Art World News

Market Street mural project approved by Lockport Common Council

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Market Street mural project approved by Lockport Common Council

Coming down Market Street from Main Street there’s sign of a past art project along a retaining wall on the eastern side of the hill that did not stand the test of time.

However, upon an unanimous vote by Lockport’s Common Council, Wednesday night, that wall is due to become the site of a new mural in the city, to be completed by Lockportian Austin Hinton.

“My whole life I’ve always been drawing and painting. Ever since I was 10 or 11,” Hinton said in a brief interview before the city’s meeting.

Hinton didn’t go to school for art, instead focusing on business administration, but did start to paint murals in 2020 as part of a New Year’s resolution.

“From that it just snowballed to painting murals here and there,” Hinton continued.

The wall is approximately “80 paces” Hinton said. His design incorporates a “Lockport pride” aesthetic in blue and gold. It includes a top-side view of the Flight of Five Locks and the Lockport skyline and horizon.

The project was spearheaded by Alderman at-large Lisa Swanson-Gellerson who’d seen Hinton’s work in the past.

“I think that art murals can tell us a story and Lockport has a lot of stories to tell, that I think will help bring us together,” Swanson-Gellerson said. “We come together when we share our stories. Community art can do that. It can educate and unite us.”

Questions from the rest of the Common Council were laced with encouragement for the artist and future projects.

“Do you know the one (mural) that’s all faded is of (the late Gord Downie) from the Tragically Hip?” 4th Ward Alderman Kitty Fogle asked Hinton. “We need to redo that one!”

While Hinton will be accepting private donations for the artwork, no taxpayer funds will spent on the project.

Family Affair: Q&A with Cherokee artist Kindra Swafford on Cherokee Art Market

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Family Affair: Q&A with Cherokee artist Kindra Swafford on Cherokee Art Market

Over 150 Indigenous artists will take part in the 18th annual Cherokee Art Market, Oct. 14-15, inside Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa. Among them is Cherokee Nation artist Kindra Swafford, of Tahlequah, who is participating for the fourth year. 

“My favorite thing about CAM is that from the moment you walk in, to the moment you break down your booth, there is an incredible environment,” Swafford says. “We are all helping each other, checking in with others to see if they need anything. We cheer each other on in sales and with awards. You feel like a big family and you can hear the laughter echoing down the halls of the ballroom area.”

Swafford took part in a Q&A to discuss their work and more. 







IMAGE THREE Quantum Yona[66] copy.jpg

Quantum Yona by Kindra Swafford


How do you describe your art?

My work consists of a variety of mediums, but I lean toward watercolor as my primary medium. I try to keep learning and pushing my art to new heights. I want to continuously change and grow — who doesn’t? I love creating fun compositions from my personal experiences or adventures in nature. My art is described as saturated subjects over-imposed to create a glitch. A glitch is made by duplicating the same image with overly saturated hues. It’s unique and jarring at first and I love it. You can find some of my watercolors to be 3-inches across and others that are almost 8-foot-tall. I am known for creating large watercolors. I also love doing pop art from shows, games and comics.

What is the price range of your work?

My artwork ranges from $60 to $10,000. I want to be sure anyone that walks into the market has a choice between my large-framed watercolors or limited prints of those works. I hear a lot, “Not everyone can afford an original, but people can afford limited prints.” I offer unframed originals priced as low as $60. As artists, we put so much time and care into what we create for the show and we want people to enjoy our work. You will find quality work from booth to booth at CAM and a lot of us have worked hard to ensure there is something for every buyer.  

Who are some artists that inspire you through their work?

It’s the people that are utilizing their native language in their art, that have picked up traditional pottery or weaving and have taught others in the community. Those are the super stars. I’m inspired by the playful color compositions of Jerry Sutton’s pieces, the positive impressions Roy Boney’s daily sketches bring to social media, the emboldening images of women in Keli Gonzales’ work, the intricate but delicate line work of Kristin Gentry’s ink/watercolors, and the beautiful abstracts of Dean Wyatt.  

A Colossal Interview: Zoë Buckman On Tenderness, Her Evolution as a Woman and Mother, and Embroidering Her Largest Works To Date

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A Colossal Interview: Zoë Buckman On Tenderness, Her Evolution as a Woman and Mother, and Embroidering Her Largest Works To Date

“songs leak from my bedroom walls” (2023). Photo by Charles Benton. All images © Zoë Buckman, courtesy of Lyes & King, shared with permission

What responsibility does an artist have to care for her viewers? Zoë Buckman thinks deeply about this question and discusses it in a recent conversation with Colossal.

