More about: Alice Cooper
The singer had forgotten about it in a 'swirl of drugs and drinking'
We’ve all done it, right? Maybe you’ve moved house or decided on a spring clean and that favourite old poster of yours gets rolled up and slipped into a tube and forgotten about? But would you forget about it if it were an original artwork by Andy Warhol? Apparently you would if you are Alice Cooper. Of course you would. Because you’re Alice Cooper.
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An original Andy Warhol red silkscreen from his Little Electric Chair series has been discovered after lying rolled up in a tube in a storage locker for over 40 years.
The artwork was a present to the shock rocker from then-girlfriend Cindy Lang who’d paid $2500 for it. Then, as you’d expect in the midst of a “swirl of drugs and drinking”, Alice Cooper simply forgot about the print. Now, let’s put that into sharp context: you’re that off your head that you don’t actually remember owning an original Warhol. And to think that these days rock stars head to the Priory because they had an extra glass of wine with their pudding.
The print was discovered by Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon.
He told The Guardian: “Alice’s mother remembered it going into storage. So we went and found it rolled up in a tube.”
The print was authenticated by Warhol Richard Polsky who dated the artwork back to 1964 or 1965.
“I’m 100%,” Polsky said. “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? He had plenty of electric chairs. They were not an easy sell. They weren’t decorative in the conventional sense. It’s a brutal image.”
According to Gordon, Cooper now plans to hang the picture up at home when he comes back from touring his new album, Paranormal.
“Truthfully, at the time no one thought it had any real value,” he said. “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!’”
More about: Alice Cooper
Photo: Press
