‘SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS’

Robert Pattinson Curates Sotheby’s Auction of His Favorite ‘Cosmic’ and ‘Alien’ Art

“What I look for is when a piece has its own language,” Pattinson said. “It doesn’t necessarily feel like it just exists for its own sake and has a presence that hums with...life.”

Actor Robert Pattinson is known the world over for many reasons: his mercenary good looks, his roles in prominent works of landmark cinema such as Good Time, The Batman and the Twilight franchise and a number of high-profile romantic relationships.

Pattinson isn’t necessarily renowned for his taste in fine art, but Sotheby’s is looking to change that with an upcoming Contemporary Curated auction whose works have been partially chosen by none other than Edward Cullen himself that will take place on September 30th.

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Six of the eight items included in the Sotheby’s sale were selected by Pattinson, and his choices include paintings by Richard Serra and William de Kooning, sculpture by Thomas Houseago and a graphite drawing by the superlative Julie Mehretu. The Daily Beast reached out to Sotheby’s for comment. Previous celebrity curators have included Swizz Beatz, Oprah Winfrey, Ellie Goulding, and Cynthia Erivo.

“What I look for is when a piece has its own language,” Pattinson said in a statement. “It doesn’t necessarily feel like it just exists for its own sake and has a presence that hums with a bit of life. It has the ability to communicate with you on a kind of primordial level. I sort of sway between things that feel very profound and cosmic and alien. Then even on the other side, I like subversive, naughty, slightly dangerous stuff as well.”

Over the years, Pattinson has stood out as a movie star via his eclectic and bizarro film choices: opting for dark auteur fare like The Lighthouse and Cosmopolis rather than a spate of crowd-pleasing rom-coms, it's been clear that the actor’s taste in movies is well-developed, but his fine art inclinations are considerably less well known, a state of affairs one can attribute to the Pattison’s closely-guarded personal life.

“De Kooning can capture so much energy, and this work feels incredibly fresh, present, and exciting,” Pattinson said of the artist’s 1964 piece Untitled. “Looking closely, it is incredibly sensual and quite tasty.”

Mehretu, Pattinson added, “is so amazing at portraying magnitude and abundance and I found this piece quite incredible because there is still a huge scope. I always imagined that certain paintings feel like they’re shot in slo-mo, like IMAX, where you can almost feel the splashes come up. I mean, it just feels so incredibly detailed and quite overwhelming—Mehretu is always very, very impressive.”

Pattinson’s advice for collectors is: “Only acquire pieces that you’re going to love, no matter what. Just having something which you’re going to keep for the rest of your life is probably the best idea.”

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Helen HolmesCulture Reporter

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