Wall Street Journal portraits up for bid
By Alex Armitage
Bloomberg News Service
NEW YORK — For a little more than $100 on eBay Inc.'s auction site, you can buy a small portrait of Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine publisher and founder.
Bloomberg News Service
You can also buy a portrait of Fred Rogers of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" fame. Allow three to four weeks for delivery.
A portrait of golfer Tiger Woods that appeared in the Wall Street Journal sold for $860 on the online auction site eBay.
The portraits are part of the Wall Street Journal's six weeklong sales of more than 582 so-called hedcuts of individuals including sports stars, chief executive officers, celebrities and, of course, porn kings. These portraits have graced the Journal's pages since 1979.
All are hand-drawn using a method called stipple, which uses dots and dashes instead of lines, giving a look similar to an engraving technique. The style is used because of its close tie-in to stock certificate illustrations and U.S. dollar bills.
Penthouse Publisher Bob Guccione's portrait is for sale, as is radio personality Rush Limbaugh's. Portraits of golfer Tiger Woods already sold for $860 and basketball star Michael Jordan sold for $733.45.
"We were a little shocked when we first heard about the auctions," said Noli Novak, an artist at the paper since 1987. "Because they're our drawings, it's a little hard to see them auctioned away. I guess it's sort of cool."
The Journal publishes about 10 hedcuts a day from "live" shots and from an electronic archive of more than 9,000 portraits. The money raised from the sales will go toward newspaper-education scholarships.
