By Willard Spiegelman
Houston  - Updated August 28, 2012, 6:59 p.m. ET

In 1819 John Keats called his imaginary Grecian urn a “foster-child of silence and slow time” and a “sylvan historian.” He put himself in a line going back to the ancients, who thought of pictures and statues as silent poems that speak volumes.

 

‘Lavender Disaster’ (1963) by Andy Warhol - Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS

 

Silence is now as precious and rare as slowness, or solitude, clean air and a star-filled night sky. As someone who never goes anywhere without ear plugs, and who would rather stay hungry than be forced into a noisy restaurant, I was keen to visit “Silence” at the Menil Collection here. In a variety of tones, voices and media, it reminds us of what we often want but can never have.

You won’t experience silence here. That would be impossible, even in the cool, chaste chambers of Renzo Piano’s exquisite building. This exhibit is really a riff on the composer John Cage’s remark that “there’s no such thing as silence.” The show has 52 pieces. Some are metaphysical or abstract paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko, all favorites of John and Dominique de Menil, who had amassed a fabulous if quirky collection before the museum opened in 1987.

Hanging on the walls, too, are such two-dimensional works as Yves Klein’s vibrant, glistening, gold-leaf “Untitled (Monogold).” Sculpture, small objects, neon-tubing and other three-dimensional works complement the pictures. The show features audio and video installations, as well as a living performance piece by Tino Sehgal in which a dancer rolls slowly along the floor of an interior room for 2½ hours, followed by another dancer who does the same thing. It certainly is silent; whether it is gripping, rather than boring, depends on a viewer’s patience.

A typical museum show often moves chronologically; in a thematic show, organizers make other arrangements. “Silence” may seem random, but it has a partially recognizable plan. After entering a vestibule containing a selection of representative works, you go on to four inner rooms. The first, the most conventional and tightly arranged, is in many ways the most moving. Four Andy Warhol pieces—silkscreen ink and acrylic on linen from the mid-1960s—represent the ultimate silence, death: in this case, death by electrocution. Warhol’s depictions of the electric chair at Sing Sing are beautiful, almost abstract in their swirls of color, a kind of phantom homage to Jackson Pollock. The smallest one, “Little Electric Chair,” is so black that you might mistake it for a cousin to Ad Reinhardt’s all-black “Abstract Painting” in another room, until you come close and see the chiseled outline of the electric chair staring right back at you.

Interspersed among the Warhols are seven silkscreens by Christian Marclay, each focusing on the single word “Silence” above the electric chair in the death chamber. “Silence” surrounds you, at least visually, on all sides.

The other rooms contain miscellaneous pieces. Some “talk” to one another; others seem more randomly placed. Dominique de Menil, a woman of austere and religious character, famously said that “only silence and love do justice to a great work of art,” but one is seldom alone in a museum, where quiet contemplation is hard to achieve. Interrupting a private experience of the art are not only the voices and footsteps of other viewers but also the sounds from the audio installations, including—most boomingly—Kurt Mueller’s “Cenotaph” (2011), an old jukebox into which you put a quarter and then get to hear one of 99 moments of silence, all of which are preceded by very noisy introductions. No silence comes without sound.

Two of the most compelling pieces are video installations, each within its own darkened chamber. Jacob Kirkegaard’s 2006 “AION” (Greek for eternity or infinity) was shot on location in ruined spaces at Chernobyl, site of the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion. Shapes and colors move, come in and out of focus; an interior landscape is bathed in light, then dark shadows, then overwhelmed with whiteness. Static architecture changes as though it were Tai Chi, Keats’s “slow time” reimagined.

If you move counterclockwise through the show, the last thing you will see is the most resonant—a return to Cage, silence’s major spokesman. Sixty years ago, on Aug. 29, 1952, David Tudor sat down at a piano and performed for the first time Cage’s now celebrated (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) “4’33”“: a work in three movements and total silence other than the extraneous sounds within the hall. Cage himself said it could be “played” by any soloist or group of musicians.

Manon de Boer’s film “Two Times 4’ 33”” stars Jean-Luc Fafchamps. We see him at his piano—stern, unblinking, virtually motionless—and we hear him set and release the chess timer that marks the three movements. A plate glass window behind him gives on to wintry snow, ice and wind, whose sounds we also hear. He finishes, he stands up. An unseen audience applauds. The screen goes black.

