What model was reading an Alison Gingeras book in the south of France? What's the latest gallery decamping to Tribeca? Read on for answers.
Every Thursday afternoon, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate at [email protected].
Last October, the New York real estate blog Curbed announced a splashy listing—a true gem of a building in the West Village priced at a hefty $21.8 million. The property is a five-story townhouse at 78 Morton Street, built in 1864 as a firehouse, with a landmarked facade still boasting a firetruck-sized garage and firehouse dirt-red bricks. Like any splashy real estate worth its salt, it also has a nickname: “Red Rover.” And in addition to the undeniable novelty of, you know, living in a firehouse, there’s a large terrace, four bedrooms, proximity to Hudson River Park, and a gym.
Here’s the good news: gallery-goers will one day get to see the place for themselves. The house is off the market, bought for the asking price, and Wet Paint can reveal that the buyer is Beth Redmond, a collector and art director currently based in Los Angeles who plans to turn the 19th-century structure into an exhibition space. There’s 7,281 square feet on the ground floor and ample high ceilings (because it’s a firehouse).
78 Morton Street. Photo courtesy Beth Redmond.
Over the past few years, Redmond has become the type of person who gets tapped for those “Best and Brightest Young Collectors to Watch” listicles. She’s served on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art director’s circle, MOCA’s director’s forum, and the Brooklyn Museum’s contemporary arts committee. Her house in LA earned a feature in Architectural Digest last year, and according to the images, she manages to mix high-octane design with an eclectic smattering of work on the walls.
Spore-like sofas made by the Campana Brothers in collaboration with KAWS dot the floors, while work by artists such as Marilyn Minter, Daniel Arsham, and Gina Beavers adorn the walls. A rep for Redmond said she also collects Austin Lee, David Shrigley, Sarah Lucas, and many, many others. Who knows what she’ll show at the new space, which opens next year. But a $21.8 million former firehouse is an upgrade from Redmond’s former NYC digs. As the AD feature noted, she used to live in the Greenwich Hotel full time. Come to think of it: That’s not too shabby, either.
When the portrait painter Barkley L. Hendricks died in 2017, he was having an institutional revival, which began with the acclaimed touring retrospective “Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool” first organized by Trevor Schoonmaker at the Nasher Museum of Art (at Wet Paint alma mater Duke University). Hendricks’s market, too, was gaining traction, as large-scale works started selling at auction for prices in the mid-six-figures. After his death, demand skyrocketed. Take Yocks (1975), which was purchased at Sotheby’s in May 2017 by a European collector for $942,000—only to be sold again at Sotheby’s two years later, this time for $3.74 million, a new auction record.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Yocks (1975). Photo courtesy Sotheby’s.
That price now seems quaint. Sources tell Wet Paint that, during lockdown, a collector quietly offered one of Hendricks’s prized large portraits privately, and found a buyer for the astounding price of $14 million. That would shatter his previous record, as well as make Hendricks one of the few contemporary Black artists to ever sell work in the eight figures, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kerry James Marshall.
It’s unclear who bought the work, but there’s been a decent amount of Hendricks activity this summer, despite the fact that longtime dealer Jack Shainman had to postpone a would-be slam-dunk May show of basketball-themed paintings called “In the Paint.” Up in Canada, where competent leadership has kept the virus at bay, Bob Rennie’s private museum in Vancouver is hosting a show of work by Hendricks and Lorna Simpson, all from his collection.
In a statement, Shainman said he could not confirm the $14 million sale, but stated, “I can confirm private secondary sales for Barkley’s figurative paintings have far surpassed auction records.”
We have winners! After the rare stumper last week, when no one could identify a pair of artworks at a collector’s house, some eagle-eyed readers correctly identified the painting that Kate Moss was standing in front of. It was Rene Ricard‘s In The Half Life of a Drug (2003), first offered by the Chelsea gallery Cheim & Read that same year.
Here are the winners: Knell Company founder Peter Knell; Jack Eisenberg, a director at the Bushwick gallery Clearing; the art-advising quiz maestro Meredith Darrow; the artist James Benjamin Franklin; Half Gallery founder Bill Powers (who is actually staging a two-person show with Ricard and Natalie Frank at the gallery in October); Brooklyn Museum fellow Bix Archer; artist Chad Mundie; and the art advisor Ludovica Capobianco.
Here’s this week’s clue. These are two works by the same artist. Name the artist—as well as the owner of the first work and the owner of the second work, both of whom are prominent artists that you all know very well.
Email answers to [email protected]. Winners will get everlasting glory, acceptance into the Pop Quiz pantheon of esoteric art-world knowledge, an outdoor martini at one of the last good places left in New York, and one of those Wet Paint ball caps we keep threatening to make.
7 Franklin Place. Photo courtesy Instagram.
Nicelle Beauchene is the latest gallery to decamp to Tribeca, as the Lower East Side outfit prepares to inaugurate, in October, a grand space at 7 Franklin Place in a deal brokered by Tribeca real-estate guru Jonathan Travis … Critic and publisher Stephanie LaCava’s novel The Superrationals is set to be published in October from Semiotext(e)—and it’s so hard to put down that, halfway into it, your diligent scribe had to throw the galley to the other side of Wet Paint HQ in order to finish this column … Berlin-based critic Camila McHugh and New York-based curator Robert Franklin have launched Art for Black Lives, which offers A4 art digital prints by the likes of Puppies Puppies, Lawrence Weiner, Hadi Fallahpisheh, and Amy Sillman in editions of ten for $300 each, with all profits going to organizations benefitting Black trans lives … Graduate students at Columbia University‘s art-history department sent a letter to the deans insisting that they get extensions to complete their degrees and have fees waived—peer institutions such as Harvard, Brown, NYU, and Yale have made similar offerings … Artist Madeline Hollander worked with singer and influencer Lil Miquela on choreographing her new video, even though Lil Miquela is, strictly speaking, not a real person …
Lil Miquela x Madeline Hollander. Photo courtesy Instagram.
Suki Waterhouse reading Alison Gingeras. Photo courtesy Instagram.
*** Model Suki Waterhouse reading curator Alison Gingeras’s book “Totally My Ass and Other Essays” while vacationing at the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat in the South of France *** Lehmann Maupin co-owner David Maupin and his husband, editor Stefano Tonchi, lunching in Maine with Martha Stewart *** Rapper A$AP Rocky at the Canal Street watch and necklace spot Popular Jewelry *** Aby Rosen sitting by his yacht’s on-deck pool while docked on Martha’s Vineyard (though wasn’t he just in Formentera? It’s hard to keep track) ***
Aby Rosen on a boat. Photo courtesy Instagram.
A number of writers, dealers, and gallery owners at the original Soho art-world hang, Fanelli’s, which is hitting its stride as it takes over all of Mercer Street *** Ramiken founder Mike Egan giving tours to drop-ins at the gallery Saturday, all of whom trekked to Bushwick to see Sven Sachsalber’s swell show, a series of gloriously hole-sliced Swiss racing suits mounted on canvas *** Bella Hadid in a bodysuit by Ottolinger that sports on it a painting by LA artist Julien Nguyen ***
Bella Hadid. Photo courtesy Instagram.
