This is a presentation of the most valuable African Arts ever sold. The Presentation is designed to promote the need for a more robust and unified African Art market, museums, and libraries as part of fulfilling the role of culture in Sustainable Development
In the memory of our friend Amadou Sow Senegal/Austria
Presents: The most valuable African Arts ever bought and sold
The Senufo Female Statue, carved by an artist known as the Master of Sikasso, is a Cote d’Ivoiran rare piece that sold for a record $12 million last November. It was owned by Myron Kunin, an African art collector who sold $41.6 million worth of his collection at Sotheby’s in New York.
David Hammons is an American artist especially known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. This work is unique from a series of 3. Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000 SOLD FOR $8,005,000
A celebrated 19th century mask by the Gabonese Fang people garnered more than $7.5 million at auction in Paris in 2006. The Ngil masks (sometimes referred to as the gorilla mask) were worn by men of the same name during the initiation of new members and the persecution of wrong-doers. The mask, which is said to have inspired artist Pablo Picasso, brought in four times its estimated price of $1.9 million.
AT PHILLIPS LONDON’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Oct. 14, Mark Bradford’s “Constitution IV” set a new record for the Los Angeles artist. Created in 2013, the mixed-media painting sold for 3,778,500 pounds ($5,848,796, including fees) nearly twice the high estimate of more than 4 million pounds. Bradford’s abstract mixed-media paintings are layered canvases that reflect his own experience and reference issues of social justice.
$5,170,000 The ‘Fang Mabea’ statue, owned by two art collectors, Felix Feneon and Jacques Kerchache, who were fighting for better recognition of African art in Europe, was sold for $5.17 million in 2014. The statue that produced in Cameroon in the early 19th century.
The ‘Arab Priest’ by the South African artist Irma Stern is most expensive African art painting ever sold at an auction to date. It was purchased by a museum in the Middle East for £3.1 million ($4.8 million) in March 2011.
The Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation (2001), an art painting by Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu who was best known for her densely layered abstract paintings, sold for $4.6 million at Christie’s New York in 2013.
The “Holy Virgin Mary,” 1996 (acrylic, oil, polyester resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on linen) is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. More than 15 years after it raised a ruckus in New York, Chris Ofili’s mixed-media painting depicting a black Madonna decorated with elephant manure sold at auction at Christie’s on June 30th, 2015 for $4,522,643 (including fees)This is a record for its artist, who surpassed his previous auction record of 1.9 million pounds.
The Muninia mask, a previously unseen masterpiece, was auctioned off at Sotheby’s France for about $4.4 million, the second highest price in history for an African mask.
IT WAS THE FIRST LOT OF THE NIGHT, a white-on-white text painting by Glenn Ligon detail of “Untitled (I Was Somebody),” 1990, 2003 (oilstick, graphite and gesso on panel) | Estimate $1 million – $1.5 million. Sold for $3,973,000 including fees. Originally executed in 1990 and repainted in 2003, “Untitled (I Was Somebody)” The price was well over twice the estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million and set a record for Ligon.
The ‘Bahora Girl’, also by Irma Stern, is second most expensive African art ever sold. It was bought by a private South African art collector for £2.4 million ($3.6 million) in October 2010 at Bonhams auction house in London.
In 2012, a Jean Willy Mestach wooden African sculpture from the northwest Mbandaka region of the Democratic Republic of Congo sold for $3.5 million at the Christie’s auction house in Paris.
This portrait taken from a class picture from Marlene Dumas’ childhood in South Africa sold for $3.3 million in 2005. It is a provocative piece by the 60-year-old inspired by the politics of her apartheid upbringing.
“Afrosheen,” 2009 (oil on canvas) is the work of Hurvin Anderson is a British painter. | Estimate $510,900 – $681,200. Sold for $2,246,481 (including fees) Hurvin Anderson’s paintings flirt between abstraction and figuration, their tranquil scenes merging unstable ideas of memory, conjoined histories, and crossculturalism. Peter’s Sitter’s 3 imagines a home barbershop, a cottage industry taken up by many newly arrived Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s. Rendered in a reduced palette of blue, white, and red, the scene conveys the experience of freshly acquired British identity, its aspirations and hard realities.
‘Les Chadoufs’, a painting by Mahmoud Said, which acts as a powerful metaphor for an Egyptian Renaissance, sold for $2 million in 2010. It became the most expensive piece of art made by an Arab artist ever to be auctioned by Christie’s Dubai.
Martin Puryear, “Untitled,� 1989 (red cedar and pine ). | Estimate $600,000$800,000. Sold for $1,805,000 (including fees). Martin Puryear is an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in wood and bronze, among other media, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials.
Leni Charles: Poetic tales of Kids of the Diaspora (Kids of the Diaspora)
The Millennials born in the Diaspora, many with mixed heritages are charting a new path for their own unique identity. Leni Charles leads a group of youth devotees exploring new art forms by combining traditional crafts, fractals arts, graphic designs, mixed media, with reductive technique and poetic approach to describe their own multicultural boundaries. Giving birth to a new form of art entirely.