One thing that’s important to me has to do with beauty and softness. Those are definitely tools that I embrace and harness. I know that I’m exploring something that is very difficult and triggering. It’s always been important to me that I make work that draws people in and creates an environment for conversations about violence, rape, abortion, miscarriage, and all of these things. In the work itself, I am trying to care for viewers.

Much of Buckman’s output during the past few years has championed the fight: that of resilient survivors, of rebelling against the patriarchy, and of her own sparring with the art world as she sought to use mediums historically associated with “women’s work” to put critical issues front and center. Her new series, though, titled Tended and on view at Lyes & King, takes a softer approach, which Buckman discusses in this conversation about her early indoctrination in feminism and what it’s like to raise a child around such difficult, and undoubtedly necessary, work.

Read the interview.

 

two images of embroidered portraits, on the left, a woman looks directly at the viewer with a black eye while a younger girl sees blood in her underwear. on the right, a child sits in between her mom's legs as she does her hair

Left: “holy ash” (2023). Right: “thoughts run out my hands like a gecko” (2023). Photos by Charles Benton

a close up of a woman's face with loose threads and floral applique

Detail of “songs leak from my bedroom walls” (2023)

a close up of a child's face with loose threads and embroidered details

Detail of “thoughts run out my hands like a gecko” (2023)

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For Barkley Hendricks, Finally a Seat at the Head of the Table

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For Barkley Hendricks, Finally a Seat at the Head of the Table
image

An underground virtuoso, always being discovered in bits and pieces, the portraitist solidifies his place in the canon with a solo show at the Frick — its first ever for a Black artist.

One day, in the late 1970s, while walking the streets of Pigalle in Paris, the American painter Barkley L. Hendricks noticed several well-dressed Black men and women. As Hendricks later explained, he was particularly struck by the fashion sense of two African men. He spent time photographing them in different postures and situations, as was his habit with models he painted, laying the foundation for work that would end up on his canvas. The resultant painting — “APB’s (Afro-Parisian-Brothers)” — is eternally modern even in our time, relentlessly cool, and luxuriously vibrant, qualities that radiate through his ongoing exhibition of portraits at the Frick, where he is the first artist of color to have a solo show in the museum’s 88 years of existence. It is a posthumous glory: Hendricks died in 2017, at age 72.

Visitors at the Frick studying Barkley L. Hendricks’s “APB’s (Afro-Parisian-Brothers),” 1978, based on a photograph that the artist took in Paris.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

In 1966 — the year he turned 21 — Hendricks spent time in Europe funded by the Cresson scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, touring the continent’s cities, looking at and falling in love with the works of European masters like Van Dyck and Rembrandt. Back in the United States, he consistently visited the Frick, reportedly his favorite museum, studying the collection, which also included classic paintings by Bronzino and Moroni. Both at home and abroad he noticed the continuous absence of Black people in the portraits (the Frick, until now, has never displayed the portrait of a Black figure in its collection). The few he saw dealt with dehumanizing representations, mostly of enslavement or servitude. He decided to fill what he saw as a gaping hole, and leaning on his influences from European portraiture began to make elegant, poised paintings of Black people.

There are deliberate, delightful decisions surrounding the organization of the exhibition, “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick.” The main elevator opens up to reveal “Lawdy Mama,” a luminous painting of a Black woman cleverly layered on gold leaf with an Afro sitting on her head like a halo, complementing the arched canvas (ideas that might have occurred to Hendricks after seeing Gentile da Fabriano’s “Madonna and Child with Saints Lawrence and Julian”).