The film resumes. It’s impossible to know if he’s playing the piece again or whether we are just seeing the first performance from a different angle. This time, we hear only the timer’s clicks but now we watch the rapt audience of earnest, attentive young people. And we see another view to the outside: a northern European city (it’s Brussels, Dec. 2, 2007), part industrial, part architectural, part natural.

To reach Mr. de Boer’s installation, you walk through two heavy doors with sound-deadening panels, and two sets of heavy black draperies. You sit on a bench, with a single light above you. The chamber is dark. You are bathed in silence, except for the sounds of the jukebox outside, which penetrate into this inner sanctum whenever someone puts a quarter in the old nickelodeon.

Cage would have smiled, audibly.

Mr. Spiegelman writes about the arts for the Journal. His essay “Some Words on Silence” appeared in the April issue of The Yale Review.

 

What is the fair market value of an object that cannot be sold?

The question may sound like a Zen koan, but it is one that lawyers for the heirs of the New York art dealer Ileana Sonnabend and the Internal Revenue Service are set to debate when they meet in Washington next month.

The object under discussion is “Canyon,” a masterwork of 20th-century art created by Robert Rauschenberg that Mrs. Sonnabend’s children inherited when she died in 2007.

Because the work, a sculptural combine, includes a stuffed bald eagle, a bird under federal protection, the heirs would be committing a felony if they ever tried to sell it. So their appraisers have valued the work at zero.

 But the Internal Revenue Service takes a different view. It has appraised “Canyon” at $65 million and is demanding that the owners pay $29.2 million in taxes.

“It’s hard for me to see how this could be valued this way because it’s illegal to sell it,” said Patti S. Spencer, a lawyer who specializes in trusts and estates but has no role in the case.

The family is now challenging the judgment in tax court and its lawyers are negotiating with the I.R.S. in the hope of finding a resolution.

Heirs to important art collections are often subject to large tax bills. In this case, the beneficiaries, Nina Sundell and Antonio Homem, have paid $471 million in federal and state estate taxes related to Mrs. Sonnabend’s roughly $1 billion art collection, which included works by Modern masters from Jasper Johns to Andy Warhol. The children have already sold off a large part of it, approximately $600 million worth, to pay the taxes they owed, according to their lawyer, Ralph E. Lerner.

But they drew the line at “Canyon,” a landmark of postwar Modernism made in 1959 that three appraisers they hired, including the auction house Christie’s, had valued at zero. Should they lose their fight, the heirs, who were unavailable for comment, will owe the taxes plus $11.7 million in penalties.

Inheritances are generally taxed at graduated rates depending on their value. In this case, the $29.2 million assessment for “Canyon” was based on a special penalty rate because the I.R.S. contends the heirs inaccurately stated its value.

While art lovers may appreciate the I.R.S.’s aesthetic sensibilities, some estate planners, tax lawyers and collectors are alarmed at the agency’s position, arguing that the case could upend the standard practice of valuing assets according to their sale in a normal market. I.R.S. guidelines say that in figuring an item’s fair market value, taxpayers should “include any restrictions, understandings, or covenants limiting the use or disposition of the property.”

In this instance, the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act make it a crime to possess, sell, purchase, barter, transport, import or export any bald eagle — alive or dead. Indeed, the only reason Mrs. Sonnabend was able to hold onto “Canyon,” Mr. Lerner said, was due to an informal nod from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1981.

Even then, the government revisited the issue in 1998. Rauschenberg himself had to send a notarized statement attesting that the eagle had been killed and stuffed by one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders long before the 1940 law went into effect. Mrs. Sonnabend was then able to retain ownership as long as the work continued to be exhibited at a public museum. The piece is on a long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which Mr. Lerner said insures it, but the policy details are confidential.

Mr. Lerner said that the I.R.S.’s handling of the work has been confusing. Last fall, the agency sent the family an unsigned draft report that it was valuing “Canyon” at $15 million. After Mr. Lerner replied that the children were refusing to pay, the I.R.S. then sent a formal Notice of Deficiency in October saying it had increased the valuation to $65 million.

