The New York Times Profiles Marlene Dumas as living female painter who fetched the highest price at auction.

Strange timing to be profiling Dumas who had her moment on the auction market some three years ago. But the story serves as a solid reminder in the run-up to the London sales that we live in an age of micro-markets where a painter will see their work have a two-year rise in value.

Here is how author Deborah Solomon describes Dumas’s own spin on the secondary market:

For all their moral gravity, Dumas’s paintings have led a separate, rather flashy existence in the more commercial precincts of the art world. In February 2005, at Christie’s in London, “The Teacher (sub a)” (1987) — a large, horizontal group portrait that turns a sentiment-laden class picture from her own childhood into a bruising reflection on authority — sold for $3.34 million. Virtually overnight, Dumas became “the world’s most expensive living female artist,” as the blogs reported, Read the rest of this entry »