Affordable art that's worth buying. Get industry professionals' tips on what’s coming up at auction. PLUS news, events, books, exhibitions and everything arts & culture.
🧡 Friday F.U.N email
The Friday F.U.N Email
(Factoid, Under 2k, Nugget)
Factoid:
pulped fiction
It started in an Oxfam in Swansea. When a public plea for people to stop donating copies of the Da Vinci Code went viral. It also caught the eye of Turner Prize-winning artist David Shrigley.
"I read the story in the Telegraph and that sparked my imagination in the sense that I was like I want those. I don't know why, but I want them" says Shrigley. "So, I set about acquiring as many Da Vinci Codes as I could."
Since 2017 he managed to gather an astonishing 6,000 copies of Dan Brown's best seller. Then pulped and transformed into a limited edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Tomorrow 1,250 copies of the edition will go on sale in the same Oxfam in Swansea. Each is unique, costs £495 and comes complete with a signed and numbered print.
As for Oxfam, they have almost reached the stage of having to halt donations of another book: Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club.
Shrigley promises outright that he will not be collecting those.
Under 2k:
SIR JACOB EPSTEIN
Fleurs du Mal: Nude in foliage
£2,000 - 3,000
In 1936 Epstein was commissioned to illustrate Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. He was asked for 6 drawings but was so absorbed with the brief he made over 60. He considered the group of drawings some of his best-ever works. Some have made over £20k at auction in the past. Have a pop at this one for cheap.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
£650
Can't make it to Swansea by tomorrow? This is a first edition of the 'facsimile manuscript'. It presents all the preliminary drafts and notes Orwell made before he made the final. Plus a handsome binding by the Grey Parrot bindery.
Nuggets:
🏆 Victory: A man in his 80s has won a years-long battle against the French Ministry of Culture for his right to sell a drawing by Da Vinci.
😎 Perks: Become an RA house member here.
🧅 Impulse purchase: Handmade Japanese onion skin paper. Sure.
🤔 Quiz time: Can you get 10 in a row to win?
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Affordable art that's worth buying. Get industry professionals' tips on what’s coming up at auction. PLUS news, events, books, exhibitions and everything arts & culture.
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