That figure came from the agency’s Art Advisory Panel, which is made up of experts and dealers and meets a few times a year to advise the I.R.S.’s Art Appraisal Services unit. One of its members is Stephanie Barron, the senior curator of 20th-century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where “Canyon” was exhibited for two years. She said that the group evaluated “Canyon” solely on its artistic value, without reference to any accompanying restrictions or laws.

“The ruling about the eagle is not something the Art Advisory Panel considered,” Ms. Barron said, adding that the work’s value is defined by its artistic worth. “It’s a stunning work of art and we all just cringed at the idea of saying that this had zero value. It just didn’t make any sense.”

Rauschenberg’s combines, which inventively slapped together everyday objects he found on the street, helped propel American art in a new direction.

Though the I.R.S. usually accepts the advisory panel’s recommendations, it is not required to; last year it did not follow the group’s opinion in 7 percent of the cases, according to panel’s annual 2011 report.

So how did the panel arrive at the $65 million figure? Ms. Barron said, “When you come up with a valuation you look at comparable works and what they have sold for at public or private sales.”

The I.R.S. declined to comment.

Mr. Lerner told Forbes magazine, which reported the dispute in February, that Joseph Bothwell, a former director of the agency’s Art Appraisal Services unit, had told him “there could be a market for the work, for example, a recluse billionaire in China might want to buy it and hide it.” Mr. Bothwell has since retired from the I.R.S. Ms. Barron said she did not consider any hypothetical black-market buyer.

Still, the notion that the I.R.S. might use the black market in this way to determine a fair market value has surprised some tax experts. James Joseph, a tax lawyer with Arnold & Porter in Washington, noted that the I.R.S. has taxed illegal contraband at its market value, but added: “I don’t know of any instance where the I.R.S. has assumed taxpayers will engage in an illegal activity in order to value their assets at a higher amount. Al Capone went to jail for not paying income taxes on his illegal income, but this is very different than that.”

At the moment, tax experts note that the I.R.S.’s stance puts the heirs in a bind: If they don’t pay, they would be guilty of violating federal tax laws, but if they try to sell “Canyon” to zero-out their bill, they could go to jail for violating eagle protection laws.

Mr. Lerner said that since the children assert the Rauschenberg has no dollar value for estate purposes, they could not claim a charitable deduction by donating “Canyon” to a museum. If the I.R.S. were to prevail in its $65 million valuation, he said the heirs would still have to pay the $40.9 million in taxes and penalties regardless of a donation.

Then, given their income and the limits on deductions, he said, they would be able to deduct only a small part of the work’s value each year. Mr. Lerner estimated that it would take about 75 years for them to absorb the deduction.

“So my clients would have to live to 140 or so,” he said.

 

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: April 26, 2012

ODDS are 3-to-1 that when Edvard Munch’s “Scream” comes up for sale at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, it will fetch $150 million to $200 million. And there’s a 3-to-2 chance that pastel will become the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, breaking the current record of $106.5 million set two years ago at Christie’s for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust.” As for who will buy “The Scream,” bets are 5-to-2 that it will be a Russian, 3-to-1 an Asian or European and 4-to-1 an American. That’s the thinking, anyway, from Ladbrokes, the British bookmaking chain, which has been analyzing the fate of what Sotheby’s is billing as the most recognizable image in art history after the “Mona Lisa.”

Art isn’t generally Ladbrokes’s métier, but laying odds on just how much this work will get has even captured the attention of gamblers used to putting their money on horse races or boxing. Jessica Bridge, a spokeswoman for the company, said that the bookmakers “apply the same math and algorithms we do for football or hockey.”

While it is certain to be the big draw, “The Scream” is not the only highly recognizable work up for sale at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury over the next two weeks. Other highlights include a classic red abstract Rothko canvas; a Warhol image of Elvis Presley; a Picasso portrait of Dora Maar, the artist who was his lover and muse; and a watercolor of one of Cézanne’s famed Card Players.

What’s bringing these paintings, drawings and sculptures to auction now? One reason is sheer serendipity, as several estates from seasoned collectors have come up for grabs this spring. The second is more opportunistic. Owners are hoping to cash in on the penchant of new, extraordinarily wealthy collectors from Russia, Asia and the Middle East for paying record prices for whatever strikes their fancy. “There are two markets, the regular market for the average collector and the super-market for global icons” that is fueled by the new rich, said Tobias Meyer, who runs Sotheby’s contemporary art department worldwide. “This last group is smart and gravitates toward the very top.”

