."
By 1 a.m., a sea of
more than 1,000 people bobbed and bounced as the music rushed over them. A
few hours later, with the club still in full swing, people started making
their way outside onto West 28th Street.
On this particular
Friday the postparty jam was minor, the turnout perhaps lower than usual
because it was St Patrick's Day. But as cars headed east past the Chelsea
and Elliott Houses, the public housing developments that are home to 1,100
families, impatient drivers continued to honk. "Yes, they honk their horn,"
one cabbie said. "But it's O.K. Nobody lives around here."
The New York
Post, PageSix
THE MAN IN EVERY PICTURE
December 26, 2002--A NEW book on
Mark Kostabi
makes the controversial artist look like Zelig, the Woody Allen movie hero who
popped up in every bit of newsreel footage. "Mark Kostabi and the East Village
Scene 1983-1987" (Matteo Editore) by Webster Hall curator
Baird Jones
includes dozens of photos showing Kostabi with top celebrities of the day. Many
of them, however, didn't seem to know who was posing with them. In one shot,
Steve Martin and Paul Simon are seen at a party while Kostabi sneaks into the
picture just behind them. At another fete,
Dick Cavett
looks caught off guard by a grinning Kostabi, who strode up next to him as the
shutter clicked. Kostabi - who became simultaneously rich and hated when he
began having assistants paint all of his work - is also seen mugging for shots
in the vicinity of
Lou Reed, Si Newhouse, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Peter Max, Joan Rivers, John Cage,
Grandpa Al Lewis, Tama Janowitz, Robin Leach, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring,
Huntington Hartford, Sylvia Miles and Fran Lebowitz.
Jones, himself
a fixture in those circles, took all the photos.
The New York
Post, PageSix
SIGHTINGS
May 22, 2005
-- BAIRD Jones,
the freelance gossip often identified as the curator at Webster Hall, being
ordered to take off his Yankee cap at One in the Meatpacking District as
retired slugger Mo Vaughn
consoled Met outfielder Cliff Floyd after an 0-for-4 game ...
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