An art auction for the ultimate Playboy

If media mogul Hugh Hefner has anything to do with it, 2010 will go down in (art) history as 'The Year of the Rabbit'.  

In December, Christie’s auctioneers will be offering 125 pieces of Playboy art in a special sale, including works that have been hanging above Hugh Hefner’s bed in his infamous Playboy mansion. Included in the auction, which will take place at New York's Rockefeller Centre, will be 80 photographs and 24 cartoons as well as many magazine layout boards complete with comical notes scribbled by amused art directors. Estimates start at $400 dollars, with Tom Wesselmann’s 1966 work Mouth No.8 billed as the top lot with an estimated selling value of $2-3 million dollars. 

Hefner, who is trying to buy back control of the brand (he currently owns just 70% of the voting shares) is a keen art collector - a storage building in Chicago is rumoured to house 5,000 contemporary artworks and more than 20 million photographs from the magazine.

Follow the link to Art Daily’s report on the Playboy sale