Brett Gorvy, Mr. Meyer’s counterpart at Christie’s, says these buyers’ “tastes are conservative but they want quality, technical virtuosity, beauty and color.”

Estimates are high for some of the best works this season, although Sotheby’s figure of $80 million for “The Scream” is conservative by Ladbrokes’s standards. After that are several paintings estimated to fall in the $30 million to $50 million range: a Roy Lichtenstein comic book image and a 1976 painting by Francis Bacon, as well as the red Rothko and the Warhol “Elvis.”

Back on the block are also several works, including “Circles and Angles,” a stainless-steel sculpture by David Smith that failed to sell at Christie’s when the market collapsed during the financial crisis of 2008. Now they have considerably lower estimates. If there are any striking differences between the offerings this month, it is the selection of postwar and contemporary art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Christie’s won a group of works collected by David Pincus, a clothing manufacturer from Philadelphia who died in December, and his wife, Geraldine. Their collection includes a large number of Abstract Expressionist paintings. Sotheby’s sale, on the other hand, features more classic Pop art.

Some art historians, who declined to be named for fear of offending Sotheby’s, laughed at the astronomical price predictions for “The Scream,” even the seemingly lowball house estimate, calling the work too ugly to live with, depressing or mere kitsch. Whoever buys it will have a hefty insurance bill, not to mention round-the-clock security, to worry about. But were any new museum to add “The Scream” to its collection, that institution would become an immediate destination.

The image of “The Scream” is so embedded in popular culture that it adorns products like mugs, mouse pads and inflatable dolls, even navel rings. Munch produced four versions of the composition. Three are in Norwegian museums and this one — a pastel on board from 1895 — is the only “Scream” left in private hands. It is being sold by Petter Olsen, a Norwegian businessman whose father, Thomas, was a friend and patron of the artist.

The painting’s fame is almost as much a liability for Sotheby’s as it is an asset. Versions of it have been stolen twice, first in 1994, when two thieves entered the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo and fled with an 1893 “Scream,” and then in 2004, when gunmen stole the 1910 version from the Munch Museum, also in Oslo. (In both cases the paintings were recovered.) This month Londoners had to go through metal detectors before entering the Sotheby’s gallery where it was on view. The crowds were so great that auction house officials have decided not to open the presale viewing in New York to the public, as they usually do. Instead, only Sotheby’s clients will have a chance to see the painting.

Among those who saw “The Scream” in London the betting game has already begun. As for the rest of the art for sale, just where today’s big money goes will be as much of a gamble as the fate of “The Scream.” It is the unknown, after all, that has always been the allure of auctions.

“The mystery is in the moment,” Mr. Meyer said. “Either people are in the mood to bid, or they’re not.”

via nytimes.com

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via Sotheby’s

Artist Andy Warhol
Title 'Double Elvis'
Auction House Sotheby's
Estimate $30 million to $50 million

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The Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsen Group, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via Sotheby’s

Artist Edvard Munch
Title 'The Scream'
Auction House Sotheby's
Estimate $80 million More Photos »

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Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via Christie's

Artist Mark Rothko
Title 'Orange, Red, Yellow'
Auction House Christie's
Estimate $35 million to $45 millionMore Photos »

By Adam Lindemann

April 25, 2012

Alex Israel is a youngish L.A. artist whose pastel-color panel paintings look like the sets of ’80s porn flicks; they’ve been selling like hotcakes at chic galleries in Paris and Berlin. I tried to see his recent one-man show at the übercool and cutting-edge Lower East Side gallery Reena Spaulings Fine Art, but the gallery is so übercool and cutting edge that, on the Friday afternoon I chose for my visit, it wasn’t even open. In fact, the two times I have ventured to this gallery in an attempt to see an exhibition, during regular gallery hours, they have managed to have the doors locked and the lights turned off. I’d given up on writing about Mr. Israel’s work, when I realized that I could simply review his new TV show, As It LAys, the one he’s recently uploaded to You Tube and for which he created a website: www.asitlays.com. This interview show, with Mr. Israel as host, reminds me of Andy Warhol’s famous “Screen Tests”: both projects are, in superficially different but actually very similar ways, forms of video portraiture.

