Alec Baldwin made his art-buying intentions clear Friday night at the Summer Gala Benefit Auction for Guild Hall, the East Hampton art and entertainment complex.
“Just get the hell out of my way when Clifford Ross comes up,” he said under a tent on the grounds of a Long Island estate near Guild Hall. “I really want it and I’m going to get it.”
When Ross’s 2008 “Hurricane LI,” a scene of crashing waves, came up for auction, Baldwin playfully glared and glowered at competing bidder Donald Mullen, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s global head of credit.
Ultimately, the “30 Rock” star, who says he is thinking about a New York City mayoral run, made the winning $70,000 bid.
“I have a room in my apartment that I’m decorating all in black-and-white photography,” Baldwin said, moments after Simon de Pury, chairman of Phillips de Pury & Co., gaveled the sale. “I have another by Sally Mann of the Virginia countryside -- southern roads and mansions -- which I bought at a Guild Hall auction a few years ago. This will be a great bookend.”
Baldwin said reactions to his possible mayoral run have varied: “Either people are supportive or they think I’m crazy.”
As guests dined on hangar steak and shaved beets, De Pury auctioned six items, including a 2011 Eric Fischl watercolor nude that went for $100,000.
Mullen, who wore his sunglasses most of the night, paid $100,000 for a Barbara Kruger print of a man wearing a blindfold over which appears the sentence, in red lettering, “He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare.”
Richard Prince, the artist, paid $30,000 for Bryan Hunt’s 2002 bronze sculpture “Maenad II.”
