A word about value

How is value determined on a unique collection of posters like these?

"Value" in any "collectible" or antique is based in a string of tangibles and intangibles: rarity, significance, uniqueness, aesthetics, quality, provenance, and desirability, and is ultimately determined by the marketplace...what are collector's willing to pay for X, Y, or Z?

A dealer could look at any one of these posters and give you a ballpark estimate of its worth ON ITS OWN....and the price evaluation for a single poster would vary from dealer to dealer. Most of these posters are unobtainable.

But that isn't what we have here.

This is a COLLECTION that has been kept intact from the period, with a few posters given away to friends and musicians over the past 50 years (for instance, I gave Ginger Baker the two Cream posters from their first appearance at the Fillmore when I took drum lessons from him in 1991...it seemed more appropriate that he have them than me). This is a COLLECTION that was given to me by Bill Graham, and this is a COLLECTION displayed in unique and relevant circumstances in the famous Funky Features house in the Haight-Ashbury, and in my equally infamous flats in "swinging London," so it drips with color and rock history, being owned by a recognized artist of the period (as well as now) who was knee-deep in the Haight-Ashbury psychedelia of that amazing time.

The mere fact that this is a collection that has been maintained since that period adds value to each poster, AT LEAST doubling or trebling its overall value if you added the posters up one-by-one. From the sheer practical aspect of trying to "put together" a collection like this, it would take any collector considerable time and effort...as the curator of the Experience Music Project in Seattle said to me, "Where were you nine years ago when we started putting our collection together?" It took them EIGHT years of hunting and digging using their heavyweight resources to complete their collection....and still, their wonderful collection has no "history" of its own.

The fact that I have owned this collection and displayed it in historical and relevant circumstances, with all the stories that go with these beautiful posters adds more value (see individual posters for story vignettes)...and certainly not least, the fact that this collection was given to me by Bill Graham himself adds even MORE value. But HOW much more value? It's pure guesswork because there has never been a collection like this anywhere.

Never.

And there never will be again, unless Bill Graham's estate sells his, and I wouldn't count on that ever happening. So there's no way to really determine an ultimate value on this collection until it is sold. Just like trying to price Dorothy's red shoes, Marilyn's famous white dress, or the piano on which John Lennon wrote "Imagine." Once someone has paid cold, hard cash for a unique item, it has established a value in the marketplace...but only until then. We all know how even experienced auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's get it consistently wrong on unique, one-of-a-kind items...usually on the low side time after time.

This is no different than selling a 60's Fender Strat, say, for $10,000...but what if it was once owned by a famous guitarist? Ahhh....things change! A bass player friend of mine and Eric's who played several tours with Clapton coveted a bass that EC owned. Eric gave it to him at the end of the last tour, then added as an afterthought, "Oh, by-the-way....Bill (Wyman) used it on 'Satisfaction.'" That guitar went from being worth a few grand to maybe WELL over a hundred grand instantly--POWIE!

"Oh, by-the-way" indeed! Nice one, Eric.

Now I'm not saying I'm the artistic equivalent of Bill Wyman, EC, or any other rock star (but I've played with EC and used to practice on Charlie Watts' grey pearl Gretsch drum kit at the Stones' rehearsal studio in Bermondsey....how about that???)...but I'm a fairly well-established artist now and was during that time...so the same principle applies. This is art, as well as rock 'n roll history. Some of the early Avalon posters are second and third editions that were produced contemporaneously in 1966 and 1967 because the Family Dog was such a hand-to-mouth operation that it was common for first runs to run out before the concerts and more had to be printed...but in the case of this collection, that fact is irrelevant. If you had a beat-up, common Strat that belonged to Eric Clapton...it would be worth as much as a classic, collector's Strat that belonged to him..because the value is not in the guitar, but in WHO it belonged to, where it has been, and what historical significance it has. And this collection has that in spades...more than other in the world. It is truly unique.