From left, Hendricks’s “Lawdy Mama,” 1969, with an arched top that evokes a medieval altarpiece; “Madame His,” an 18th-century marble bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon; and “General John Burgoyne,” mid-18th century, by Joshua Reynolds.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times
“Madonna and Child, with Saints Lawrence and Julian” (1423-25), gold ground Italian work by Gentile da Fabriano.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

Aimee Ng, who curated the show, together with Antwaun Sargent as consultant curator, wisely arranged the 14 pieces of Hendricks’s paintings between some of the European paintings from the Frick’s collection, sometimes matching paintings with similar colors intuitively across the rooms of the fourth floor of the Frick Madison, where the show is set, giving visitors a taste of what Hendricks might have been looking at when he frequented the museum. This collaboration with Sargent, who is a director at Gagosian — a multinational commercial gallery — might raise the question of whether there is a deliberate reconsideration of Hendricks’s place in the art market (one of his pieces in the show is for sale by the Jack Shainman Gallery, which represents him). In an interview, Ng, who is a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting, said she had asked Sargent what contemporary artists he thought might illuminate the Frick’s collection, which ends at 1900. She said he suggested Hendricks and given Sargent’s expertise in the subject, and the fact that he had maintained a relationship with the artist, he became her collaborator.

Hendricks’s rich treatment of color shines through the show, evident in his choices of backgrounds, displaying an intimate relationship with the materiality of clothing with great attention to how they fold or reflect light, and in minute detail like how he paints the fade of denims. (He is quoted on a wall text as having boasted, “No one paints jeans like me, with the consciousness of the fact that jeans are a material that is worn rather than painted.”)

Perhaps the most famous set in his experiments with different shades of the same color are his white-on-white paintings, in which he spectacularly layers shades of white in figurative paintings such as in the striking “October’s Gone … Goodnight” — depicting the same majestic figure of a woman in a white dress, standing, facing three different directions, or in “Lagos Ladies (Gbemi, Bisi, Niki, Christy),” painted after he visited Nigeria for the World Black Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977 and which before now has never been on view.

Hendricks’s “Lagos Ladies (Gbemi, Bisi, Niki, Christy),” 1978, which has never been on view.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

Yet, Hendricks’s mastery of the genre is reinforced by his understanding of the function of all great portraiture: to elucidate what the artist considers the grand persona of the subject, while simultaneously memorializing the version the artist wishes to commit to history.

Hints to these are present in some of the photographs in “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick,” a monograph accompanying the exhibition. Drawn from Hendricks’s archive, the pictures demonstrate the original character of some of the figures and how Hendricks introduced little elements to change or accentuate their personalities: glasses for models that originally wore none, a change in hairstyle or a hat, an entire replacement of attires, addition or removal of jewelry, a toothpick to create an unforgettable, funky vibe. This intentionality with the personality of the figures he painted is perhaps most potent in “Woody.” Set on yellow canvas, a dancer in a yellow unitard romper stands on one foot with the other raised and arms spread out. There is no light falling on his face, and his eyes, darkened entirely, project a strange, irrepressible sense of balance and power.

“Woody,” 1973, Hendricks’s depiction of a dancer. “There is no light falling on his face,” our critic says, “and his eyes, darkened entirely, project a strange, irrepressible sense of balance and power.”Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

The show exudes a deep relationship to art history, yet Hendricks, a notable pioneer of Black figurative painting in the United States, has not received enough recognition for his role as an inspiration and as a forerunner to many of today’s artists, including Kehinde Wiley, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, who have furthered the genre. Richard J. Powell, a professor of art & art History at Duke University and considered an authority in African American art history, writes in his catalog essay “Barkley L. Hendricks, Anew,” that “Every intermittent sighting of Barkley L. Hendricks’s work over the past few decades has been a revelation.” In this way, Hendricks seems to have maintained the position of an underground virtuoso who is always being discovered in bits and pieces. The show at the Frick seems to be, finally, a break into the atmosphere, introducing him to a new audience and solidifying his position in the canon and lineage of Black American portraiture.

In 1966, the same year Hendricks first traveled to Europe and began looking at European masters, the great Black American boxing champion Muhammad Ali was resisting being drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in Vietnam, the Black Panther Party was being formed, and the Black American civil rights activist and writer Malcolm X had just been assassinated barely a year earlier. It was a period of great racial and political upheaval, and most Black movements had to find strength in each other only, frowning heavily upon any kind of white or Western influences.

From left, “Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith),” 1976; “October’s Gone – Goodnight,” 1973; and “Blood (Donald Formey),” 1975.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

So, was it, in some way, an act of bravery that Hendricks stuck with the influences that mattered to him and helped expand his artistic vocabulary? Or was it a way of turning European modes of painting on its head by imbuing the form with an essence that was unmistakably Black? Regardless, what the indelible portraits at the Frick really portray is that art is a confluence of many rivers, and the greatest artists drink from them all.

Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick

Through Jan. 7, 2024 at the Frick Madison, 945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 288-0700; frick.org.

In ‘The Lost Mystics,’ Kumkum Fernando’s Enigmatic Wanderers Chase Illusions Through Time and Space

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In ‘The Lost Mystics,’ Kumkum Fernando’s Enigmatic Wanderers Chase Illusions Through Time and Space

“Formally Known as Izah,” 950 blocks composed of upcycled wood, hand- and spray-painted wood, scratched coated brass detailing, and recycled nails, 31.5 x 56.2 x 21.5 inches. All images © Kumkum Fernando, courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Projects, shared with permission

In vibrant color, Kumkum Fernando’s hulking, hybrid figures (previously) wander through an enigmatic and quickly evolving world. “The melancholy characters of The Lost Mystics are searching for meaning, crisscrossing time and space, unmoored and chasing illusions,” says a statement from Jonathan Levine Projects, which presents the artist’s solo exhibition during ArtPrize.

Fernando repurposes found wood, nails, and metal details into modular beings, some of which have removable crowns. The artist draws on a wide range of global traditions, from Ethiopian and Sri Lankan masks to American board games to Buddhist and Hindu folktales. Simultaneously robotic and mystical, each character interacts with its surroundings in a unique way. The duo in “Soul Mates,” for example, are said to have traveled 23 million light years to find one another, and in “Which Way Is Home,” the creature turns its three heads in a perpetual search for direction.

The Lost Mystics is on view at the ArtPrize Clubhouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, through October 1. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

 

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

“Which Way is Home,” 1,900 blocks made from upcycled wood, hand- and spray-painted wood, scratched coated brass detailing, and recycled nails, 24 x 56 x 22 inches. Installation includes 3 removable heads that articulate 360 degrees and a base made from an antique coffee table found in the Mekong region of Vietnam

Two robotic sculptures featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

“Soul Mates,” upcycled wood, hand- and spray-painted wood, scratched coated brass detailing, and recycled nails, 24 x 28.3 x 12.6 inches each, containing 300 blocks

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recucled nails and brass.

“Voodoo Veera”, 230 blocks made from upcycled wood, hand- and spray-painted wood, scratched coated brass detailing, and recycled nails, 19 x 19 x 10 inches

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

Details of “Voodoo Veera”

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

“Baby Devis Board Game,” 650 blocks made of upcycled wood, hand- and spray-painted wood, scratched coated brass detailing and solid brass halo, and recycled nails, 25.6 x 44.2 × 14.5 inches. Installation includes 180 hand-turned pawns

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

Detail of “Baby Devis Board Game”

A robotic sculpture featuring hundreds of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

“Formally Known as Izah”

A robotic sculpture featuring dozens of wooden blocks and recycled nails and brass.

“Yellow Fellow,” 45 blocks made from upcycled wood with added pigments, scratched solid brass ears, and brass detailing, 22 x 30.5 x 13.2 inches

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In ‘The Lost Mystics,’ Kumkum Fernando’s Enigmatic Wanderers Chase Illusions Through Time and Space appeared first on Colossal.

These Technologies That Can Help Collectors, Galleries And Artists Supercharge The Traditional Art Market

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These Technologies That Can Help Collectors, Galleries And Artists Supercharge The Traditional Art Market

“Art tech” refers to solutions that assist art market stakeholders—whether they’re collectors, creators, or gallerists—in elevating their businesses. The inception of art tech predates the dot-com boom, with SaaS solutions targeting this market. Yet, nearly three decades on, the art market predominantly operates on PDFs, word processors, email lists, and spreadsheets.

According to the 2023 Art Basel and UBS market report, global art sales increased by 3% year-on-year in the previous year. The report indicated that 2022 sales approached almost $68 billion, with the US capturing 45% of the global market share. However, the Artnet Mid-Year Review from July 2023 expects a downturn in these figures for 2023, noting a significant deceleration in line with the global economy. Artnet’s findings revealed a 25% decline in secondary sales at major auction houses compared to 2022. Despite this, gallerists like David Zwirner remain hopeful.

