It was tucked away in storage for nearly 40 years.
Can you imagine being so rich that you didn't realise you owned a priceless painting by one of the most renowned pop-artists in the world? Well, that's exactly what happened to shock rocker Alice Cooper when he decided to open up an old storage locker of his recently.
Alice Cooper at the Silver Clef Awards
It was actually his manager Shep Gordon and his mother who reminded him that he was in possession of a silkscreen print of Andy Warhol's Little Electric Chair from his Death and Disaster series. He had obtained it when the pair became friends back in the early 70s.
'It was back in 72 and Alice had moved to New York with his girlfriend Cindy Lang', Alice's manager Shep Gordon told the Guardian. 'Andy was kind of a groupie, and so was Alice. They loved famous people. So they started a relationship, and they loved to hang out.'
Apparently, Alice Cooper didn't recall such a meeting whereby he purchased the print, given that he was a rockstar floating along in a haze of drink and drugs and even ended up going into an 'insane asylum'. Though he did vaguely remember a conversation with Andy Warhol, he couldn't be sure it was real.
Then, four years ago, Shep and Alice decided to look for it and found it rolled up in a tube in a storage locker also containing touring props including an electric chair which he used as part of his theatrical performance.
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The canvas, which measures 22 by 28 inches, was taken to a Warhol expert named Richard Polsky to be confirmed as genuine. 'It looks right, and the story just makes too much sense', he admitted. 'It's hard to appreciate how little Warhol's art was worth at the time. Twenty-five hundred was the going rate at the time. Why would Andy give him a fake? He had plenty of electric chairs. They were not an easy sell. They weren't decorative in the conventional sense. It's a brutal image.'
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