A good friend of mine just bought a scratchy, ordinary, 45 record of the William Tell Overture for over $500. His new, very young, hilariously funny French Canadian fiancee called me up and good-naturedly complained, "Paul, Ken is CRAZEEE! Can you talk some sense eento eem! He just spent $500 on an old, scratchy record...and what about my ring?!!!!" Ken grabbed the phone and laughed while Nikita was protesting loudly in the background, ranting and raving. "Paul, it's not quite like that...this is the copy of the William Tell Overture that once belonged to Clayton Moore." (the actor who played The Lone Ranger). Of course, Nikita had never heard of the Lone Ranger and couldn't appreciate the object. To her, it was a scratchy 45 not worth ten cents. By-the-way, Ken still has his charter-membership card from the Cavern Club! (he's from Liverpool). In a weak moment he almost sold it to me for three hundred bucks....but my eagerness to have it alerted him and he backed off. Rats.

While Bill Graham was getting warmed up with the Fillmore Auditorium in March 1966,
I was making a name for myself as a true "pop" art event and image artist. The front-page "Stop Art" stunt
that March was my artistic jab at the City for positioning an arterial stop sign at the top of one of
downtown's steepest hills, when the other three level streets had stop signs as well! Madness. I got caught
on prom night at the top of this stupid hill in my parents' brand-new, non-synchro stick shift VW.
It was a nightmare to a novice driver trying to impress his date! This gag put me on the front page
of the paper and was picked up by the wire services and printed all round the world, launching my artistic
career and making my paintings instantly desirable and "collectible."
Bill Cosby then recorded a comedy sketch about getting stuck on this very hill as a result
of my making it world famous (it was only famously frustrating among local denizens until then).
I also made a bunch of "explosion" paintings as a send-up to pop art, by glopping tube acrylics
around firecrackers and lighting them (and running)....even doing one on the Gypsy Rose Lee Show and getting everyone and everything
in the studio splattered with paint. Gypsy loved it.

I formed the "Psychedelic Raiders" with famous madam
Margo St. James and we painted fire hydrants bright colors in the middle of the night that were instant hits with the
people of San Francisco (but not with the Public Works Department). I then joined Jack and Sam
and formed the Funky Features poster company and acquired and showcased this collection!

1967 Nob Hill
(photo for a Macy's ad)

Yeah, O.K.....(blah-blah-blah)........but, so what's the value?

Being an artist, I am used to pricing paintings whose value is ephemeral: whatever I think they are worth, basically. But how do I come up with that? Pull a number out of the air?

Well-l-l-l....that's actually not too far off the mark...there's certainly a bit of voodoo involved. My judgement of value is the inverse of what a potential buyer considers when they decide whether they want to buy a particular painting: do they want the painting enough to pay the asking price? I price my paintings on what it is worth for me to let them go. There's a bit more to it than that---like what I think a piece of work is worth in the scheme of things...but that's the meat of it. And that's basically my bottom line as to what I think this collection is worth for me to let it go. I would actually value this collection at about the $500,000 mark....it's value will escalate to a hell of a lot more in a few years after my book and movie come out.

Think about this: where else could you obtain a museum-quality collection of 234 classic images loaded with style, art, and history averaging just $2,600 each? You have an instant, museum-quality, recognizable art collection of 234 pieces for the price of one small painting by a major artist. The added bonus is that these images all relate to each other in a way no other collection of images ever will. This collection is HISTORY you can touch.

So why am I selling this collection now if it will double or treble in value in just a few years?

I am going to put all the money from the auction at Sotheby's towards rebuilding the Starship Enterprise by the original team that
created her for Star Trek - The Motion Picture back in 1978-79.

When I was living in Barnes, in southwest London in the early 70's, I began a correspondence with David Niven that we kept up over the years as a result of a letter he sent to the Times. He stated that ten years previously he had seen a Miro painting for £1,000 that he wanted to buy. The dealer told him the story of the painting: that Miro had started it, got bored with what he was doing and put it aside for quite a while, came upon it again and finished it. After he finished it, he realized he had finished it upside-down to how he had started it. That put David off and he didn't buy it because he figured if the artist couldn't give a damn about the painting, why should he?

