After our item ran that blue-chip artist Raymond Pettibon — whose paintings have fetched as much as $3.4 million at auction — was recently celebrated by Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills, numerous notable readers reached out to tell us they own Pettibon works that were bought decades ago for just a few hundred bucks!
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that → run → bucks
Ankler columnist Richard Rushfield and screenwriters Nicole Coady and Halle Eaton got in on the Pettibon action early and are now sitting on potential goldmines.
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Rushfield → get → goldmines
(Pettibon famously began his career amid the ’80s LA hardcore punk scene by creating edgy album covers and fliers for bands on SST Records.
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Pettibon → begin → Records
The pioneering indie label was owned and operated by Pettibon’s brother and famed Black Flag founder, Greg Ginn.)
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label → own → brother
Back in the early ’90s, Rushfield, Coady and Eaton were all among a group of fledgling industry-ites who hung out at a bar on Beverly Boulevard, called Dominick’s, the famed watering hole once frequented by Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack that ultimately closed in 2016.
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that → hang → 2016
A then-twentysomething named Mindy Daluiso was also part of the Dominick’s scene, and had begun dabbling as an art dealer.
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twentysomething → name → dealer
“Mindy asked all of us to buy [his] paintings to help her fledging business get off the ground,” Rushfield recalls.
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Rushfield → ask → ground
“And they were $300, $400, which was all any of us could have afforded back then.”
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any → afford → us
Adds Eaton, who also bought one of the artist’s works: “She had a huge collection of Pettibons.
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She → add → Pettibons
She spread them out all over the floor for us.”
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She → spread → us
Rushfield, a onetime art history major at Hampshire College, bought an eerie cityscape for $300,” he says.
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he → buy → 300
Coady splurged and shelled out $573, to be exact, for a painting called “The Other Side of Head.”
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Coady → splurge → Head
(MoMA has a DIY art book in its collection by Pettibon and his nephew and sometimes collaborator, Nelson Tarpenny, with an image of the same Pettibon work on its cover.)
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MoMA → have → cover
“I fell in love with this piece,” says Coady.
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Coady → fall → piece
“But I had no money at the time.
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I → have → time
I like scraped up all my pennies, and I got it.”
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I → scrap → it
Soon after, Daluiso married and left America, Rushfield recalls.
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Rushfield → marry → America
(We could not find Daluiso, but perhaps she, too is a Page Six Hollywood reader and will surface!)
In 1995, Pettibon joined the then-two-year-old Soho gallery of David Zwirner, who became the mega-dealer of art icons including Yayoi Kusama, Richard Serra, Gerhard Richter, Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin and countless others.
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who → find → Kusama
Years later, Rushfield happened upon a coffee table book of Pettibon’s art.
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Rushfield → happen → art
Gracing the book’s cover was a long fold-out picture of his studio.
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picture → grace → studio
His cityscape appeared to be hanging on the wall of the studio in the photograph.
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cityscape → appear → photograph
But the Ankler newsletter founder then quickly forgot about the potential value of a Pettibon — until he saw our piece — while turning his own attention to chronicling Hollywood’s churn of, er, fine art from “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” to “Megalopolis.”
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he → forget → Megalopolis
(More recently, we’d written how the journo ruffled Paramount’s feathers by showing up at CinemaCon in possession of some “Block the Merger” buttons.)
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journo → write → buttons
Rushfield quips of his Pettibon purchase: “It’s the only smart investment I ever made.”
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I → quip → purchase
Or as Coady notes: “It definitely beats the stock market.”
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It → note → market
The Aporia
