Andy Warhol’s Collection with an Estimated Value of $1.1 Million to Be Auctioned

Phillips will auction over 200 photographs taken by Andy Warhol in 1982 during his visit to China, where he came at the invitation of a local businessman, Alfred Siu. The organizers of the auction estimate to receive about $1.1 million for the entire collection.

CNN writes that most of the photographs can be characterized as ‘tourist’ ones: during the three-day trip, Warhol took pictures of the passersby, captured the Great Wall of China and Tiananmen Square. “The photos capture his personality in a way that may even be more genuine and pure than the pictures he takes prior to this, because he came to Beijing and Hong Kong as a tourist,” Phillips’ associate director Charlotte Raybaud says.

“Andy was not making art in a precious way. It was so inside him — this unique vision of the world. They’re very strong images, not just random snapshots,” curator Jeffrey Deitch says, who accompanied Warhol on his trip to China.

According to photographer Christopher Makos, who also traveled in China along with the artist, the price set by the organizers of the auction is ‘nonsense’. “(They were) snapshots. Andy was never thinking about the light and dark, he was hoping he had the settings right and that’s it,” Makos says.