The number’s up on what is considered to be one of the hottest new collectibles-paint-by-number “art.”
“They’re part of the consciousness of anybody that’s alive in America,” says Paul Bridgewater, co-owner of Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery in New York’s SoHo district, about the frenzy over the paintings. His gallery is credited with fueling the craze when it held the “world premiere” paint-by-number exhibit in April 1992. Titled “The Fortieth Anniversary of Paint-by-Number Paintings,” the exhibit drew 1,000 people on its opening night and set off a media frenzy.
“We were on everything from Connie Chung (“Eye to Eye with Connie Chung”) to the BBC, the CBC and we were in HG, Vanity Fair, Interview, The New York Times, New York, The New Yorker, Associated Press . . .” Bridgewater says, as he lists the coverage even Picasso might envy.
“Everyone in the media understood it to be tongue-in-cheek. This is something that’s funny. It’s kitsch. People don’t want to have to take everything so seriously. This is a breath of fresh air.”
Making claim
The origins of paint-by-number kits, which gave Everyman a chance to become Michelangelo, are debatable.
New Yorker Michael O’Donoghue, a paint-by-number collector who’s writing a book on the subject, says Max Klein, owner of the Detroit-based Palmer Paint Co., and a Detroit-area artist named Dan Robbins, started a company called Craft Master which first introduced the kits in 1952.
By 1954, some 12 million Craft Master paint-by-number kits had been sold for a few bucks each in hobby shops and drugstores.
However, Chicago artist Don Baum, who collects myriad paint-by-numbers to construct his miniature houses he calls “domuses,” says he’s found some signed and dated by “artists” from the ’30s.
Whatever their origins, the idea was always the same. The kits included a piece of cardboard (or in rarer cases, canvas or velvet) and were stamped with the outline of a drawing. Numbers were stamped on the cardboard in jigsaw puzzle-like spaces, waiting to be filled in with various colors of oil paint that would correspond with the numbers.
Everything’s eligible
An American fad from the ’50s through the ’70s, the kits had a broad range of themes-from copies of great masterpieces such as “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci (who must be rotating in his grave) to tranquil landscapes and sweet furry kittens festooned in yarn.
Once finished, the paintings enjoyed time on the walls of their creators, then they usually turned up in a collection of another kind-the trash. Those that escaped annihilation often could be found at garage sales, flea markets or thrift store basements. The cost typically was a dime and up, frame included.
Until, this new development.
Foraging the Midwest
Paint-by-numbers have become “a fun, new, inexpensive collectible,” says Dennis Daurer, co-owner of Millenium Antiques, 950 W. Newport St., where the Midwest’s premiere exhibit and sale of 80 framed paint-by-number works is being held through Oct. 1.
“People see them, they smile and laugh. They bring out memories,” Daurer says of his 80-piece show, which runs the gamut from florals, still-lifes, barns, streams, desert scenes, dogs, birds, horses and kittens. Daurer and his partner, Jim Hammes, forage for paint-by-numbers in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Sparks of individuality
While one might think a dictated outline for a painting could result in serial sameness, Daurer says, the paintings “all have individual characteristics . . . depending on how the paint was applied.”
While most of the paintings are anonymous, about a third are signed and dated, says Dauer. One, he says, is signed on the back with the name of the sanitarium where it was done.
Some of the paintings are framed in shadowboxes from the ’50s, but many of the framing techniques are “pretty bizarre.” Rather than use conventional framing tacks, everything from big nails to thumbtacks to wire to upholstery tape hold the frames and paintings together, says Daurer. Beer can tabs sometimes serve as hooks for the paintings, which range in size from 12-to-16-inches to 24-by-30.
Big money
What’s the big deal over something that is actually anonymous assembly-line artwork?
“I think art got so serious in the ’80s that people had to respond in a way that was kind of making fun,” says SoHo’s Bridgewater, producer of a limited edition of abstract paint-by-number kits himself in 1979, which were bought at $500 each by such artists as Andy Warhol and Fernando Botero.
Daurer, who says he is going by “gut instinct” in putting on the Chicago show, says he feels that “in the ’90s, when life does not present a pretty picture, the paint-by-numbers remind us of a simpler time.
“The ’50s were (like the television show) `Leave it to Beaver,’ everything was wonderful and the subject matter of the paintings is like that, barns and streams, it’s all perfect, everyone’s happy,” he says.
Big, big money
Since the paintings are “kitsch,” there is no real way to discern how or if one paint-by number is more “valuable” than another.
“Realistically,” says Bridgewater, paint-by-numbers are worth “35 cents to $35. They have no intrinsic value.”
However, he delights in telling the story about collector Michael O’Donoghue, whose 200 or so paint-by-numbers were in the Bridgewater/Lustberg exhibit, just to be amusing put “the most ridiculous value of $1,000,000 on his collection. (Comedian) Chevy Chase actually called us up and asked to buy it. We were on the phone with him three times. He stopped at $250,000,” says an amused Bridgewater.
Still reasonable
In any case, at Millenium Antiques’ paint-by-number show, Daurer says “nothing will be over $45.”
Although, Daurer says he thinks paint-by-numbers will remain an inexpensive, fun collectible, he warns collectors that the same thing was “said about Bakelite, Fiestaware and Depression glass and look what happened to them,” a reference to their rising price tags.
It’s anyone’s guess what people will charge for paint-by-numbers at garage sales and flea markets, but it will probably give new meaning to the expression, “numbers racket.”
