Bill Watterson painting sells for $13,000 in Team Cul de Sac auction
A painting considered the first widely viewed new artwork in 16 years by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson sold at auction Sunday night for $13,145 as part of the Team Cul de Sac charity.
According to The Washington Post, the oil painting of Cul de Sac character Petey Otterloop fetched the highest bid of the more than 100 works donated for Team Cul de Sac, created to honor cartoonist Richard Thompson following his recent Parkinson's disease diagnosis. All of the proceeds from the auction benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation to support Parkinson's research.
Nearly $50,000 was raised by the online sale, which included original art by the likes of Sergio Aragones, Danielle Corsetto, Evan Dorkin, Cathy Guiswite, Lynn Johnston, Karl Kesel, Roger Langridge, Patrick McDonnell, Stephan Pastis, Lincoln Peirce, Don Rosa, R. Sikoryak and Mort Walker. The artwork is also collected in the book Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson's, which arrived in stores Tuesday. A portion of the proceeds from book sales also benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Watterson explained his approach to Thompson's character last year to the Post: 'I thought it might be funny to paint Petey 'seriously,' as if this were the actual boy Richard hired as a model for his character. At first I intended to do the picture in a dark, Rembrandt-like way to accentuate the 'high art' of painting vs the 'low art' of comics ' the joke being that the comic strip is intelligent and the painting is idiotic ' but the picture went through quite a few permutations as it developed.'
An original watercolor created by Watterson for a 1989-90 Calvin and Hobbes calendar sold at auction in February for $107,000.
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