A saying common during crypto bear markets goes, “the bear is for builders.” This sentiment resonates with the art market as well. With advancements in blockchain technology and AI, developers across various sectors are fervently creating solutions for an industry long overdue for modern tooling. By “supercharging” the art world with tools crafted by teams of tech and art experts, the market might witness enhancement.

Artificial Intelligence and User-Friendly Tooling by simplify.art

simplify.art, a platform powered by Yurica—an AI engineered to “understand and process text about art”—was introduced to me by its co-founder, Victoria Dejaco. Yurica, a meta-algorithm, drives various facets of the simplify.art platform. Its algorithms handle tasks like processing and extracting information from online documents and those uploaded by artists. It also offers LLMs for text processing, provides custom recommendations for collectors and artists, and implements an AI-based pricing model. Furthermore, the diligent AI task force at simplify.art, spearheaded by researcher Sonja Steiner, meticulously refines Yurica to ensure its algorithms exhibit reduced biases concerning gender, social, and racial representation.

Dejaco founded simplify.art drawing from her experiences as a gallerist, art historian, and a studio and collection manager. Recognizing the inadequacies of current solutions, she envisioned a new platform tailored to address the specific issues she encountered firsthand. Together with co-founder Glenn Vanbavinckhove, a former Director of Data Science at both KPMG and Deloitte, they scrutinized other art tech offerings. Their vision expanded, aiming for a tech stack that seamlessly integrates the best solutions. Dejaco stressed the importance of a software “that remains simple to handle, integrating essential features into a cohesive ecosystem.”

The duo, alongside an all-female team of technologists and marketers, is committed to refining the platform, focusing on user-centric automation. Vanbavinckhove emphasized the importance of tailored and relevant solutions, championing the use of automation, machine learning, and AI throughout simplify.art.

Blockchain-based Artwork Authentication by Verisart

In 2015, the Verisart team began experimenting with the blockchain for physical art. Their Certificates of Authenticity, built atop the Bitcoin
BTC
blockchain, were launched in 2019. The product has four different certificate statuses, incremental in levels of verification. The highest one, Certificate of Authenticity+ provides detailed item information and includes holographic certificates and QR stickers for physical items.

As the company evolved, and in response to the explosion of the NFT
NFT
market in 2021, Verisart has subsequently expanded their product offerings. Today, they provide NFT minting tools, a Shopify integration for streamlined storefront creation, and more.

A Generative Art Engine by Art Blocks

Generative art stands out as the most dominant genre in the NFT world. Art Blocks, established in 2019, has led the industry in this space since 2021. This platform and company are devoted to launching and selling algorithmic art. Two of the most lucrative generative art NFT releases, Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak (January 2021) and Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs (June 2021), were introduced via Art Blocks. As per the NFT marketplace OpenSea, Ringers and Fidenza have generated trading volumes of 31,301 ETH
ETH
and 62,872 ETH, respectively.

To diversify their offerings, Art Blocks rolled out a generative art engine in 2022. This engine empowers creators and brands to debut their own NFT generative collections using Art Blocks’ smart contracts and rendering capabilities. The Art Blocks Engine offers two products: the primary Engine, which also manages on-chain storage of assets, and Engine Flex, which grants clients the flexibility to manage asset storage through decentralized solutions, such as IPFS.

Invisible Web3 Experiences by Mojito

Mojito, a consumer engagement platform, has garnered attention in the traditional art world, partly due to the crypto expertise of its founders, Matthew Iles and Amanda Cassatt, both Consensys alumni and marketing experts. Mojito extends a suite of white-label web3 services, including crypto wallets, mints, drops, marketplaces, and token-gated reward systems.

Mojito is versatile, catering to a diverse range of brands and companies of all sizes. While they can assist prominent names seeking a strong metaverse presence, their expertise doesn’t stop there. Renowned auction houses such as Sotheby’s (that was in turn a backer in Mojito’s $20 million USD raise) and esteemed galleries like Pace—both Mojito clients—already benefit from their services. Moreover, small creative agencies looking to lead in web3 consulting can harness Mojito’s comprehensive tools to amplify their offerings. This is in line with how global brands, like Adidas, are charting their course in the metaverse, underscoring a broader industry shift.

Iles highlighted in an email conversation that “Traditional art galleries are largely offline, lacking in e-commerce proficiency and customer data.” Beyond creating new markets for digital art, Iles believes NFTs offer traditional galleries enhanced online engagement capabilities and richer customer data.

