Art Market Monitor

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Sam Gilliam Sales Up Ahead of Mnuchin Show

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Quietly and without much fanfare, the market for works of art by Sam Gilliam has been on fire. In the last month, three of his top 5 prices have been achieved, including a record set at $684,500 at Sotheby’s September 27th mid-season sale for Rays from 1971 which was estimated at $100-150k. Also in September, a DC auction house offered Fan Fire IV from 1970 with an estimate of 100-150k. The buyer took it home for $332,400. Earlier this month, Rubiyat from 1973 was offered at Swann’s with a more modest $60-90k estimate. It only took $191,000 to bring the work home that day.

The art market functions in mysterious ways but sales often increase in front of shows that are expected to have a strong effect on the artist’s prominence. It just so happens that Mnuchin Gallery’s Sukanya Rajaratnam has been putting together a show that opens in early November.

Here are some details from the press release:Continue Reading

Artelligence Podcast: Sam Gilliam Interviewed by Jonathan Binstock

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Sirius XM produced this interview between artist Sam Gilliam and Jonathan Binstock, the director of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery and a Gilliam scholar.

On the occasion of Gilliam’s return to the Venice Biennale 45 years after he represented the United States, this far-ranging conversation covers the artist’s entire career. Born in Louisville, Kentucky where Cassius Clay, Sr. (Muhammed Ali’s father) was a prominent painter, Gilliam encountered a European refugee Ulfert Wilke at the Louisville and became his studio assistant.

He also eventually encountered the Gutai artists in Japan, Bob Thompson and moved eventually to Washington, DC where Kenneth Noland was at the center of the Color Field movement and the city was “a town of connection.”

Throughout this conversation Gilliam talks of the lifelong struggle to make art and make a life as an artist. His career followed no clear trajectory but has been punctuated by encounters with an endless cast of 20th Century artistic influences culminating in his most recent turn in the center stage.

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Second Chances for Artists in Venice

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The Wall Street Journal highlights some of the artists whose careers are getting a second look at Venice this year. For octogenarian Sam Gilliam, the return to Venice after half a century later comes at a time that his reputation and market are in recrudescence:

Along with giving younger artists their breakout moment, Venice gives curators a chance to validate older artists who may have been overlooked. Expect a reassessment of Irma Blank, an artist born in Germany in 1934 who now lives in Italy and is known for transcribing entire books and newspapers into slender script that’s unreadable—a gesture that turns language into line. Her dealer Alison Jacques said Ms. Blank will show some of her earliest pieces from the late 1960s. Sam Gilliam, a Washington-based painter, is also making a return appearance 45 years after he became the second African-American artist to show in the biennial. This time, his dealer Kurt Mueller said Mr. Gilliam is making a “spectacular” new painting that nods to his earlier Color Field breakthroughs.

The Olympics of the Art World  (WSJ)

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