INTERVIEW: ‘Brillo Box (3¢ Off)’ is bittersweet tale of family selling Andy Warhol painting

To see an Andy Warhol painting is an exciting experience. To own an Andy Warhol painting is something special for art collectors.

The modern artist’s work continues to be sold at auction for unthinkable amounts of money, and enthusiasts flock to museums to view his iconic works of Campbell soup cans, Marilyn Monroe portraits and funky, neon-tinged prints.

One of his most famous pieces is Brillo Box (3¢ Off), which sold for more than $3 million at a record-breaking Christie’s auction. The provenance of the artwork is almost as amazing as its sale price.

Martin and Rita Skyler purchased Brillo Box (3¢ Off) for $1,000 in 1969. They even got Warhol to sign the bottom of the piece, a rarity for the modern art master. A couple of years later, the Skylers traded the painting for a piece by abstract painter Peter Young, and now Brillo Box (3¢ Off) has sold for more than $3 million.

Ouch.

This bittersweet story is the subject of a new documentary from Lisanne Skyler, Martin and Rita’s daughter. Brillo Box (3¢ Off) will premiere Monday, Aug. 7 at 10 p.m. on HBO. She dives into the art world, investigating her parents’ decision to trade the piece and how modern art has escalated in price and prestige in the decades since.

“I had just finished a short fiction film that was based on a novel with similar themes of nostalgia and looking back on a similar time period, and I just started thinking of my own family and just the incredibly vibrant and rich cultural moment that that was,” Lisanne Skyler said in a recent phone interview. “If I followed a work of art, it would be such a [cool] way to look at different people, different attitudes toward objects and how value changes, and I thought it would be really fascinating. And so I started interviewing my family to see what they would be like as characters.”

During this process, Lisanne’s mother called her and said she should check out Christie’s upcoming auctions. The sale featured several Pop art pieces, and, lo and behold, Brillo Box (3¢ Off) was included among the items.

“I was very new to the art world and didn’t have any understanding about all the records that exist, so I was really just beginning,” she said. “I thought there was absolutely no way that the very Brillo Box would actually be so easy to turn up like that, and it turned out it was there. It was at the November 2010 auction.”

The work of art had taken quite the path from the Skyler household in 1971. London advertising executive Charles Saatchi bought the piece for $35,200, and then five years later, it was sold again for $43,700. It then landed in the hands of Robert Shapazian, a top collector of modern art. It remained with him until his death in 2010. Christie’s estimated the sale of the piece in 2010 at $600,000 to $800,000, and it’s fair to say that all parties were surprised when it sold for $3 million and change.

“I think there was an initial moment of, oh my gosh, this little object we once had is now worth this, and that’s incredible,” Lisanne Skyler said. “I think it became much more symbolic of my parents’ lifestyle and the … values they had, what was important to them as young parents and what they wanted to share with their kids, so I think part of the film is looking at that bittersweet sense of loss about these things. Nothing stays the same. Things are always changing, but also I think through the making of the film, I think it allowed them to tell their story.”

Interest in Warhol’s output skyrocketed after his death in 1987, and for Lisanne Skyler, these art prices are interesting because they make enthusiasts rethink the painting. Is that a somewhat dangerous thought — that interpretation is based on commercial value?

“It’s almost like you can’t help it,” she said. “When the [Jean-Michel] Basquiat sale just happened, and here is this amazing artist, who had a great deal of appreciation, but then there’s a $100 million sale. And then people are talking about it in a different way, and I think it’s very fascinating. Our culture is driven by numbers, so it’s hard to avoid that. I think one thing in the film that I hoped to highlight was that, it’s hard to imagine now, but at one point Warhol was a struggling artist. He went around with his portfolio. He tried to get museum curators to show his work, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about who he was, and the significance of his work early on and certainly around the time he passed away. So I hope it will encourage conversation around not just the market, but also the new artists coming up. … We need those works to keep being generated to keep our culture moving forward.”

Lisanne Skyler has always been fascinated by Warhol’s work, even without her family’s unique history. Being a filmmaker, she finds Warhol’s pieces to be a document of culture. She’s not actively looking to purchase any of his paintings (so few are), but she is continually influenced by his many original pieces.

“There’s always a new way to think about Andy Warhol, and I think that’s why he’s so great,” she said. “There’s always a new context. There’s always a new way to think about a quote he said or a work he created. I feel like he continues to be meaningful. There’s certainly other artists my family collected that I also love.”

She hopes viewers walk away from her 40-minute documentary with a new perspective on art.

“I wanted to make a film about art that was very accessible and fun, even though there’s certainly a sense of loss in the film, and it is a bittersweet story about the fact that we can’t always predict the future,” she said. “I hope that it will create more conversation about younger artists and encourage people that might go, oh, I won’t go to a museum. … They might think of it in a different way, and might go to their local museum, or go to an art class, or look at a gallery of young artists and think about the different ways art impacts our lives, which is often very hard to verbalize, but yet it’s so important. The sharing of ideas and artistic impulse is one that struggles a little bit in our country because there’s so little funding for artists and all that stuff. Sometimes museums often struggle financially too, so I hope that it will encourage that kind of seeking out of art on whatever scale is accessible to you.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Brillo Box (3¢ Off), directed by Lisanne Skyler, will premiere Monday, Aug. 7 at 10 p.m. on HBO. The film will also be available on HBO On Demand, HBO NOW, HBO GO and affiliate portals. Click here for more information.