Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops. If you have a tip, email Annie Armstrong at aarmstrong@artnet.com.

THE LOW DOWN ON CADY NOLAND 

Is there an artist active today with more mystery and allure than Cady Noland? Famously, the 67-year-old artist hasn’t shown new work since a group show at the now-shuttered Team Gallery in 2000, and the most recent piece we’ve seen to date is an untitled sculpture owned by the Walker Museum from 2008, which artist-writer Greg Allen reported was a gift to the museum from the collection of curator Helen van der Miej-Tcheng. 

Thus, upon the announcement by Gagosian that the gallery would be hosting a show of new work by the artist this year, the art world went kind of nuts (or at least, as nuts as the art world can get, which means hyperbolic tweeting and giddy glasses of Ruinart). Much to our dismay, the notoriously fame-hating artist requested that her show not come with a corresponding opening, so this Tuesday, her fans lined up at Gagosian’s gallery at Park and 75th Street to pay their respects and check out some work using found materials like coke cans, hand grenades, and sheriffs badges crystalized in acrylic.

Though there wasn’t an opening, your dutiful gossip columnist hung around the gallery for long enough to speak with a few interested collectors, who revealed how much they were asking for the works on view—which I will share with my dear readers today. But first, recall that in 2006, Noland became the most expensive living female artist for her work Oozewald, which sold for $6.58 million at Sotheby’s in New York (that superlative has since gone to Jenny Saville for $12.4 million, but Noland did top her own record again in 2015 when Bluewald sold at Christie’s for $9.8 million). 

An untitled work by Cady Noland, selling for around $200,000. Photo by Annie Armstrong.

As for the work being offered on the primary market, I can exclusively confirm that there are three editions of the sheriff badge pieces selling for upwards of $200,000 (a veritable steal!), and larger sculptures in the show are available for around $1.5 million. 

Get ‘em while they’re hot.

THE ART WORLD PAYS HOMAGE TO ASHLEY BICKERTON

Opening night of Ashley Bickerton’s solo show at Gagosian, “Susie’s Mother Tongue.” Photo by Annie Armstrong.

There are some figures in the art world that I would like to personally thank for keeping things lively and interesting. I never got the chance to meet Ashley Bickerton, but if I did, he’d certainly be one of those on the receiving end of my gratitude. The late artist’s fluorescent, high-octane sculptures have always been a personal favorite of mine, and hearing stories of his surfer lifestyle in Bali lead me to believe he may be the consummate “grom,” maintaining a child-like daredevil spirit for the entirety of his life, which was cut incredibly too short due to a tragic ALS-diagnosis. 

Not to lean too heavily into the Gagosian universe this week, but I’d be remiss to not write about the opening for Bickerton’s posthumous first outing at the gallery, “Susie’s Mother Tongue,” which opened last Friday. Gathered at the 21st street location in Chelsea were the artists, bohemians, collectors, and former surf buddies who loved him, there to see the show that Bickerton curated himself in his final days. 

“There’s obviously a huge sadness in the room,” Jeff Koons told me while we gazed at Bickerton’s most recent body of work, the auric “Blur” paintings. “But this is just such an optimistic exhibition. The work has so much joy!” Truly, the room around us whirred with a bizarre energy that was somehow both melancholy and buoyant. 

Among the other artists swirling around the room were Jonas Wood, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Dustin Yellin, and Nate Lowman, as well as Sarah Calodney, a former Lehmann Maupin employee who worked directly with Bickerton when he showed with them for nearly a decade and a half. “He was funny, sarcastic, always a little cranky, and most of all, he was a do-er,” she said. 

Eventually, the party migrated downtown to EN Japanese Brasserie, where Linda Yablonsky, Arden Wohl, and Jordan Wolfson sipped champagne and scooped raw meat from a giant tuna belly for sushi rolls. Many of the evening’s festivities were organized by the artist’s widow, Cherry Bickerton.

Toasts were made. Hubert Neumann, a collector of Bickerton’s work, kicked off the remarks. “I don’t think people really understand how radical Ash was. He has changed the visual vocabulary away from modernism…it’s a visual vocabulary that greatly influences young artists today,” he said. “Ashley is a key figure in establishing this post-modernism approach.” 

Bickerton’s ex-wife, photographer Jessica Craig Martin, was even less circumspect. She got a rousing applause when she declared, “No one lived harder, loved harder, or FUCKED HARDER than Ashley Bickerton!” 

Post-dinner, the evening winded over to The Nines for martinis and more reminiscing. The artist’s brother, James Bickerton, described being gobsmacked by one of the first pieces in the entry-way of the show, a work that includes a photorealist drawing his brother made of his passport photo. According to James, the first time the family realized they had a great artistic talent on their hands was when Ashley was eleven, and transferred his passport photo with such skill and detail that it stopped them all in their tracks. “I thought I was over it, but I saw that piece and it blew me away,” he said. 

James’s son, Buster Bickerton, quickly came over to comfort his father. As he put it: “Everyone has a crazy uncle. But my uncle was actually crazy, and actually amazing.”

WE HEAR

Call it a sign of the times: the menu prices at Fanelli Cafe have risen, with the charge for fries going up a full dollar…  Former Greene Naftali director James Cardoso Shaeffer is hanging out a shingle and opening his new gallery GEMS on East Broadway this November…  Lisson Gallery has taken on representation of British painter Dexter Dalwood… You can now buy some merch from emerging artist and former domestic terrorist John Hinckley… Sophie Gubernick has launched her own advisory firm, SGAdvisory… Lévy Gorvy Dayan apparently had new merch made since they dropped the “r” … 

Courtesy a tipster.

SPOTTED

Maestro of the Tribeca art scene Jonathan Travis gloating in his success last week after a series of big openings in the area *** Adam Weinberg, Alberto Campo Baeza, Cecilia Alemani, Stanley Zabar (!), and Stefania Bortolomi at the opening of Maggazino’s new pavilion *** Yoshitaka Amano and his gallerist Alex Shulan among the art-world presence at art-star-turned-fashion designer Carly Mark’s Puppets & Puppets runway show *** Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith walking around Chelsea followed by a full camera-crew *** JiaJia Fei, Zoe Buckman, Hannah Traore, and Lee Quinones eating from an impressively-sized chocolate tower at Theory’s dinner at the New Museum *** Ryan McGinley, Natasha Lyonne, Fourtet, Lizzi Bougatsos, and Virginia Overton, at Canada‘s packed opening for Marc Hundley ***