Fame, Fortune and Froufrou

Sotheby’s, the art auctioneer, this week completed a 10-day sale of nearly 10,000 items once owned by the late Andy Warhol, whose paintings of soup cans made him rich and whose prediction that everyone will some day be famous for 15 minutes made him quotable. The auction proved to be remarkable not so much for the extent and eclecticism of Warhol’s acquisitive habits as for the enormous crowds that it drew and the staggering prices that its various doodads and gewgaws fetched. Sotheby’s initially estimated that the Warhol cache, honest treasures and flea-market junk alike, would bring $10 million to $15 million. When the final hammer fell, the till had been stuffed to the tune of $25.3 million.

Granted that recent years have seen prices for recognized art inflate hugely. But what is one to make of the three mass-produced plastic watches that Sotheby’s thought would go for $60 to $80 but that instead brought $2,640? Or the $20 cookie jars that sold for thousands? Or the $300 quartz gemstones knocked down for a cool $10,000?

About 60,000 people came to see the Warhol trove on display--more than double the number that dropped by when the Duchess of Windsor’s jewelry collection was auctioned last year. Virtually everything that went on the block sold, and price was clearly no barrier. What could it be that impelled people--many of whom had never before bid at an auction--to pay mind-boggling prices for merchandise that wouldn’t be out of place at the average garage sale? Probably it was nothing more than an urge to connect themselves with someone once renowned if not notorious, to try to achieve their own 15 minutes of fame by owning something once owned by Warhol.

Celebrity mania is nothing new. It’s hard to think of another recent occasion, though, when so many have been so eager to pay so much for a little gilt by association.