Category Archives: Art

Auction news roundup

It's been an incredibly busy week in the auction world, with collectibles from the music industry fetching huge prices, works of art getting snapped up by zealous bidders and an iconic piece of movie memorabilia for sale.

American music legends
Items from two of the most celebrated musicians in American history were recently auctioned off, and each piece went for prices that would probably make even the most diehard rock 'n' roll fan's jaw drop.

On Friday, Dec. 6, one of the most famous guitars in music history was sold at auction for nearly $1 million. The sunburst Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan plugged in at the Newport Music Festival in 1965, thus leaving behind his purely acoustic folk legacy, was sold for $965,000, a new record for a single guitar.

Apparently, "Born to Run" was also born to sell for a lot of money. A working lyric sheet of the title track to the 1975 album, which was handwritten by The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, himself, was sold at auction on Thursday, Dec. 5, for $197,000.

Art auctions
Aside from baseball and apple pie, there may be nothing that screams "America" more than a Norman Rockwell painting. That archetypal nature was reinforced on Wednesday, Dec. 4, when his 1951 painting, "Saying Grace," which appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post's Thanksgiving issue, was sold at auction for a staggering $46 million. That number was nearly double the pre-sale estimate, and almost $20 million more than the previous record for an American artwork.

In modern art auction news, "Flower Girl," a mural that was drawn on the side of a Los Angeles gas station by the street art sensation Banksy, was also sold recently. That work went for a more pedestrian figure of $209,000, which was still a tidy sum for the station's owner, who had to have the wall removed before it could be sold.

Movie memorabilia auction
There are few movie wardrobes that are more iconic than the yellow jumpsuit martial arts legend Bruce Lee wore in his classic 1972 film, "Game of Death." And now, the article of clothing he donned when he battled the 7-foot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the climactic sequence has been sold at a Hong Kong auction on Thursday, Dec. 5, for a shade over $100,000.

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