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Black artists are pictured like never before at New York’s spring sales next week after years of being overlooked and underrated, and several are set to set new records for their work.
For Sanford Biggers, a black sculptor whose 25-foot-tall bronze “Oracle” statue has just been installed at Rockefeller Center, the development is a long-awaited “fix”.
“For a long time the work was overlooked, but the work has actually been fantastic for decades,” he said.
The massive Black Lives Matter protests that swept across the United States and the world last year in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd have contributed to a reassessment already underway, according to experts and artists.
Born in the United States, Jean-Michel Basquiat, of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, becomes the first black painter to make the headlines of the main auctions of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, 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 at virtual auctions.
The late Robert Colescott, renowned for his expressionist paintings dealing with black identity and history, is expected to increase his record tenfold with his “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook” from 1975 estimated at $ 12 million.
The works of Norman Lewis, Mark Bradford and Kerry James Marshall are all expected to exceed $ 1 million.
David Galperin, evening sales manager for contemporary art at Sotheby’s in New York City, believes that a “historic reassessment” and increasing visibility in galleries and museums is bolstering the popularity of marginalized artists.
“There is a sense of increased market appreciation and demand which correlates with the prices we see at auctions,” he told AFP.
“Much of the art we see today could not have happened without a group of artists who broke through and somehow changed the dialogue around art,” said Ana Maria Celis, Head of 21st Century Evening Sales at Christie’s.
She considers Jordan Casteel, 32, among the heirs of this movement, which “challenges existing notions of what art should say or how it should be done”.
“The art that is created today by these artists is a reflection of the times. They want to advance conversations that might have been uncomfortable, ”Celis said.
Sherman Edmiston, president of the Essie Green Gallery in New York City, which has promoted 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 trailblazer, while Sean Combs, Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams and Kanye West are also recognized as great collectors.
“It’s all about culture. Hip-hop was a cultural phenomenon and they were the first to embrace it and create taste,” he told AFP.
Another factor was the shift in the 1990s from an art market to a collectors market to an investor market.
As the supply of works by traditional artists, almost all white, has dried up, investors have turned to minority artists at attractive prices to boost their portfolios.
“That’s when noir art really started to take off,” Edmiston said.
Artists like Basquiat, Marshall, and Jacob Lawrence have, in their own ways, opened a window to an element of American life that was lacking in traditional art – the experience of being black in the United States.
The surge in buying works by black artists, which has resulted in a steady flow of records over the past three years, has seen prices go well above their original estimates, a rare occurrence in the UK. best auctions.
“There’s a tendency like ‘If it’s black it’s great’,” Edmiston said, adding that he favors a distinction between artists and the quality of their work.
He even thinks the market could overheat. “At the same time, I realize that I could be far away, and most likely I am,” he says with a smile.
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