The process of promoting Simon de Pury from auction house empresario to reality show pseudo-celebrity hasn’t taken very long. The New York Post participates this week:
De Pury’s own artistic energy has been bubbling since the age of 12 or 13.
“I would paint and spend time going to galleries and museums. The interest never went. It grew and grew.” Nowadays, de Pury, a father of four, travels incessantly, spending weeks at a time hitting up a different city daily, bouncing among openings, auctions and friends. (Last week he was in Monte Carlo.)
His travels and love of art have resulted in his own eclectic collection. In addition to owning pieces by some of his favorite artists, including Kelley Walker, Rembrandt and Juergen Teller, de Pury boasts an impressive set of ceramic mugs in the shape of cartoon characters. “Batman or Superman, you know? You used to be able to buy those in airports — now you can only buy them on eBay,” he says. They go well with de Pury’s expertly assembled assortment of Godzilla figures and skateboards.
In a way, de Pury lives for such juxtapositions. Just take his deejaying. (Yes, he moonlights as a deejay.) While the acclaimed auctioneer doesn’t take to the turntables too often, he did recently participate in a deejaying competition in Vienna hosted by Francesca von Habsburg. (And yes, one of those Habsburgs.)
Powers is trying to convince Bravo to let de Pury deejay the party for the “Work of Art” finale, but there’s no word yet on a decision.