Brillo 5, a work of art by Gavin Turk, will be auctioned off at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art sale on September 23. It is estimated that Brillo 5 will reel in $30,000. Brillo 5 is the cardboard box to your right. Christie’s describes the piece of art as “an ironic and ambiguous work that is essentially a copy of a cardboard box.” Be it art or be it a cardboard box, Turk’s creation will no doubt pay the bills. With that in mind, we realized that boxes are exactly what we need to turn this economy around. After the jump, we present 10 of the city’s most underrated (and valuable) cardboard boxes. Live well and prosper. Read More »

Remember that rich Chinese art dealer we told you about who phoned in an extremely large fake bid for YSL’s bronze rat and rabbit because they were plundered goods? It was kind of a Punk’d meets Robin Hood moment, and charming in a way that we didn’t think a Christie’s auction was capable of.

No shocker, according to a report on Bloomberg, such renegade antics don’t pay. “Cai Mingchao, the Chinese art dealer who is refusing to pay for the $40 million Qing bronzes he successfully bid for in the Yves Saint Laurent auction, wept when he realized that his credibility was shot and he may now have to close his business.” He’s 40.

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Book publishing is used to dire forecasts for its future; the industry’s funeral has been prematurely anticipated for decades. Publishing was supposed to be killed off at various points by television, the Internet, and the general public’s apathy toward reading. But it’s always managed to scrape by — even if, in these scattered times, it’s been increasingly on the back of huge successes like The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series. The stagnant-but-relatively stable industry has also long been seen as “recession-proof”; the thinking goes that consumers will still spend on small, non-luxe goods, such as books, during a downturn.

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