Observers of the art market have referred to the rising demand for work by contemporary African-American artists in recent years as, among other things, a “furor” or “surging,” and the work itself as “a hot commodity.” Ten years ago, it was relatively rare to see a Black artist’s work set a record at auction. Now, such sales are routine, boosted by numerous high-profile lots, perhaps most famously Kerry James Marshall’s 1997 painting “Past Times” (purchased by the rapper and music producer Sean Combs for $21.1 million at a Sotheby’s sale in 2018) and, more recently, Jean Michel-Basquiat’s “In This Case” (1983), which sold at Christie’s in May for $93.1 million — an astronomical price, but still only the second-highest ever paid for a Basquiat.
A look at the soul of the art world, and where it’s headed.
– Experts weigh in on how to buy a work of art, and artists share which artists to keep an eye on.
– How TriBeCa became New York’s hottest new gallery district, home to PPOW and more — and where to find notable galleries outside of New York and Los Angeles.
– The down-to-earth guy with one of the most exciting collections around …
– … And the optimistic artist who turned the Met’s rooftop into a “Sesame Street” fantasy.
Given the hype surrounding such figures, it’s surprising that one of the more interesting collections of contemporary African-American art is housed inside a fairly humble Manhattan two-bedroom apartment on Madison Avenue. It belongs to Alvin Hall, 68, a broadcaster, financial educator and author, who, through good timing, taste and a bit of luck, began collecting in the 1980s and has been able to buy masterpieces by artists whose work is now worth much more. At a time when art — and Black art in particular — has been inflated and commodified to the point of a quasi-bank transaction, Hall is a model of best practices for nonbillionaires hoping to amass a world-class collection. His apartment also illustrates some of the realities of how to live with art when you only have a minimal amount of space: He owns 377 works, 342 of which are in storage.
The first work that greets you is on a wall that abuts the apartment’s front door, by the New York-born, California-based artist Gary Simmons. The words “again and again …” (the 2001 piece’s title) are stenciled at eye level in smeared blue paint. The work more or less points to the living room, a few short steps away, where the eyes bounce around from piece to piece. Toward a window that grants a peek at the East River — and almost directly beneath a portion of the wall that was recently water damaged by some upstairs neighbors failing to clean their outdoor terrace — is Lorna Simpson’s “7 Mouths” (1993), which contains seven panels, each displaying a black-and-white image of a closed mouth, grips the attention and renders the East River powerless. In the bedroom, past an installation atop a sideboard in the entryway by the Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, a Lee Friedlander photograph of a New Orleans street scene hangs next to a window air-conditioning unit. In the office, two cleavers are stuck forebodingly into the wall, an installation by Barry Le Va, the influential sculptor who died this year. But the star of the apartment is Carrie Mae Weems; pieces from her series “From Here I Saw What Happened, and I Cried” (1995) are framed dramatically in the living room above a dining table. (The work totals 65 pieces, and Hall owns four of them; he recently moved them from the bedroom.) A series of appropriated 19th- and 20th-century daguerreotypes of slaves that spell out the array of atrocities Black people encountered after arriving in this country against their will, Weems rephotographed the images and printed them through colored filters, giving them a haunting beauty and, as she once said in an interview with the Museum of Modern Art, providing “a voice to a subject that historically has had no voice.”