It’s worth noting that the tools and platforms mentioned above aren’t solely designed for big institutions or high-profile galleries; they cater to a broad spectrum of users. To suggest that the art market’s primary participants are only major galleries and auction houses is an oversimplification. Numerous talented artists opt for independence, while others struggle to secure representation. Moreover, many smaller galleries can’t afford the cost of showcasing at art fairs or prominent online platforms.

Affordable service rates, a wide range of technologies and customizable packages help small businesses grow sustainably. The tools highlighted above offer diverse avenues for all art world participants to carve out their online identities—whether they’re selling NFTs, sculptures, paintings, or even poems.

Platforms crafted by multidisciplinary teams, bridging the divide between technologists and art enthusiasts, will be pivotal for the art world’s future. They hold the key to broader inclusivity, fostering a more vibrant and healthy market.

Ramshackle Dwellings by Simon Laveuve Reach Skyward in an Imagined Post-Apocalyptic Future

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Ramshackle Dwellings by Simon Laveuve Reach Skyward in an Imagined Post-Apocalyptic Future

Detail of “Le Rocher / IDF2068” (2023), mixed media, 67 x 20 x 20 centimeters. All images © Simon Laveuve, shared with permission

Paris-based artist Simon Laveuve imagines a world filled with anarchic architecture in his ongoing series of detailed, miniature shelters (previously). At 1/35 scale, his recent works continue to explore the possibilities of dwelling in remote or inhospitable places, incorporating tiny tire swings, rope ladders, furniture, and art. The ramshackle, towering structures contain wooden doors, scrawled messages, and a variety of utilitarian objects, suggesting the industrious work of unseen hands. While devoid of figures, an abandoned coffee cup or a door left ajar suggests the inhabitants are not too far away.

In his piece titled “Le Rocher,” which translates to “The Rock,” the artist explores notions of time. “The rock is a survivor. Cataclysm, tsunami, storm. He was there,” he says in a statement. “He saw everything, heard everything. When land and sea give birth to a new world, the rock, against wind and tide, will be there. It’s at the end that everything begins (again).”

Explore Laveuve’s sculptures in more detail on his website, and follow Instagram for updates.

 

A miniature dwelling sculpture featuring numerous details like a ship mast, ladders, and steps.

“Le Rocher / IDF2068”

Two images of of a miniature dwelling sculpture featuring a wooden shack on a giant vine.

Left: “Voir Loin / Hors-série” (2023), mixed media, 47 x 15 x 15 centimeters. Right: Detail of “Voir Loin / Hors-série”

A miniature dwelling sculpture featuring numerous details like a rope swing and wooden windows.

“La Guérite / IDF2068”

Detail of miniature dwelling sculpture featuring numerous details like miniature painters and wooden details.

Detail of “La Guérite / IDF2068”

Two images of of a miniature dwelling sculpture featuring numerous details like a ladder and tire swing.

Details of “La Guérite / IDF2068” (2023), mixed media, 55 x 12 x 12 centimeters

Detail of “Le Rocher / IDF2068”

A miniature dwelling sculpture featuring numerous details like ladders, signs, and paintings.

Detail of “Le Rocher / IDF2068”

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Celebrity Memorabilia Becomes the Star of Auction Season

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Celebrity Memorabilia Becomes the Star of Auction Season
image

As the art market wobbles, estate sales are filling holes in the auction calendar.

Within the living room where she entertained heads of state and celebrities, the broadcast journalist Barbara Walters exhibited two pictures in gilded frames. One was a commissioned portrait of herself in a luxurious gown. The other was a painting of a stoic Egyptian woman in a black head scarf — created in 1891 by one of the most beloved painters in American history, John Singer Sargent.

After the iconic interviewer died last year, her family decided to keep her portrait and sell the Sargent as part of an $8 million trove of artworks, jewelry and dresses featured in a charity auction at Bonhams on Nov. 6 with an online sale running from Oct. 29 through Nov. 7. And though the Sargent painting is the marquee lot of the collection, with a high estimate of $1.8 million — another female portrait from his trip to Egypt hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — auctioneers expect fans of Walters to compete in bidding wars for less prestigious items like cutlery and serving plates.