 

The so-called “Screen Tests” that Warhol made in the early ’60s weren’t really screen tests at all. Warhol shoved his camera in his subject’s face and did a two-and-a-half-minute film. Whether it was a factory regular like Edie Sedgwick or Lou Reed, or some celebrity like Bob Dylan or Salvador Dalí, didn’t really matter, because in the end all the subjects were just meat to grind in Warhol’s lens, reminders that youth, beauty, sex, fame and fortune exist only in the moment.

 

Before As It LAys, Mr. Israel’s claim to fame was that he was once an assistant to the late L.A. artist Jason Rhoades and served as the doorman for Rhoades’s infamous “Black Pussy Soirée Cabaret Macramé” parties. Now Mr. Israel has succeeded in taking the Warhol screen test to a whole new level by doing interviews with celebrities and quasi-celebrities in which he reads a series of bizarre and awkward questions—to Rachel Zoe, “If you were to create the perfect salad, what would be the key ingredients?”—from a set of index cards he shuffles in his hands. His subjects are left trying to tell a personal story without help or support from their interlocutor. Mr. Israel’s portraits, which seem to both emerge from and comment on the current Facebook/Twitter sound bite zeitgeist, are painful in the way Warhol’s once were: they exist in an existential space devoid of human emotion or sympathy.

 

Unlike Warhol’s project, for the most part, Mr. Israel’s guests are older, passé. They are walking, talking pieces of L.A.’s cultural history. Taken together, they represent a sampling of L.A. personalities who were once at the center of the scene but now have one foot—or, in some cases, both feet—out the door.

 

A TV-style interview where the questions are read right off note cards in a harsh and empty environment is a strange thing to watch. But only a few of Mr. Israel’s victims realize they are being set up; most of them just writhe and sweat in their seats. I feel their pain. In the end I was left wondering: what is it like to have once been famous and important in L.A.? What comes after that?

 

His questions run the gamut from banal to bizarre. Adrienne Maloof, a reality-TV “housewife of Beverly Hills,” is asked, “Did you ever cheat on a test?” She answers without hesitation, “No, I helped others, the whole football team.” Yet she never seems to reflect on what she just revealed to us, namely her relations with the “whole football team.” Restaurateur Mr. Chow is asked, “In the battle between people and robots who wins?” His answer should have been “Get lost,” but instead he responds, “Nature is more precise than a machine, every leaf is unique, just like every thumbprint … a robot is a machine and therefore has limitations.” And it’s funny! It gets worse when 71-year-old singer-songwriter Paul Anka is asked, “Chocolate or vanilla?” and gives a three-minute monologue. Or when Jon Peters, the once-famous film producer and head of Sony pictures (and ex-Barbra Streisand hairdresser) gets caught in a trap when he’s asked, “Are you a good storyteller?” and answers, with candor, “When I was a kid I was more of a liar, but when I grew up I made those lies into a fantasy.”

 

Their moment in the spotlight may be over, but all of these guests are still dead set on proving their relevance, so much so that they are willing to talk at length to this unknown artist/interviewer. Most of them end up, tragically, revealing their hollow “screen test” side. L.A. is a city obsessed with youth and power; it must not be very pleasant to feel marginalized in a place where you were once the center of attention.

 

That said, it’s not all tragedy. At 95, Phyllis Diller gets credit, in my book, just for showing up. When asked, “Are you reading anything?” she supplies the riposte, “I cannot read. I am losing my eyesight.” Other interviewees didn’t have such an easy out, and that makes for moments that are strangely poignant. Asked, “What do you want the world to know about you?” the seven-time NBA All-Star James Worthy replies, uncomfortably, “Basketball is what I did for a living but it’s not who I am as a person.”

