Priceless

How much humiliation will an auction house boss endure to get a few minutes of TV time? A lot it turns out and you can’t say that Simon de Pury didn’t have fair warning. De P was asked by the Colbert Report to give his expert opinion on Stephen Colbert’s self portrait, the one tweaked by Shepard Fairey, signed by Andres Serrano and given the intellectual thumbs-up by Frank Stella (see OTN’s WTF).

In his seven and a bit minutes of TV fame, de P trades off about three minutes of Colbert insulting the art in his upcoming auction at Phillips de Pury for four minutes of Colbert insulting him. You can watch it here if you want to and get to hear C tell de P that he’s gay, the art is gay, his Swiss accent makes him sound drunk, the catalogue text is pretentious and that art is crap. Phillips de Pury sold the Colbert portrait for $26,000.
Image: Colbert puts in the boot as Simon de Pury smiles through gritted teeth