Page Six is reporting that, for reasons I will never understand, someone just paid $16,000 for a 12-by-9-inch black-and-white sketch of the Empire State Building by budding artist Donald Trump.
Trump originally drew the sketch, pictured above, for a charity auction in 1995. It now belongs to real estate mogul Elie Hirschfeld, who paid $4,000 more than the bidding price in an auction on October 19.
Realizing that she—and indeed any living organism with functioning opposable thumbs—could have scribbled three boxes on a piece of paper and passed it off as expensive art, Jezebel features editor Kelly Stout challenged us to do our own renditions on a whiteboard.
First, she laid out some ground rules:
1. The building must be drawn from memory.
2. You cannot study photos of the Empire State building in advance (full disclosure: Kelly instituted this rule after I loudly declared, “I am going to study photos of the Empire State Building!”)
3. In honor of the 45th president, you have only 45 seconds to draw it.
Jezebel’s creative geniuses then went to work:
Prachi Gupta
Megan Reynolds
Madeleine Davies
Joanna Rothkopf
Ellie Shechet
Hazel Cills
Kelly Stout
Maybe I’m biased, but I have to say, I think that our 45-second drawings from memory are in the same ballpark as Donald Trump’s expensive chicken scratch. So if anyone would like to bid on our whiteboard art, by all means, get in touch.