Actors aren't the only stars helping presidents get elected. Artists are doing their bit, too. In a Talk of the Town piece in this week's New Yorker, Calvin Tomkins reports that Chuck Close â€" who made a tapestry based on a larger-than-life size portrait of the president that was on view at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., throughout the Democratic National Convention - is making other artworks to raise money for the Obama campaign.
He is planning to sell 10 tapestries based on different images of Mr. Obama that will cost $100,000 apiece; ten large prints at $50,000 apiece; 40 medium-sized ones at $25,000 each and 200 small ones at $5,000 each. The artworks will be sold at an invitation-only event at the Lever House in New York on Oct. 3. (The small prints will also be offered online.) The proceeds, which could well reach $3 million, will go to the Obama Victory Fund.
This isn't the first time Mr. Close has put his talents behind an election. “I photographed Hilary Clinton for her senate run, and the portrait I did from that sold for a lot of money,'' he told The New Yorker. “We also organized an art auction for Gore, and I made a tapestry of him as well. I offered to do this for Obama, during his first election campaign, but there was no response.''
Shortly after Mr. Obama got elected, however, Mr. Close joined the president's Committee on the Arts and Humanities and talked up the money he had made for Gore so much that the Obama camp finally asked Mr. Close to come to Washington and photograph the president, which he did in a hotel room at the Jefferson Hotel. Although he was told he only had 8 minutes, Mr. Close said he photographed Mr. Obama for more than an hour and that he didn't seem in a hurry to go anywhere important. “People kept telling him he had to leave,'' Mr. Close recalled. “And finally he said that there was a picnic for Congress in the White House backyard.''
No comments:
Post a Comment