John Singer Sargent’s “Egyptian Woman (Coin Necklace),” from 1891, hung in Barbara Walters’s home and will be sold at Bonhams in October. via Bonhams

From the sale of Elton John’s artwork and pianos, coming to Christie’s early next year, to photographs of Madonna going on the company’s auction block next month, celebrity memorabilia and estate sales are headlining the coming auction season as major consignors wait to see if the weakening art market will rebound. The prognosis looks grim, according to experts, when accounting for the lackluster performance of spring auctions and the more recent string of disappointments at the September art fairs.

“It’s a market based on confidence,” said Bruno Vinciguerra, chief executive of Bonhams. “And we have a lot of uncertainty because of global tensions and interest rates.”

Natasha Degen, chairwoman of art market studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said that celebrity sales have proliferated in recent years because of their “unparalleled ability to attract attention, and, thus, to boost prices.”

“If auction houses are having a hard time acquiring the kind of blue-chip works that break records, celebrity estate sales can reliably earn press attention and pique public interest,” Degen explained.

via Bonhams
via Bonhams

So far this fall nothing has materialized that compares with the gangbusters twin estate sales of Paul G. Allen’s art collection in 2022, where Christie’s topped $1.5 billion and where five paintings were purchased for more than $100 million, including works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne and Gustav Klimt.

The best to surface comes to Sotheby’s on Nov. 8 and 9. The auction house announced its fall season with a Picasso painting estimated in excess of $120 million, coming from the estate of the philanthropist and art patron Emily Fisher Landau. If that price is achieved for the work, “Femme à la Montre,” it would be the second-highest price fetched by a Picasso at auction, falling nearly $60 million short of another of his paintings that sold in 2015.

Spending sprees in the fall might have left buyers and sellers with a collective hangover. When the spring auction season rolled through in May, there was a noticeable absence of modern masterpieces by artists like Warhol, Picasso and Lichtenstein. Three paintings by Jasper Johns offered at Christie’s that month failed to reach their low estimate, signaling perhaps that estimates were still too high, or that demand was misjudged.

Charles F. Stewart, the chief executive of Sotheby’s, told The New York Times in an interview at the time that the market was experiencing scarcity issues. “Collectors who can hold onto them longer will,” he said. “And when they do come, it will be a relatively small group of people who can afford them.”

With the ultrawealthy benched, the real electricity of this year’s auctions may belongs to the estate sales, in which prices hover within the thousands and low millions of dollars, bringing more bidders into play. And when the consignments are coming from celebrities, the battle for memorabilia gets heated.

Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby’s

A recent auction of the heirlooms of rock vocalist Freddie Mercury at Sotheby’s nearly quadrupled its initial high estimate of $14.2 million to achieve $50.4 million. According to the company, there were more than 41,800 bids placed on 1406 lots. It was the most bidders they’ve had in almost two decades, since the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate sale in 2004.

The star of the show? A silver mustache comb no bigger than a pinkie. The collectible was originally priced with a high estimate of about $760 but soared to nearly $194,000 with buyer’s fees — selling better than some paintings from the musician’s collection. And there were other tchotchkes that vaulted over their estimates, including a neon telephone for $51,000, a group of 29 cat ornaments for $39,000 and a common book of poetry for $89,000.

“It’s about finding stories that people love,” said Gabriel Heaton, a specialist who worked on the sale. “One thing people love about Freddie was his refusal to take himself entirely seriously. And the mustache comb speaks to that, as did our wonderful mustache over the entrance to our auction.”

via Sotheby’s
via Sotheby’s
Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby’s

The sale was a reminder of how celebrity bestows importance on the mundane. Last November when Stair Galleries held an estate sale in Hudson, N.Y., for the writer, Joan Didion, even a group of shells and beach pebbles sold for $7,000. Those sales clearly made an impression; the small auctioneer has since offered other estates, including those of the actors Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, and the collection of the fashion editor André Leon Talley. (A Christie’s sale of Talley’s belongings brought in $1.4 million.)

Earlier this week, the auction house offered Wilt Chamberlain’s golden Los Angeles Lakers’ jersey, which sold for $4.9 million with fee. And the art collection of the French actor Gérard Depardieu also sold at the auction house Ader for $4.2 million.

Despite the relatively low total estimate of $8 million on the Barbara Walters collection, the major auction houses were competing through the summer for the deal. (Christie’s lost the Walters collection to Bonhams, a smaller company that has developed a specialty in estate sales.)

