The Horror! Vincent Price Sells Art for Sears

From 1962 to 1971, Sears Roebuck and Co. advertised “The Vincent Price Collection”: artworks supposedly selected by horror film star Vincent Price and sold at retail. The Sears website says it “moved over 50,000 pieces of fine art” at prices ranging from $10 to $3000. Above is an instructional film Price made for Sears salespeople more used to selling wrenches than Rembrandts. Below, pages from a 1967 Sears catalog: “Decorate your cube with a cubist! A Picasso can turn your dull den into a spicy fiesta!”

Price was a Courtauld-trained art history student and gallerist as well as actor. In 1947 Price helped organize the Modern Institute of Art, which was to be the West Coast MoMA and kind of was, for its brief existence on Rodeo Drive (1948-1949). A decade later, he founded East L.A. College’s Vincent Price Art Museum. So he wasn’t a completely crazy choice to hawk art for Sears. Thrice-married, Price had a subdued gay vibe that mid-America read as “cultured.” The question is, what was Price and Sears selling, exactly? A signed, oil-on-canvas Picasso or Mondrian for $800? Not likely, even allowing for it being 1967. Picasso was alive in 1967. Did he approve of the Sears marketing of his name?

Most of what Sears sold seems to have been prints (some by big names) and contemporary paintings by very minor artists. Everything came framed, ready to hang, with “the Sears guarantee that it’s okay.” In the film Price singles out an impression of Rembrandt’s etching Angel Appearing to the Shepherds. Says Price,

“I’m pretty sure that most of your customers will say, as they did many years ago about diamonds and mink: ‘Rembrandt at Sears?’ Well yes. This is one of the things I wanted to prove to people, that you could buy this greatest name in art… at Sears, at Sears prices.”

The price: $900. That’s believable for a great Rembrandt etching in the 1960s. But wait, there’s more. It’s got provenance. According to Price, the Sears impression was formerly owned by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

For those who don’t like to spend too much, Price points out two original Goyas, for $35 a pop. They’re aquatints from the Caprichos. There were 12 editions of the Caprichos, all but the first posthumous, and pulled from increasingly ruinous plates until 1937. Dealers liked to break up the portfolio of 80 and sell the sheets separately as Sears was doing. Could sheets from one of the bad, late editions have been going for $35? I suppose so, but geez—the Sears price included framing.

The catalog page promises a lithograph of Picasso’s The Bull, signed and numbered, for $560. (For what it’s worth, multiply by 6.73 to adjust for general inflation since 1967, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) It’s said that they sold works by Salvador Dali. No surprise there—this was when he was signing blank sheets of paper. The mystery is the Picasso and Mondrian oil paintings.

I’d guess they were painting-mill copies, but the Sears page doesn’t give a heads-up on that. It’s true that Nelson Rockefeller later (1977) began selling reproductions of artworks he owned, and had Picasso paintings reproduced in tapestry. The Rockefeller clan was a lot chummier with Picasso than Price was, surely.

Did artists not sue back then? It’s hard to image Walmart getting away with selling unauthorized copies of Jeff Koons balloon dogs.

Girl With a Boat is a reasonably well-known 1938 Picasso, now in Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne. Should you want an oil copy, you’re not too late. This Internet painting mill sells it for $215 (and other prices, depending on size).

And you’re not too late to catch up on Price’s film oeuvre, at a better-than-Sears price. LACMA is holding a free marathon of six Price films on Sunday, Oct. 30.

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