This is heart-breaking. I’m all for art, but this sculpture by artist Andrew Vickers was made by destroying $20,000 worth of comics. Here’s the official description of the piece from the Heroes: Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary exhibition at the s1 Artspace in Sheffield.
Stoneface Sculpture – Andrew Vickers will display a piece of his latest work, ‘The Paper Boy’, inspired by the artist’s fascination with the mystical and made from a rare collection of recycled comic books. His work embarks on a change from his usual media of natural stone, using metals and reclaimed stuffs, but revisits the familiar female form in the unveiling of a new sculpture ‘Earth’, and a reworking of ‘Naked’, a stone sculpture war memorial re-displayed on canvas in digital print form, alongside a number of more recognisable superhero facades, timelessly captured in stone.
What the artist didn’t know was that the collection of comics, which he found in a dumpster, included some very rare and collectible gems. He only found out when comic fan Steve Eyre saw the sculpture and recognized the value of some of the titles.
“First of all I thought ‘Fantastic’ as, visually, it is a beautiful thing, but then as I walked round it, certainly on the inside right leg, there was a cover of Avengers number one. I’ve got a copy of that, which was published in 1963, that is worth well over £10,000. Then I started looking and there are six comics on this that together would be worth, even in the condition you can see, £20,000.
Hear that? It’s the sound of collectors everywhere screaming, “No!” at the thought of those issues being glued to a bunch of chicken wire.
See more pictures after the break…
(BBC via Bleeding Cool)