A couple of posts ago, I quoted Brooklyn sculptor Simone Leigh as saying how amazing it was to be a Black artist at present. My point was that, at least when it comes to the high-culture art scene, the much bandied about notion of "white privilege" appears to have been replaced, for the time being at least, by "Black privilege." In other areas of life, probably not so much.
"Mea culpa," or "it's about time," or "lots of ground to make up," or whatever.
An artist who would probably agree with Leigh is painter Sam Gilliam, a Black abstract expressionist credited with introducing draped and wrapped painted canvases in the mild 1960s. An example can be seen below.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal Magazine article, Gilliam, now 86 years old, was for the first time represented by a New York Gallery, Pace, only last year. Apparently as a result, his art appears to be commanding significantly higher prices than before.
"This May, his 1973 "Patched Leaf" painting, for instance, sold for $905,000 against a high estimate of $500,000," the magazine article noted.
A selection of new Gilliam paintings and sculpture will be exhibited at Pace from Nov. 6 through Dec. 19, 2020.
Moreover, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC is scheduled to mount a retrospect of Gilliam's work next year.
"It's a real beautiful ending," Gilliam told the WSJ.
Gilliam is a distinguished artist with a long and productive career and appears fully deserving of wider acclaim -- and greater financial success. I bring this to the attention of readers only because there is so much commentary out there that seems to suggest nothing has changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment