NEW YORK —
Black artists are represented like never before at New York’s spring sales next
week after years of being overlooked and underappreciated, with several
expected to set new records for their works.
اضافة اعلان
American-born
Jean-Michel Basquiat, of Haitian and Puerto
Rican descent, becomes the first Black painter to headline both Christie’s and
Sotheby’s main auctions, on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
The 1983 “In This Case,” part of his trilogy of “skull”
paintings, and his 1982 work “Versus Medici” are expected to fetch around $50
million each during the virtual auctions.
The late
Robert Colescott, renowned for expressionist
paintings that dealt with Black identity and history, is expected to increase
his record tenfold, with his 1975 “George Washington Carver Crossing the
Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook” estimated at up to $12
million.
Works by Norman Lewis, Mark Bradford, and Kerry James
Marshall are all expected to top $1 million.
David Galperin, head of evening sales for contemporary art
at Sotheby’s in New York, said a “historical reevaluation” and growing
visibility in galleries and museums is boosting the popularity of marginalized
artists.
“There’s a sense of increased market appreciation and demand
that correlates with prices that we are seeing at auction,” he told AFP.
For Sanford Biggers, a Black sculptor whose 25-foot-tall
bronze “Oracle” statue has just been installed at the Rockefeller Center, the
development is a long overdue “correction.”
“For a long time the work was overlooked but the work has
been actually fantastic for decades,” he said.
The massive Black Lives Matter protests that swept the
United States and the world last year following the police murder of George
Floyd have contributed to a reassessment that was already underway, experts and
artists say.
Sherman Edmiston, president of New York’s Essie Green
Gallery, which has been promoting Black artists since 1979, says the
breakthrough has happened in recent years, in part thanks to the emergence of
prominent Black collectors.
Jay-Z, Kanye
Rapper and producer Swizz Beatz is considered a pioneer,
while Sean Combs, Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams, and Kanye West are also recognized
as major collectors.
“It’s all about culture. Hip Hop was a cultural phenomenon
and they were early adopters and tastemakers,” he told AFP.
Another contributing factor was the shift in the 1990s from
art being a collectors’ market to an investors’ market.
As the supply of works by traditional artists, almost all
white, dried up, investors turned to minority artists at attractive prices to
boost their portfolios.
“That’s when Black art began to really take off,” said
Edmiston.
Artists such as Basquiat, Marshall, and Jacob Lawrence have,
in their own way, opened a window into an element of American life that was
missing from mainstream art — the experience of being Black in the United
States.
“A lot of the art that we’re seeing today could not have
happened without a group of artists that kind of broke through and sort of
changed the dialogue around art,” said Ana Maria Celis, head of 21st century
evening sales at Christie’s.
She considers 32-year-old Jordan Casteel as among the heirs
of this movement, which is “challenging existing notions of what art should say
or how it should be made.”
“The art that is being made today by these artists are
reflective of the times. They want to push forward conversations that might
have been uncomfortable,” said Celis.
The push to buy works by Black artists, resulting in a
steady stream of records over the past three years, has seen prices go way
above their initial estimates, a rare phenomenon at top auctions.
“There’s a tendency along the lines of, ‘If it’s Black it’s
great,’” said Edmiston, adding that he favors a distinction between artists and
the quality of their work.
He even thinks the market might be overheating. “At the same
time I realize I could be way off, and most likely, I am,” he said, smiling.
Read more
Trending stories
.jpg)
.jpg)
