With the pandemic upending most elements of the artwork world this yr, prime public sale homes tailored their marquee gross sales to a brand new digital format, ushering in an period of live-streamed mega-auctions. Within the course of, data had been notched for artists with rising markets.
At Sotheby’s, in the home’s debut live-streamed public sale in June, a key work by Summary Expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler from the gathering of seller Ginny Williams sparked a bidding conflict, ultimately promoting for a report value of $7.9 million. Not too lengthy after, Christie’s set a milestone for Ruth Asawa throughout its July “ONE” sale. That very same month, throughout Sotheby’s “Rembrandt to Richter” sale, a newly restituted uncommon Fifteenth-century cassone panel by Italian renaissance grasp Paolo Uccello bought for 4 occasions its low estimate, realizing £2.4 million ($3.1 million), surpassing Uccello’s earlier report value of $252,900.
Elsewhere out there, Swann’s African American artwork division set the yr off with a brand new excessive, reaching its first white-glove sale with the artwork assortment of the Johnson Publishing Firm, the writer of Ebony and Jet. The sale set 29 new artist data, together with a brand new excessive for a set of pictures by Carrie Mae Weems.
By the top of 2020, the December night gross sales staged on the prime public sale homes set new highs for established and rising Black artists comparable to Barkley Hendricks, Mickalene Thomas, and Amoako Boafo, amongst others. A survey of those data and extra follows beneath.