What high-flying art collectors will be bidding on next year
Art fairs to visit
?Despite some cancellations, several worthwhile art fairs are still (at the time of writing) on the international calendar over the next three months. These include the London Art Fair in Islington, with a focus on photography and a loan exhibition of contemporary art by women artists from the New Hall art collection from the Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (20-24 April); the Indian Art Fair in Delhi (April 28 – May 1); Spain’s premier contemporary art fair, ARCO in Madrid (23-27 February), the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Marrakech (3-6 March), and Art Basel Hong Kong (24-30 March).
For buyers who want to venture outside the mainstream into the realms of the mediumistic, the untutored, the physically and mentally disabled and less expensive, the Outsider Art Fair in New York (3-6 March) beckons. Making its first appearance since the fair began 30 years ago is London’s Gallery of Everything with an exhibition curated by its founder, James Brett, which reflects on ‘the first flurries of activity’ following the birth of the term ‘art brut’, coined by artist Jean Dubuffet to describe the flavour of self-taught rawness.
Brett will single out the best, museum quality works by the prolific ‘Scottie’ Wilson – whose fantastical drawings were collected in the 1950s by both Dubuffet and Picasso, mixed with other outsiders from the early to mid-20th century such as the Haitian, Hector Hyppolite (included in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ exhibition, to be shown at Tate Modern in February), and the quirky, flat perspective views of everyday life in the 1920s by Congolese artist Albert Lubaki.
A controversial painting
Perhaps the most controversial single painting continues to be Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which made $450 million when sold at Christie’s New York in 2017. Ever since, questions have been asked about its authenticity – how much of it is the master, how much by his pupils and followers, and how much by present day restorers.
The latest bombshell for Christie’s to fend off, published in November, was the view by experts at one of Europe’s top Museums, the Prado in Madrid, that it was a combination of the last two. 2022 will undoubtedly see this story unfurl a little more, but how or when is anyone’s guess.
Old Master blockbuster
Staying with Old Masters and following the record $92 million for Young Man Holding a Roundel by Botticelli in January, the brightest light on the horizon is the sale of Man of Sorrows (photographed, top), a bust length portrait of Christ, crowned with thorns and a halo of angels - a rare late, more realistic Botticelli masterpiece inspired by his enthusiasm for the fanatical monk, Girolamo Savonarola.
It was last sold in 1963 to an American collector, when it was considered by Botticelli’s workshop, for ￡10,000. Now fully attributed it has an estimate of $40 million. Watch the bidding live from New York on Sotheby’s website on 27 January from 10am EST (3pm GMT).
Young painter to watch
One of the most eagerly anticipated contemporary art selling exhibitions is for London’s latest superstar, Flora Yukhnovich. Still only 31, Yukhnovich is heavily influenced by the 18th century Rococo art of Tiepolo, Watteau and Boucher, and has caught the eye of contemporary art collectors who like the Old Master-cum-Modern look. To say her market rise has been meteoric could be an understatement.
Last October a large 2020 painting, estimated at ￡60,000, sold at Sotheby’s in London for ￡2.3 million. It had cost in the region of ￡30,000 from London gallery, Parafin, a year earlier. See her latest work at Victoria Miro ( 1 – 26 March).
New York transfer
The fashionably figurative 41-year-old American artist Jenna Gribbon paints intimate, slightly voyeuristic, sensual paintings of friends in various stages of undress. In market terms, Gribbon is one to keep an eye on. Since coming out as queer about four years ago (she has an 11- year-old son but her partner and most frequent model became singer songwriter, Mackenzie Scott) Gribbon has been making sell-out shows in New York. This summer, a small painting of a bikini clad girl squatting on a beach that had been estimated at ￡3,000 by Christie’s sold for ￡30,000.
Within days, Massimo De Carlo, which has galleries in Milan, London, Hong Kong and Paris, announced its representation of Gribbon alongside the Fredericks & Freiser gallery in New York, and in September a slightly larger self-portrait sold in New York for a triple estimate $60,500. Her first exhibition in London (prices $20,000 - $70,000) opens at Massimo De Carlo on 20 Jan.
Comeback queen
Could it be revival time for one of Britain’s favourite lesbian artists, Maggi Hambling? It seems strange that someone so widely known in the UK – ever since her first hilarious, false moustachioed appearances on the TV quiz show Galleries in the 1980’s to her more recent controversial sculptures of scallops on Aldeburgh beach and portraits of Oscar Wilde and Mary Wollstonecraft – is only now dipping her toes into the American art market at the age of 76. Her gallery, Marlborough, once a powerhouse in the contemporary art market having been Francis Bacon’s primary gallery, has been through trying times lately with warring families on its board, and losing one of its pre-eminent artists, Paula Rego, to Victoria Miro.
But with this Hambling show (March 10 – April 30), a tsunami of swirling, frothy seascapes and precipitous mountain landscapes, marks a bold move to introduce a new, though fully developed personality to the bustling New York scene. Last year, what would have been her first US show was cancelled because of the pandemic, but then art selling website, Artsy, reported there had been a 16-fold increase in enquiries about her. Perhaps her time has now come.
