Drunk purchases tend to result in returning the item(s) the very next day or taking responsibility for the increase in credit debt. We are most likely all guilty to have purchased a new laptop, TV, clothing or more, under the influence of utter intoxication. Let’s face it, there’s probably a few items lying around your home right now and having no recollection on when, where, or how it was purchased.
With that said, Alice Cooper recently discovered one of his long, lost, and forgotten drunken purchases tracing over forty years ago. The shock rocker found an Andy Warhol masterpiece that could be worth well over ten million dollars. The forgotten Warhol purchase was a silkscreen of an electric chair, an image based on the 1953 death chamber at Sing Sing prison, where Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed that year for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Russians. It was part of Warhol’s Death and Disaster series and somehow discovered “rolled up in a tube,” in a storage locker. The never-before displayed piece was found by Cooper’s mother, four years ago.
According to the guardian, Shep Gordon, Cooper’s longtime manager recalled:
“It was back in 72 and Alice had moved to New York with his girlfriend Cindy Lang. Andy was kind of a groupie, and so was Alice. They loved famous people. So they started a relationship, and they loved to hang out.”
“As I recall, Cindy came to me for $2,500 for the painting. At the time Alice is making two albums a year and touring the rest of the time. It was a rock’n’roll time, none of us thought about anything. He ends up going into an insane asylum for his drinking and then leaves New York for LA.
Alice says he remembers having a conversation with Warhol about the picture. He thinks the conversation was real, but he couldn’t put his hand on a Bible and say that it was.”
Cooper learned the top price for a Little Electric Chair is $11.6 million, when a green version dated in 1964 was marked at this price back in 2015. Cooper didn’t want anything with that value in his house and returned it to storage.
Warhol expert, Richard Polsky expressed:
“I’m 100 percent, it looks right, and the story just makes too much sense. It’s hard to appreciate how little Warhol’s art was worth at the time. Twenty-five hundred was the going rate at the time. Why would Andy give him a fake?”
Gordon added:
“At the time no one thought it had any real value. Andy Warhol was not ‘Andy Warhol’ back then. And it was all a swirl of drugs and drinking. But you should have seen Alice’s face when Richard Polsky’s estimate came in. His jaw dropped and he looked at me. ‘Are you serious? I own that!’”
It is safe to say, not all drunk purchases are considered a bad investment. Therefore, you never know what hidden gem(s) you could find in your own storage location.
[via Daily Beast]
