Collecting culture.......

Current mood: Original.....
Category: Original..... Art and Photography

You can call me a BASTARD COMMODITY LOVING MOTHAFUCKA!!! if you like, but I'm a sucker for cultural artifacts....

It's a vanity thing, an investment thing, and an aid to my own creations...

Yes boss, I'm of the definite belief that seeing, hearing and reading original issues, paintings and contexts, adds something to ones experience and understanding of them. It perhaps only counts for 5 or 10% extra than the 11th printing - but such percentages count...


For example:

Hearing the original Beatles records in mono on scratched to fuck vinyl helped me to understand The Beatles completely - until then I'd had the blue and red double hits LPs but I didn't quite get the fuss...

But one spin around a well worn Rubber Soul, and I soon understood why they have the rep they do...


So, yesterday I went to the Amuti Gallery in Woburn Walk, to see an exhibition of their Top 10 pop cultural artifacts...


The Amuti Gallery is a rare and quality place.

Yes boss, it's the only privately run dealership that sells rare cultural artifacts worth tens of thousands of pounds that doesn't make me feel nervous, out of place and paranoid the minute I walk through the door..

In fact within minutes of turning up there, the boss Laurence asked me to mind the front of shop, whilst he went for a piss...?!?

Now, though I've been there once or twice before as a punter, I've never spoken to this bloke before in my life, and there I am being entrusted to hold guard over the collection..?!?!


Well, I resisted the obvious temptation to barricade Laurence into the lav, call a cab and make off with the lot, and instead set about studying the work on display in great and quiet detail...


Amongst other things there was the following:

One of the last ever silkscreens by Warhol (The Mac Logo) £20,000
Campbells Soup prints by Warhol
A handbag belonging to and signature of Marilyn Monroe
The 4 editions of Playboy in which Monroe appearred, including the very first ever issue of the magazine...

A Banksy print.
3 fully signed original US issue Beattles LPs framed (£8000 a pop)
2 fully signed original issue Rolling Stones LPs framed


Downstairs were the books...

Yes boss, things got really interesting down there...

The piece de resistance was a First English Hardback edition of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse - it's the only known copy with the original dust jacket...

£1500 if you're feeling rich...


Well, I was rather enthralled with it all, AND with the free beer, and I hung around all night in the manner of someone who turns up at your party and stays until the end, even though you don't quite know who they are and aren't at all sure why they're there...


Here follows some of the things I learnt:

Drinking free beer is all very well, but loosing count of your bottle total isn't...
Being rich has advantages...
Playboy might be little more than a plastic wank fest now, but back in the day it played host to some of the best writers of the times...
And no matter how good you are at collecting, you're always gonna end up selling some stuff far too cheap...


So, there's another private view there tomorrow night if you fancy it...

Take money!!!

And if you see me there, doing another performance of 'SILENT PAUL' and guzzling all the beer, punch me and see if I scream....

Currently listening : Born Under a Bad Neon Sign By The Flaming Stars Release date: 2006-10-09