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The Headlines
THE BEAT GOES ON. Despite the absolute slaughterhouse in the stock market on Wednesday, Phillips held an evening auction of 20th-century and contemporary art in Manhattan that saw all 36 lots sell (one was withdrawn pre-sale), including an $85 million Jean-Michel Basquiat. That all rang up a record total for the firm: $226 million. “The result marks a breakthrough for the third-largest international auction house, which competes against Sotheby’s and Christie’s for select consignments,” Angelica Villa writes in her ARTnews report. The Basquiat, from 1982, was being sold by Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, who bought it just six years ago from Christie’s for $57.3 million. It is now the priciest work that Phillips has ever sold. New records were set for Yayoi Kusama and Robin F. Williams on the block. For all the action, head to ARTnews.
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A NEW SIGNING. Last week, Ernie Barnes’s 1976 painting The Sugar Shack catapulted over its $150,000 low estimate at Christie’s in New York, finishing at a jaw-dropping $15.3 million. Now the estate of Barnes, who died in 2009, has finalized a deal to be represented by two major Manhattan galleries, Andrew Kreps and Ortuzar Projects, Alex Greenberger reports in ARTnews. While plenty of market watchers were astonished by the price that the work drew, the football player–turned–painter has long had an avid following, particularly in the Black community, for his vivid scenes of sports competitions and social gatherings. “For a huge amount of people, it’s not at all a rediscovery—quite the opposite,” Ales Ortuzar, the Ortuzar Projects founder, said.
The Digest
At Christie’s in Paris on Wednesday, a drawing by Michelangelo went for about €23.2 million ($24.3 million), a record price for a drawing by the artist—but short of the lot’s $30 million estimate. The piece was discovered in a French private collection during an inventory in 2019. [AFP]
Are you art rich but cash poor? Gurr Johns Capital, a new venture from the advisory firm Gurr Johns, is entering the art loan market, and will extend loans of 40 to 70 percent of the value of a piece. [Financial Times]
The ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in beautiful Ishøj, Denmark, has hired Marie Nipper as its next director. Previously the director of the Copenhagen Contemporary, she follows Christian Gether, who led the institution for a quarter-century. [Press Release/e-flux]
Sculptor Veronica Ryan, who is in the current Whitney Biennial and in the running for the Turner Prize, got the profile treatment from Siddhartha Mitter. “I want to talk about psychological resonance, about the extended self, and how we relate to objects that relate to us and the wider culture,” she said. [The New York Times]
The pandemic nixed the most recent edition of the Jeju Biennale, but it will return with a new show on that tranquil South Korean island in November, with works by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kang Yi-yun, Wangechi Mutu, Rachel Rose, and many more. [The Korea Herald]
PHOTO FINISH. The Guardian has published an array of charismatic pictures of Chinese youth by Shanghai’s Luo Yang, and the Smithsonian Magazine is featuring awe-inspiring images taken by the late Chip Clark behind the scenes at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
The Kicker
A PALATIAL GETAWAY. Great news for fans of great homes: Marble Hill, which was commissioned by one Henrietta Howard in 1724, in London, is about to reopen after a pandemic closure, the Art Newspaper reports, and it looks glorious. Howard, who was at one point a mistress of the man who would become George II, apparently built the place as a way to get away from her “drunken spendthrift first husband,” Maev Kennedy writes. Anna Eavis, of English Heritage , told Kennedy that he was “a real stinker.” Howard’s home can now be enjoyed by all, with no admission fee. [TAN]
Source: artnews.com