Living: Garage Sale of the Century

Let’s free-associate: Andy Warhol and what? Close your eyes. Do silver-and- rosewood tea sets come to mind? How about a Superman Touch-Tone phone or a frontal photo of a naked Yul Brynner? Allow your imagination to wander across Eskimo bone masks, prehistoric pottery and World War II medals. Try these: 18- karat-gold nail scissors and wooden merry-go-round horses.

Critics called it the garage sale of the century. Tongue-in-cheek comparisons were made with the opening of King Tut’s tomb. But the auction of more than 10,000 items owned by America’s most infamous artist, which ran throughout last week and had two more days to go this week, turned out to be a fitting tribute to the huckster of hype. “If he’s sitting up there watching, he’s probably having a ball,” said Diana Brooks, president of Sotheby’s North America, which conducted the sale in its Manhattan showrooms.

The ten-day extravaganza was one of the most extensive estate sales in history and one of the glitziest. Dealers — British, French, German and Italian, as well as American — swarmed to it. The event was studded with the celebrities to whom Warhol catered in his life and art, from the King and Queen of Sweden to Bianca Jagger and Dick Cavett. By week’s end more than 45,000 collectors and curiosity seekers had milled through Sotheby’s showrooms, 10,000 of them on a single day. For some, Warhol’s vast collection was a monument to the materialism that the artist enshrined in his Campbell Soup can and Brillo pad artworks. For others, it was a microcosm of one man’s obsessive greed. Either way, marveled Writer Fran Lebowitz, wandering around in the nearly two acres of memorabilia was “like being in a theme park.”

Until the artist’s death last year, after gallbladder surgery, the extent of his hoard had largely been a secret. As compulsive consumers go, he was inconspicuous. An old pal, Collector Suzie Frankfurt, once noticed a slight bulge under his shirt at a Studio 54 bash: it was a dazzling emerald necklace. Yet Warhol’s opulent town house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was so cluttered with the fruits of his shopping binges that only two or three rooms were habitable. Picassos were stuffed in closets. Jewels were squirreled away in the canopy of his antique four-poster bed. “He was chronically, almost neurotically, acquisitive,” writes Biographer David Bourdon in the auction catalog. “He was forever searching for that mythical five-dollar find that would turn out to be worth $1 million.”

Last week’s most frenzied bidding was for Warhol’s stash of 152 cookie jars, mass-produced pottery from the 1930s and ’40s in cutesy animal and cartoon motifs. At one point, two Manhattan businessmen faced off over two cookie jars and a pair of salt and pepper shakers in the form of a black chef and his wife. The final bid: $23,100 for a lot whose value Sotheby’s had estimated at $100 to $150. “Spiritually, they are just wonderful,” gushed Maria Olivia Judelson, wife of the victor. If so, then Cuban-born Businessman Gedalio Grinberg was truly exalted. He bought 136 of the cookie jars for a total of $198,605. “I wanted something from Andy,” he shrugged.

Time and again, Andy’s kitsch — “collectibles” was Sotheby’s more tactful label — fetched upscale prices. A Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog beach towel and other Muppet memorabilia went for $1,760. A Fred Flintstone quartz watch, still bearing its original Bloomingdale’s price tag of $20, and two other cheap cartoon watches sold for $2,640. “It’s not the article, it’s who it belonged to,” explained Steve Taenaka, a hair stylist who bid $1,000 for a Mickey Mouse watch and lost. He settled for the auction’s six-volume catalog, a relative bargain at $95.

Beyond the whimsy, serious prices were paid for Warhol’s elegant furniture and glistening jewels. During the art-deco sale, a dealer shelled out $418,000 for a pair of circa-1920 console tables designed by French Craftsman Pierre Legrain, a record for his work. Heart-shaped ruby-and-diamond earclips signed by Salvador Dali fetched $55,000. Sotheby’s termed Warhol’s collection of more than sixty 18th and 19th century chairs, tables, beds, mirrors, desks, sewing tables — and even a doorway — “the most important offering of American classical and Federal furniture to be sold at auction in many years.”

Bidding began on Friday for Warhol’s collection of more than 75 paintings and drawings, ranging from old masters through French impressionists to Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell (represented by a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy). A pair of 7 1/2-ft. portraits of Britain’s George III and his consort Queen Charlotte went for $40,700. Still higher prices were expected this week in the sale of Warhol’s modern and contemporary art acquisitions, although aside from several Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtensteins, Robert Rauschenbergs and the like, experts found this part of his collection far less impressive than might have been expected from the Prince of Pop.

Proceeds from the auction — after Sotheby’s 10% commission — will go to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, established in the artist’s will. And the foundation need hardly fear that Warholmania will fade after the final gavel. Also under way are major exhibits, movie retrospectives, books and the franchising of the Warhol name on a line of sportswear, watches, collector’s plates and home furnishings. The marketing of the mystique seems perfectly natural in the case of a man who once declared, “Good business is the best art.” Nonetheless, last week’s inflated auction prices were “queasy making,” as Cavett put it. “Some sort of sick joke was afoot. Maybe Andy was the only person who would have gotten it.”