Alice Cooper’s Forgotten Andy Warhol Piece Is Now Worth Millions
Ah, the things we misplace. Our keys. Our phone. Our multi-million-dollar pieces of art.
Must be nice to be a rock star.
Alice Cooper used to drink a lot. Like, a lot. So much so that he completely forgot he owned a silkscreen made by Andy Warhol that is now worth millions of dollars.
Cooper received the piece, called "Little Electric Chair," as a gift from his former girlfriend, Cindy Laing, after the couple met Warhol in the 1970s at New York's notorious Studio 54. At the time, part of Cooper's bonkers stage shows featured him getting "electrocuted" in a similar-looking seat.
A similar version of the piece was auctioned in 2015 at Christie's for $11.6 million. When Cooper's manager, Shep Gordon, told him how much it might be worth, Cooper was shocked. "His jaw dropped," Gordon told The Guardian. "He looked at me, 'Are you serious? I own that!"
Soon after acquiring the piece, which Laing bought from Warhol for about $2,500, Cooper or his crew put it into storage alongside those '70s-era stage props. It remained there for decades, forgotten about and "rolled up in a tube." The singer is now considering hanging it up in his home, once he finishes his 2017 tour.
“Truthfully, at the time no one thought it had any real value,” Gordon said. “Andy Warhol was not ‘Andy Warhol’ back then. And it was all a swirl of drugs and drinking."
Again, must be nice to be a rock star.