“When it comes to making the most of a celebrated collection, we are good,” Vinciguerra, chief executive of Bonhams, said. “Our salesroom will look like a history book with pictures of Barbara everywhere.”

The company is hoping to replicate the success it had selling the library of the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Bonhams had estimated the collection at $60,000, but the books ended up selling for $2.4 million.

“We are talking about objects that were not necessarily unique, but she was someone respected and loved in this country,” Vinciguerra explained.

Degen, the art market expert, pointed out that “even when these auctions don’t net as much as regularly scheduled fine art sales, they help bring attention to the auction house and burnish its brand.”

Bonhams is hoping Walters fans compete for her upholstered armchairs in a zebra pattern and a commemorative vase honoring the thousandth episode of her morning talk show, “The View.”

Some of the jewelry for sale is deeply personal. That includes Walters’s engagement ring from the television producer Merv Adelson, whom she married and divorced twice between 1981 and 1992. The ring and its emerald-cut diamond of 13.84 carats has a high estimate of $900,000.

“Our home was always filled with interesting and beautiful reminders of her incredible, diverse life,” Jacqueline Danforth, Walters’s daughter, said in a statement. “I know she would find comfort that these pieces she cherished so much will be enjoyed and cared for.”

Best Indigenous-Made Goods

By in Art World News

Best Indigenous-Made Goods

“Shop local” is a popular buzz phrase these days, and with good reason: When you buy from an Arizona business, significantly more of the store’s revenue stays in-state to bolster the economy. Practical Art in Central Phoenix has been exemplifying the phrase for 15 years, selling the work of some of the city’s best artists, including Ann Morton, Janel Garza, Carrie Marill, Christopher Jagmin, Jon Arvizu and dozens more in the form of paintings, prints, jewelry, T-shirts, ceramics, sculptures and kitchenware. If you can’t get enough of Practical Art’s merchandise, you can join its Art Club, where a moderate fee gets you one new item per month, plus exclusive offers and invitations to special events.

‘Art’ you ready? Likhang Habi Market Fair returning in October

By in Art World News

‘Art’ you ready? Likhang Habi Market Fair returning in October

MANILA, Philippines – Immerse yourself in a “World of Woven Wonders” at Likhang Habi Market Fair, running from October 13 to 15 at the Glorietta Activity Center in Makati City!

The artisanal craft fair organized by HABI: Philippine Textile Council returns on its 13th year with 72 brands from all over the Philippines, from NCR to Mimaropa to Davao. Guests can expect handwoven and handcrafted products showcasing Filipino skill and craftsmanship at their best – from textiles to sustainable shoes to limited edition bags, home decor, jewelry, and more.

BALUD CRAFTS. A traditional handwoven outfit. Courtesy of HABI

Brands like Cariñosa, Filip + Inna, The Manila Collectible Co., Abre Linea, DITTA SANDICO, EN Barong Filipinio, Idyllic Summers, Ifugao Ikat, Kalinga Weaving, Kaya Mana, TAGPI, and Wear Your Culture will be there, as well as exhibitors from Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Aside from established vendors, guests will also be able to discover up-and-comers in the crafts and textiles industry. 

MILVIDAS CHRISTMAS BALLS. Crochet balls in different colors used as decor. Courtesy of HABI

The local art scene will also be represented, as the fair will feature installations by Paul Jaytana, a local multimedia artist. It will also showcase submissions to the Lourdes Montinola Piña Weaving and the Eloisa Hizon Gomez Abaca competitions. These competitions recognize the finest local weavers who work with piña and abaca fabrics. The winners for each competition will be announced on October 13 and 14, respectively.

CAMISA AMANA. Model is wearing the Inday top. Photo courtesy of HABI

HABI: Philippine Textile Council is a non-governmental organization committed to highlighting the value of local craftsmanship since 2009. They said that this year’s edition will “be bigger and better than ever before.”

CRAFTED PILIPINAS: T’boli Abaca Ikat Pillows. Photo courtesy of HABI

The organization states that they are “tasked to preserve, promote, and enhance Philippine textiles through education, communication, and research using public and private resources.” 

They held the first Likhang Habi Market Fair in 2010. Last year, it was also held at Glorietta from October 14 to 16, and it was the first on-site fair since the pandemic. – Rappler.com

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