David Bowie painting discovered in thrift shop

A painting purchased for less than $5 at a Canadian thrift store is now up for auction after the artist was identified as music legend David Bowie.

The painting was purchased for $4.09 from a donation centre for household goods in South River, Ontario, and then found to have been painted by Bowie in 1997. The painting, titled D Head XLVI, is part of a series the singer created between 1994 and 1997.

Cowley Abbott spokesperson Andrea McLoughlin said. “It has been suggested that, for some of these important paintings, Bowie drew inspiration from the Ziggy Stardust era. With long hair and a pronounced profile, this energetic and enigmatic portrait is truly a rare representation from a celebrated artist.”

The painting is being sold as part of Cowley Abbott’s International Art Online Auction and is expected to fetch a high bid of $9,000-$12,000. n

Hotel in China billed as world’s highest

A Chinese developer opened what is being billed as the highest hotel in the world — occupying the top floors of the country’s tallest building.

The J Hotel Shanghai Tower, owned by developer Jin Jiang International is situated on the top floors of the 2,073-foot-high Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building, opened to the public recently, and bills itself as the highest hotel in the world. Guinness World Records lists the Gevora Hotel in Dubai as the world’s tallest hotel, measuring 1,169 feet high. The hotel in the Shanghai Tower is unlikely to take the record, as it occupies only a few of the building’s floors and not the entire building.

Space Balloon Company launches ticket sales

Florida-based Space Perspective, a space tourism company, will start six-hour balloon rides to the stratosphere in 2024. The price of a seat: $125,000.

It plans up to 25 flights in the first year into the second major layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, which is about 31 miles or more than 163,000 feet above the planet’s surface. The company began testing a capsule under a giant balloon with a successful 20-mile-high flight from Florida that landed in the Gulf of Mexico. Operations are to be based at Kennedy Space Centre initially, Poynter said.

Up to eight passengers will ride in a pressurised capsule with an experienced pilot, snack bar and a bathroom.

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 24th, 2021