Ulee's Gold Rolex

Art, commerce, and the watch from Easy Rider

October 5, 2007—In the art world, one man's trash has always been another's masterpiece. And long before Dash Snow made his first semen-coated newsprint collage, there was self-taught conceptualist Joseph Cornell, whose acclaimed body of work gets revived tomorrow at the SF MoMA. Cornell's first-ever West Coast retrospective features nearly 200 pieces, from the whimsical "Pantry Ballet (For Jacques Offenbach)," 1943, which features a chorus line of plastic lobsters wearing tulle skirts, to the slightly creepy "Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall)," 1954 (above left), as well as 30 objects never before shown.

Rather stare at anatomically precise 16th-century paintings of decapitated heads? Swing by today's Anatomy as Art auction at Christie's in New York. The 230-item lot features a delightfully morbid hodgepodge of medical illustrations, paintings, and wax sculptures by anatomists like Leonardo da Vinci and Jacques Gautier d'Agoty (above right). The highlight (for fans of this stuff, anyway) may well be Andreas Vesalius' seminal 1543 textbook. Bring your checkbook: It's expected to go for $300,000.

Or, for a couple hundred grand less, you can own the flag patch that adorned Peter Fonda's leather jacket in Easy Rider. It's part of a 43-piece collection of the actor's personal memorabilia that goes on sale this weekend in Dallas. Also available: the Department of Defense badge Fonda wore in the film, and a drawing he made for his old man when he was seven (estimated sale price: $400). As for something you might actually consider buying, there's Fonda's 18-karat-gold Rolex GMT Master, which starred in Easy Rider's precredit scenes. Expected to fetch around $10,000, it's said to be in decent shape: "You remember the poster boy for the counterculture, throwing away his watch at the beginning of the film as a symbolic revolt against materialism?" asks Doug Norwine, who set up the Fonda auction. "He didn't throw the Rolex. He threw a cheap Timex instead."

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, Oct. 6, 2007–Jan. 6, 2008, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., San Francisco, (415) 357-4000, sfmoma.org; Anatomy as Art: The Dean Edell Collection, Oct. 5. 2007, Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, (212) 636-2665; Peter Fonda's Memorabilia, Heritage Auction Galleries, Oct. 6-7, 2007, 3500 Maple Ave., 17th Fl., Dallas, (214) 528-3500, ha.com