TINTIN COMIC SELLS FOR $1.7 MILLION
BRUSSELS: A double-page Tintin comic strip by the renowned Belgian cartoonist Herge has fetched a record 1.56 million euros ($1.72 million) at an auction, a media report said. The sale on October 24 by auction house Sotheby’s in Paris saw 65 original items from the biggest names in European and American cartoons go under the hammer. The items belonged to Belgium’s biggest comic strip collector Jean-Arnold Schoofs. The auction raised a total of 2.7 million euros ($2.97 million), with five lots breaking world records. The double-page from Herge’s Tintin and the Spectre of Ottokar, published in Le Petit Vingtieme in 1939, had a guide price of up to 800,000 euros ($881,400) but was sold for almost double that amount. IANS BERLIN: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei on Monday said his plan to create a Lego artwork can go ahead as donations of the toy poured in from fans after the Danish company refused his bulk order on political grounds.
The maker of the children’s toy sparked a social media uproar when Weiwei said it had refused to supply him directly as it ‘cannot approve the use of Legos for political works’.
Weiwei is China’s most prominent contemporary artist. He helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics and his work has been exhibited worldwide, but he has also run afoul of Communist authorities.
He used the bricks to create portraits of political activists from around the world for an exhibition at Alcatraz prison in the United States last year, and intended to create a Lego artwork for a show in Australia.
“The Internet is a place that is sort of like a modern-day church,” he said. AFP