Andrew Vickers’ Avengers goof means that the papier maché artist has accidentally destroyed thousands of dollars of valuable comics in the making of a sculpture that went on exhibit Saturday in the United Kingdom.
The sculpture called Paperboy is a large man-sized statue that is made of papier maché from old comics that Vickers found at a dump. It went on display in Sheffield as part of a six artist exhibition on the theme of superheroes.
By all reports, Andrew Vickers’ piece was a perfectly standard papier maché piece — with the cut up paper from The Avengers and other comics applied with glue over a chicken-wire frame.
However, the artist was in for a surprise. On Saturday, comic fan and World of Superheroes shop owner Steve Eyre visited the exhibition. Here’s what he told the BBC he found while looking at the piece:
“[V]isually, it is a beautiful thing, but then as I walked round it, certainly on the inside right leg, there was a cover of Avengers number one.
“I’ve got a copy of that, which was published in 1963, that is worth well over £10,000.
“Then I started looking and there are six comics on this that together would be worth, even in the condition you can see, £20,000.”
Of course, by cutting and gluing them for the art , Vickers has destroyed all value in the rare editions. Ouch.
I’m not sure I would have had the heart, but they couldn’t resist sharing this information with Andrew Vickers. He admitted that he had just assumed the comics had no monetary value because of where he found them.
But he did try to laugh off the blooper and said it was brilliant that he’d had the opportunity to work with such expensive materials. Me, I think I would have broken down and cried.
The Art Sheffield Sf Artspace “What Makes a Hero?” HEROES exhibition opened Saturday and will run through Thursday, so check it out if you’ll be in the area.
I have an idea that art lovers are supposed to go view Andrew Vickers’ piece in person, since the photographs I’ve seen are a tad on the blurred side.
But for those of us who can’t, how about an example of a nondestructive use of The Avengers covers in art? The photo up top is a section of a photo-collage by Jer Thorp that was created using 570 issues starting with the #1 in September 1963.
You can see the Thorp’s entire photograph by clicking here .
It’s just as colorful and probably wasn’t nearly as expensive to produce as the Andrew Vickers papier maché superhero.
[ Avengers editions photo by Jer Thorp via Flickr, Creative Commons ]
