In about an hour, the Doyle New York Auction House will kick off its Inaugural Street Art Auction featuring graffiti and street art spanning from the 1980′s to the present. The 49 lots feature pretty much everyone, from Banksy to COPE2 to Faile to FUTURA to Dalek to D*FACE to Shepard Fairey to Anthony Lister.
Phillips de Pury and other houses have made a consistent successful street art sales, bundled along with their more art-art offerings, often for “emerging” buyers — but this is the first all street art/graffiti auction of its kind in the US. Consider it gone full legit.
There are a couple of pieces in the catalogue that stand out. David Choe’s much boasted about “rare watercolor” ($5,000 – $7,000) is actually killer, although the psycho-psychedelic Mickey Mouse motif is a bit too derivative of Ralph Steadman, but great. The INVADER tile comes with an official label inscribed with “Location/N. La Brea/Melrose Av./Los Angeles” — couple of blocks away from Mr. Brainwash’s warehouse of WTF. Speaking of which, who’s going to buy “Mr. Brainwash’s debut exhibition” piece “as seen in Exit Through The Giftshop” (est. $16,000-20,000), please, really, who?