The previous day to his Times letter David was walking down South Audley street in Mayfair and spotted the very same painting for sale for £10,000! It irked him no end that he could have bought it for £1,000 and passed it up and now it was worth ten times as much!! Groan. What he wanted to know, was if his integrity was still intact?

I wrote and told him he should have bought the painting if he liked it enough to spend the £1,000 on it (and also went on about art and value), and he responded with, "Of course I should have bought the bloody thing!" We corresponded regularly after that until his death. Lovely man....I would love to have met him.

Art is worth what it's worth, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder....and that's why firemen wear red suspenders!!

Andy Warhol put his finger on it when he sarcastically quipped: "Art is anything you can get away with." Closer to the mark than most people in the game would care to admit. At the end of the day, it's all smoke and mirrors...just like the stock market. If enough people think something is valuable, it's valuable. Just like the painting immediately below....if enough people think it's good, then it's good (but it isn't very good, really, and the Emperor has no clothes).

We've all been to galleries where the painting we think is the best is not the highest-priced one...and the highest-priced one may not even be second or third best. I see stunning works of art in museums that are relegated to insigificant positions in their galleries, while works of art I don't think are so great occupy pride-of-place. Everyone has a different point-of-view not only of intrinsic value, but relative value....and of aesthetic value. Total subjectivity. So you can see right away that "value" is a total crapshoot...and it really is. Remember the Van Gogh that was valued at something like 6-10 million and sold for 43 million? And now a 1902 "blue period" Picasso (because blue paints were the cheapest colors and he had no money) has just sold for 52 million! One painting! Is one painting worth that much? Not to me....but to somebody it is, so now it is.

Let me give you two museum examples---I have three favorite Impressionist artists (I like them all, but these are the kings for me): Renoir, Monet, and The Guy above, in that order. Most "artsy" types reckon Monet over Renoir...I can't agree. Monet is certainly great and gets most of the attention (because he "started" the movement with his "Impression" painting), but Renoir is easily the better artist...so you see how it goes? The National Gallery in London has an Impressionist room where on the "main" wall (at the deep end of the room) they have grouped six of their Van Goghs, including the sunflowers one above and the one of the chair he painted for Gaugin's room in Arles--famous paintings, but not great ones to my way of thinking. Not even close. The Van Gogh wall gets all the attention from the visitors, and even has rows of benches you can sit on to study his paintings; but these famous Van Gogh's to me are lifeless, poorly done, and with muddy colors compared to some of his other paintings which are spectacular....and many of them really are the best of the best. This just ain't one of them. It's famous, but it's not great (sorry!). I like color, anyway.

On the opposite wall are some Monet's which again are by far not his best ones, and most people just pass them by on the way to the next room. On the archway wall leading into the next room (the least-best place for a painting to hang because you are either leaving and looking to the next room, or you are coming in and don't look back over your shoulder) is EASILY the finest painting in their collection: a sparkling Renoir of two women in a longboat on the Seine ("Boating on the Seine") that jumps off the wall with its radiance and vivid colors...it's a masterpiece, yet it gets passed by and is not showcased. I stood and watched people come and go into this room...and they were all looking for the Van Gogh's and paid ALL their attention to them, when this jewel below went begging. It's one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen in my life. Yet there this lovely work of art hangs, like a poor cousin. Ridiculous. I would have centered it on the main wall and given it 6 feet of space either side.

Even the musem's reproduction of it on their website is not very good...I had to color correct it. They got the Van Gogh right, though.

Ahhhhhhh.....! Now THIS is a PAINTING!

Boating on the Seine

I know it's apples and oranges---or sunflowers and water, but this painting knocks the spots off the Van Gogh.
I could look at this wonderful painting every day for the rest of my life.

Isn't it beautiful?

If I could do just ONE painting like this in my lifetime, I will have felt I achieved something as an artist.
But do you see what I mean??? Of ALL the paintings in the National---and they have a surfeit of masterpieces---this is the one I would love to own, and might even be my favorite of ALL French Impressionist paintings. Yet it's hung as an afterthought, almost.

The other museum is at Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath, London. This museum has a great collection of Gainsboroughs...and has a large Rembrandt self portrait (above) which is a phenomenal painting. He was the first, true Impressionist.....just look at the way he handled paint the next time you see one of his originals. I remember seeing "The Pageboy" at a traveling exhibit in The Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in the early 60's...the gold buttons on the pageboy's red coat were splats of various colors daubed on his brush and slammed into the canvas, WHAP-WHAP! You could see where the paint had spattered off the brush with the force he used. And when he was done with this exercise that took him less than a minute, BOOM! there was a row of sparkly, golden buttons made of paint splats. That kind of knowledge and confidence is daunting. Rembrandt is rightly considered one of the greatest of all artists. A real Master.

This great painting above is hung in a narrow back gallery where the light reflects off the surface of the painting from the skylights, and there is no place in this terrible room where you can stand obliquely enough to view the painting without reflections and light glare from facing windows right next to the painting (a real no-no) ruining your appreciation of it. I think this painting is much more important than anything else in the museum...but this is the kind of judgement call all art is subject to. Who's right? Me, or the museum? I think I'm right (I bloody well know I am) but they have the painting, so they're right!

On the other hand, I have these posters! So this is my call.

As an artist, I look at these posters not only from an historical perspective, but from an artistic one...and my value of what they are worth artistically and in an historically significant perspective is more than that of a mere poster dealer who deals in single items. These images are very important in terms of American artistic expression and heritage and that truly unique period of time in our culture that they capture and represent, and so to me, and to all the museums who have collections of them, they are very valuable for those reasons.

The Whitney Museum wants my collection precisely because of the uniqueness of it....THAT'S what makes it valuable to them, much more so than a similar collection acquired piecemeal over many years with no historical integrity or significance, as all the other major museums have, including the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the MOMA in San Francisco. This collection is one-of-a-kind.

See? Voodoo!

ADDED VALUE

As mentioned earlier, I will be happy to sign and authenticate each poster as being from my collection...this should be done on the reverse or on a separate sheet of paper for each poster. That will add an indeterminate, but significant amount of value to the collection straightaway. When some of the Funky Features posters were auctioned off in London in 1998, my signature on them added a 30% to %50 premium on each one, (depending on whether they were my artwork, or that of an artist we hired)...my signature gave them provenance--authenticity, and provenance adds value.

Also, I am writing a screenplay called "Funky Features" about our colorful and unbelievable experiences during that zany time. I have "The Book of Love" coming out in January, and am working on a book of the Haight Ashbury called "The Book of Haight" which will be published next year. The Book of Haight and the Funky Features movie will add significant value to this collection...and digital images of this collection could be used as props in the movie, earning a tidy use fee from the film production company. So all-in-all, the value I will add to this collection will be considerable.

Remember...this is a museum-quality collection; and there aren't many of those of anything.

I go on about the Fillmore posters, but actually, the Avalon poster series contains more interesting images than the Fillmore series overall, and is artistically more valuable. But pound-for-pound, Fillmore posters seem more desirable because of the name associated with Bill and his highly visible style of promoting his venues and acts. He was always a high-profile personality in the business, whereas Chet Helms, who ran the Avalon Ballroom concerts, was much less the hustler and more the hippie...hence the "value" of the Fillmore name. It's "branding," pure and simple. No one could ever accuse Bill of being a hippie! Ha! He was a streetwise New Yorker with both feet on the ground while all those around him were floating in air. That must have something to do with the fact that the Avalon series is more interesting, artistically, because they certainly are.