A daredevil artist spent five minutes perched on a ledge outside the Sotheby’s building early Tuesday morning, and the next 20 hours perched inside a city jail cell.
Sam Bassett wanted to drape the famous auction house in long strands of masking tape — an art project he successfully created both inside the Hotel Chelsea and along the stretch of 23rd Street directly outside. There his tape is attached to light posts and strung in a zig zag pattern over the street.
The goal Tuesday was to spruce up the staid Sotheby’s for the following day’s contemporary art auction, where an Andy Warhol print sold for nearly $44 million.
“There were a huge amount of art collectors coming, so I wanted to do something to promote the art world in New York City,” said Bassett, 32 . “All the artists represented in the auction are dead, so this was a guerilla action to bridge the gap, a flag waving in the name of the new creative generation.”
Unfortunately for this guerilla action, the building ledges were a lot thinner than they looked from the ground. Bassett decided to save his neck and abort the mission. He headed back to the sidewalk without putting up any tape.
Yet he was up there long enough to catch the attention of a Sotheby’s security guard, who called police.
“The cops liked the concept, one cop called me the new Cristo,” said Bassett, referring to the artist behind 2005’s The Gates in Central Park. “I tried to explain this was a modern art project, but the security guard was convinced I was trying to break in and steal the Warhol print. So the cops took me to jail.”
A judge on Wednesday dropped the trespassing charge, and Bassett is out looking for the next urban canvas to decorate with his tape sculptures.