Visionairies

Mediabistro reports that Sotheby’s will soon be auctioning the first 53 editions of Visionaire, the extravagant, silly limited-edition objet d’art/magazine from the publishers of V and V Man. The expected sale price is £15,000-20,000, which isn’t bad for a magazine that often retails for several thousand dollars a copy, especially considering some fool apparently paid $65,000 for the same editions in December. Whether it’s worth it or not all depends on your view of art.

I caught up with some of the Visionaire crew at the recent NY Art Book Fair, where they very kindly showed me the printer’s dummy of their new edition, Surprise (sponsored by a well-known champagne brand, retailing at an unusually cheap $250). It’s rather a lovely box of pop-up art volumes created by the usual mix of artists/photographers, with a particularly lovely fanning credits page. Pictures here and here. I also got to stroke some of the issues I had only read about previously, including the flick books by Spike Jonze, Mario Testino and others.



For those who are considering a bid on the Sotheby’s lot, you might instead want to hold off and save your pennies for their limited-edition Goyard trunk, recently unveiled at Maison Goyard in Paris. The first ten come with issues 1-50 of Visionaire inside. The price? For you, $150,000. Like I said, silly.

I actually own a couple of copies of the magazine in question, but I didn’t pay full price, no siree. Here’s my secret: I bought my copies unopened from this particular eBayer who may or may not be connected to the magazine. They’re still not cheap, but $76 is a darned improvement on the several hundred dollar RRP.

UPDATE: The Sotheby’s lot failed to sell.