Free Republic

A former New York City dog walker thought he was going to get a $10 million payday when a painting he’d come to own by a famous artist — whose works sell for millions of dollars — went to auction this week. The retiree, who is living off Social Security, was devastated when the painting sold for a meager $40,000. Mark Herman, 68, of Manhattan, said he had a vision while on psychedelic mushrooms that the painting by the late abstract artist Chuck Close would be worth $10 million. But that drug-induced dream crumbled as he watched the work sell...

Chuck Close, a Photorealist painter who earned acclaim for his incisive portraits and more recently faced criticism after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, has died at 81. Pace Gallery, which represents him, said on Thursday that he had died after a congestive heart failure resulting from a long illness. “I am saddened by the loss of one of my dearest friends and greatest artists of our time,” said Pace chairman Arne Glimcher. “His contributions are inextricable from the achievements of 20th- and 21st-century art.” Close’s large-scale painting of his artist colleagues, celebrities, politicians, and others in his orbit...