Trade Secrets

Harry Anderson letter to Castelli, March 30, 1973
The heavyweight San Francisco collector Harry Anderson—known as “Hunk,” a nickname bestowed during his college-football years—remitted payment for Lichtenstein’s 1970 painting "Mirror #2," which in 1992 he gave to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A smaller work, "Mirror #1" (1969) set a record for the series when it sold for $2.15 million at Sotheby’s in November 2001. Anderson joked, “At these prices, Leo, I need a Rauschenberg bed to sleep on,” a reference to the artist’s famous 1955 work, made when he was unable to afford a canvas to paint on, which was later given to the Museum of Modern Art by Castelli.

Courtesy the Anderson Collection