{"id":36280,"date":"2019-10-09T10:37:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T14:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=36280"},"modified":"2019-10-09T12:46:37","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T16:46:37","slug":"taking-an-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2019\/10\/taking-an-opportunity.html","title":{"rendered":"Taking an ‘Opportunity’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From the collection of Burt Britton, 1975<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time Burt Britton asked me for a self-portrait. He subsequently included it in SELF-PORTRAIT: Book People Picture Themselves<\/a><\/em>. I sent him as minimal an image as I could think of. More than three decades later he put all the originals up for auction<\/a>. As I wrote at the time, many went unsold\u2014Tomi Ungerer’s, Frank Gehry’s, Jorge Luis Borges’s. Which was ridiculous. More peculiar, mine found a buyer. The only explanation I could think of was that it was part of a single lot\u00a0with 26 other self-portraits by the likes of James Laughlin, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Korda, and Barney Rossett. “Somebody actually paid $500,” I wrote. “Which means we went for $18.50 each. Uh, call it an opportunity taken.” Now, somebody has taken that “opportunity” and listed this on e-bay for $275: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good luck.<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time Burt Britton asked me for a self-portrait. He subsequently included it in SELF-PORTRAIT: Book People Picture Themselves. I sent him as minimal an image as I could think of. More than three decades later he put all the originals up for auction. As I wrote at the time, many went unsold\u2014Tomi Ungerer’s, Frank Gehry’s, Jorge Luis Borges’s. Which was ridiculous. More peculiar, mine found a buyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,20,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-media","11":"category-news","12":"category-political-culture","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/SELF-PORTRAIT-BURT-BRITTON-240.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9ra","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36280"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36301,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36280\/revisions\/36301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}