"The Assassination of Dimebag Darrell", the controversial 2005 painting by New York-based artist Tom Sanford, will be auctioned via Phillips de Pury & Company's music-theme sale on November 21, 2009 at the company's London, England headquarters.

In an October 2009 posting on his web site, Sanford writes about the piece, "I think of it as a history painting that attempts to depict one of the more bizarrely tragic moments of the past decade.

"Dimebag's death was certainly a great loss to the music world and a truly poignant cultural event — a real rock hero slain on stage by a seemingly psychotic fan. A horrifying symptom of the kind of cultural malaise that permeated Bush II-era America. In a way, this painting is my answer to Théodore Géricault's 'The Raft of the Medusa'.

"One of the things that interested me about making a painting about this event was that as there was almost no visual documentation of the event, just some very unclear security camera footage from the Alrosa Villa. Thus, there was little to get in the way of my imagination of what this might have actually looked like and I was able to base my painting on the oral reports from witnesses of the four murders as well as Nathan Gale's eventual death."

The piece is expected to fetch between £500 (approximately $834) and £700 (approximately $1,168).

"Assassination" is one of several paintings Sanford has created depicting violence in the lives of musicians; other subjects have included the infamous 2004 Vibe Awards stabbing incident and a knife altercation involving 50 Cent while at the studio. Sanford's paintings, which range from historical works depicting celebrity assassinations to portraits of gangsta rappers and teen pop tarts to elaborate cosmologies weaved together from Hollywood movies, reflect a deep ambivalence about the American cultural condition.

To see more of Sanford's work, go to www.tomsanford.com.

(Thanks: Metal Hammer)