 

There are some deliciously awkward moments. Cheryl Tiegs, the ravishing beauty who in 1975 graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, doesn’t fare very well; she reveals that her favorite karaoke song is “At Last” by Etta James. Quincy Jones is asked, “What is your favorite color?” Doesn’t he remember the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when Sir Galahad is asked the very same question and answers: ”blue … uh, no … green” and gets tossed down a ravine for his “mistake”? Clearly he doesn’t, because he sheepishly answers, “Purple, um … and lime, black and uh … orange,” then gives the camera a pained smile. Perhaps the most cringe-worthy of the interviews is the one with JFK’s nephew Bobby Shriver, who is painfully politically correct. “Who would you most like to meet?” he is asked, and he implausibly replies, “I once opened the door to a room and there was Luciano Pavarotti … it was too much for me.” How absurd for this to come from the man who created the global RED charity with his friend the rock star Bono. Oh, Mr. Shriver. Are we now to believe you were never into rock and roll, that all along you had us fooled, and were actually an opera buff?

 

Three of Mr. Israel’s guests managed to turn the tables on their host—no mean feat. Producer Rick Rubin answers every questions with a single word: “Yes … sometimes … somewhat … no …” Even when asked the final “What do you want the world to know about you?” he refuses to humor Mr. Israel. “I can’t think of anything,” he deadpans. Novelist Bret Easton Ellis takes Mr. Israel to task. When asked, “What do you want the world to know about Bret Easton Ellis?” he replies, “Nothing. I don’t want them to know anything.” Androgynous rock star Marilyn Manson steals the show with a performance. The question ”Have you ever considered going vegan?” is answered, “I considered having sex with a vegan but then I wondered if she would say, ‘Oooh, what’s in your semen?’” When asked, “If you could change one thing about your physical appearance what would it be?” he answers, “Not having such a big dick … it’s troublesome sometimes.” Yes, Mr. Manson, this must be a serious problem for you indeed!

 

I interviewed Mr. Israel in L.A. last week and tested my theories on him. Weren’t the questions written to make a mockery of the interviewees? He denied that, claiming that he hadn’t even written them. “My intern wrote mild-mannered questions,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be a talk show with hot-button questions.” Hadn’t he deliberately selected individuals whose moment of relevance had passed, whose stars had faded? He took offense at that interpretation. “That’s such a cynical view,” he said. ”I selected people who made a major contribution to the L.A. landscape at a point in time … that’s our city’s cultural history and I chose to celebrate it.”

 

As part of the Facebook generation, Mr. Israel is perfectly comfortable giving a campy and nostalgic embrace to L.A.’s history, while feigning ignorance of the tragic implications of living in the past. Perhaps he is earnest; his project, complete with his intern’s “mild-mannered” questions, really isn’t, after all, a cynical satire of the talk-show format. Still, am I a throwback to another era because I was looking for deeper meaning, even where there is none?

 

Perhaps I’m equally unrealistic because in growing older I still hope to grow better, or wiser, or at least more comfortable with what, where and who I am. In As It LAys, success, fame and cultural relevance are not the recipe for happiness or even personal satisfaction. The project reveals several variations on the theme of self-deception; perhaps with age this is something we all fall prey to. In the words of the great 17th-century French thinker François de la Rochefoucauld, “One is never so easily fooled as when one thinks one is fooling others.”

 

While the majority of garage sale treasures include old family photos, broken VCR's and stained baby clothes, don't give up hope! If you keep scouring you may just find yourself a bona fide sketch by none other than Andy Warhol.

Andy Fields, a businessman from Tiverton, England bought five sketches for a mere $5 at a Las Vegas garage sale. One of them was a depiction of 1930s singer Rudy Vallee, who is famous for the hits "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" and "Lover Come Back To Me". According to the BBC, Fields purchased the sketches from a man who claimed they belonged to his aunt who used to watch over Warhol as a child. Fields didn't think much of it, being surrounded by implausible claims in Las Vegas, but later found Warhol's signature on the back when he reframed the picture.

The early sketch shows Warhol's style, pre-Pop Art, and could have been made when the precocious artist was only 10 or 11 years old. In the IBTIMES video above, Fields says, "I found out it did lead to about 1939 or possibly 1940, when Andy Warhol was in bed with cholera, that I realized to the full extent what we were sitting on." A valuer told Fields the work could fetch just over $2 million, but Fields says he does not want to sell just yet.

This story emerged only days after another lucky shopper found a Picasso print for $14 in a thrift store. So we recommend you keep filtering through all those old workout VHS tapes and fading paperbacks, because you may just find yourself a masterpiece.

Check out the full article with a slideshow of other famous finds below: