Andy Warhol
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Funny Money: When Mangled Coins and Defaced Currency Become Works of Art
By Ben Marks — Harley J. Spiller is one of the most voracious collectors in the United States, but you won’t find him wandering around the tony galleries of Christie’s in New York or tromping through the antiques-strewn fields of Brimfield, Massachusetts. That’s because Spiller collects things like seashells, bottle caps, Chinese menus, paperclips, photographs of corn, and "furcula," which most of us know as wishbones. Spiller has around 80 collections of such modest objects, which are usually easier to...
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Why I Love Andy Warhol
By Ben Marks — The other day a friend confided that he never got, and still doesn't get, Andy Warhol. “What’s the deal?” he asked. In the spring of 2009, I wrote a glowing review of the pop artist’s show in San Jose for kqed.org, so I guess he thought I might be able to shed some light on this weighty subject. Let’s find out. We were talking about Warhol because a 1984 Warhol painting/silkscreen of Michael Jackson had just sold for more than a million bucks. That’s a lot of money for a piece that,...