[I'm Showing A Film At The Getty Next Week]

When asked if his art purchases in the 1960s were for investment or social climbing, collector Robert Scull famously replied: "I'd rather use art to climb than anything else."

I'm showing a film I made in 1973 with then-partner Jeff Vaughn at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Next Tuesday evening. After the screening I'll have a dialogue with Serge Guilbaut, a leading scholar of the period and author of Reconstructing Modernism and How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art.

On 18 October 1973, Robert Scull, a private New York art collector who, in the 1960s, built one of the major contemporary art collections in the United States, auctioned fifty works at Sotheby Parke Bernet for $2,242,900. The unprecedented prices these art works brought—amounts usually reserved for old masters—raised questions about art, business, and the market. America's Pop Collector is the title of a non-fiction film that chronicled this watershed event.

It was an attempt to write history with a camera...and now that it's history, people are getting interested. You'll need to reserve tickets, I just heard it's nearly sold out.

[Above: Ethel Scull by Andy Warhol]