Christie's hasn't had the best week — the dismal performance of its Impressionist and modern art sale Tuesday sent shivers through the global art market — but the major New York auctions are only half over, and the auction house is pulling out all the stops to boost confidence ahead of next week's postwar and contemporary sales. In that spirit, the auction house staged an absurd PR stunt outside its Rockefeller Center headquarters today, unveiling a giant Louise Bourgeois spider sculpture destined for the auction block on Tuesday. And who did it tap to add a little pizzazz to the event? The star of the critically skewered Broadway flop, "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark."

As potential buyers attempted to push past the crowd blocking the building's front doors, tourists snapped photos of actor Craig Henningsen — in all his royal-blue spandex glory — as he contorted his body into the friendly neighborhood web-slinger's poses just underneath the 11-foot-tall sculpture. As he relaxed his muscles and pulled off the mask, middle-aged women in the crowd rushed to take pictures with him ("It's for my son," one explained).

The hurriedly-put-together spectacle was an odd way to unveil a work by one of the world's most celebrated female sculptors who, during her lifetime (she died in 2010), was very eloquent in explaining that the spider symbolically represents her mother, a protective and clever weaver, and not, say, the radioactive arachnid that bit Peter Parker. The disconnect was likely lost on most of the crowd. 

Christie's senior postwar and contemporary art specialist Laura Paulson seemed to be the only one focused on the massive installation. She told ARTINFO that the piece is from the property of a private collector in Napa Valley, and is one of only three large-scale Bourgeois spider sculptures left in private hands. "It's exciting because the estimate is very conservative — it's $4-6 million," she said of the artwork. "We've seen prices over that range for much smaller-scale spiders. This is something that really is going to be sought-after." In May 2008, a four-foot-tall spider sculpture made in 2003 sold for €2.9  million ($4.5 million) at Christie's in Paris. Last year at a Sotheby's contemporary sale in New York another Bourgeois spider —only 19 inches tall — achieved over $3.5 million, soaring past its $600,000-800,000 pre-sale estimate.

So will Christie's absurd superhero ploy propel the Bourgeois to a new record? At least one person was optimistic. When asked if he would pay $4-6 million for the sculpture, Spiderman replied, "That's it? If I had the money I would pay a lot more than that. Seeing it in pictures doesn't describe what it looks like in real life."