From

Bottle

Caps

and

Seals

Has

Come

Colorful,

Cascading

Art

Rows of well-dressed patrons convened one evening in early March in the London headquarters of Sotheby’s for an auction of multimillion-dollar works by the likes of Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti, Lucio Fontana and David Hockney. One highlight was a gleaming wall sized sculpture made of discarded liquor-bottle caps and foil seals, their brand names sometimes still visible.

“G6,” a 2023 work by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, sold for $995,000 that night, and the proceeds were donated to London’s Royal Academy of Arts (Anatsui is an honorary Academician). It was well shy of the record $2.23 million which “Prophet” — also composed of found aluminum bottle caps, stitched together with copper wire — fetched at Christie’s in New York in 2023.

Anatsui’s creations look from afar like vast and spectacular draperies or tapestries — only there is no fabric, material or embroidery involved. These are not textiles: They’re outsized sculptures made purely of liquor bottle caps.