About The Burt Britton Collection of artists’ self-portraits:

Picking up a bartending shift at the Village Vanguard, the famous New York jazz joint where he usually worked the door, Burt Britton found himself alone at last-call with just one final patron, Norman Mailer. After pouring the esteemed author a final drink, the question was put to Burt, “What do you want from me, Kid?” Exasperated at the end of the long shift, Burt inexplicably responded, “draw me your self-portrait,” handed him a piece of folded paper, and that, simply put, is how it all began.

That night in the mid-Sixties Mailer produced and gave to Britton an amazing object of self-expression, the first of hundreds to come, a self-portrait of the author more revealing than 1000 words. Inspired by Mailer’s product, Britton started to collect. Still at the Vanguard, he gathered self-portraits by Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock after landmark 1966 concerts, he even got a portrait from a New York high-school basketball phenomenon, Lew Alcindor, later the champion Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Moving to the legendary Strand bookstore in about 1968, Britton encountered novelists, poets, journalists, and critics, both the highly regarded and those just starting out. He would respectfully ask local and visiting literary luminaries such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Jorge Luis Borges to add their self-portrait to his album with the same democratic spirit that he offered the young John Irving, just months away from the fame that came with The World According to Garp. (Bloomsbury’s auction catalogue : PDF)

Bloomsbury’s catalogue contains every items in the Burt Britton Collection along with details and explanations about the Collection in general and some specific explanations about each self-portrait as well. Alternatively, one can browse the collection over at the Bloomsbury Auctions official website. Back in 2009, there was a story about this collection in The New York Times: “Self-Portraits Speak More Than Words” by James Barron, September 23th, 2009.

Previously on Skandalon : Don DeLillo