The highest price of 2014 was another Irma Stern painting, ‘Zanzibar Woman’, which Bonhams London sold for £1,082,500 ($1.8million).
In 2011, Irma Stern’s sold another painting titled Two Arabs for about $1.8 million in South Africa. The next year she sold yet another painting of a distinguished Arab man titled Arab for nearly $1.5 million..
"Paths to the Okro Farm," by El Anatsui, aluminum and copper wire, 96 by 136 inches, 2006 Lot 432 is a larger aluminum and copper wire work by El Anatsui (b. 1944) entitled "Paths to the Okro Farm. It measures 96 by 136 inches and was painted in 2006. It has an estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $1,445,000.
Kerry James Marshall, “Vignette,” 2003 Sold for $1,025,000 (including fees) on Nov. 13, 2014 at Christies’s New York. In describing “Vignette,” Christie’s says Marshall “inflects a social realist style with hints of Pop and Surrealist aesthetics to represent his black protagonists. The figures, reminiscent of Grant Wood characters, are both romanticized and slightly flattened. The work suggest ideals of a better future even while it reminds us of stereotypes of Black identity and the way the media presents them.”
$1,025,000 Chéri Samba B.1956 UNE VIE NON RATÉE (A SUCCESSFUL LIFE) signed and dated 1995 (lower right) acrylic on canvas 130 by 195cm., 51¼ by 76¾in. Painted in 1995 Sotherby’s Estimate 20,000 — 30,000 GBP LOT SOLD. 52,500 GBP (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)
Yinka Shonibare MBE B.1962 CRASH WILLY mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, leather, fibreglass and metal 132 by 198 by 260cm., 52 by 78 by 102½in. Conceived in 2009, this work is unique Stephen Friedman Gallery, London Acquired from the above by the present owner . In addition to the record-breaking sale total, the auction saw many artists achieving record-breaking prices. British/Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Crash Willy sold for £224,750 against an estimate of £120,000180,000, a new world record at auction for the artist. World records were also broken for António Ole (Angola), Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon), Ouattara Watts (Ivory Coast), Armand Boua (Ivory Coast) and Abiodun Olaku (Nigeria), amongst others.
Spirit of Congo Square (2010). 7ft. x 13ft. High Relief Cast Bronze sculpture by Adéwálé (‘Wálé) S. Adénlé'. Commissioned by the City of New Orleans, LA. (Installed in the Congo Square in the Tremé neighborhood of Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans. His work continue to influence sociopolitical discourse in his homeland (Nigeria) and intertwined with policies in the US. He explores dual realities and logics in political constructs and systems, arriving at a three-dimensional work that vastly engages the viewer to unload and search for multiple logics in its interpretation.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother. He was an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. Record-His work, Untitled sold for $110.5 Million making it the most expensive painting ever by an American Artist Sold at Auction. The painting achieved the highest auction price in history for a work by an American artist and reached a number of other milestones: • Most expensive work by an American artist sold at auction • Most expensive work by an artist of African descent sold at auction • Most expensive work made since 1980 sold at auction • Sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction
$300,000,000 Paul Gauguin's 1892 oil painting of two Tahitian is the most expensive work of art of all time. It smashed the record for the world's most expensive single work of art, when the state-financed Qatar Museums in record sale bought the canvas from a Swiss collector for almost $300 million in February 2017. It was painted during Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti, where he said he travelled to escape "everything that is artificial and conventional" in Europe. The 1892 indigenous native painting by the French post-impressionist called Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) was sold by the private collector Rudolf Staechelin, a retired Sotheby's executive from Basel
African Views of the Universe The African views of the universe have been carefully studied and systematized, and much more waits to be fully documented. Many of these views are expressed orally in myths, legends, proverbs, wise saying, and in practical ways like rituals, dances, art, and symbols. When these materials are put together, a tapestry of African cosmology emerges. This picture shows among other things, the beauty of cultural diversity, an underlying unity or similarity of views, traits, traditions, inclinations and behaviors across the entire world; obviously reflecting local variations. African views of the universe are curated as people continue to reflect upon their life experiences in their respective societies as well as the perception of their roles and responsibilities in the world at large. No human society can exist without some form of its own view of the world in which it lives. African views provide an awareness of the diversity and the complexity of African ’s own existence and consciousness of the world. So, as African peoples all over the world went through life experiences, changes of environment, including historical, current and future challenges, more ideas are generated leading to a better understanding of the world. These ideas were by no means static, which, though in the due process of change, have come down to the contemporary in various ways and through various means. Ideas from one generation to another continue to persist despite the challenges of time. The sustainability of Africans lies in their nature of resilience. While much have been lost, many more has been gained as well. New lands inherited, new languages and new traditions developed, new nations founded, new cultures developed, and layers of resistance seemingly unstoppable despite all the odds. It is important to put all these in perspectives and look deeper within to find strength for overcoming any challenge. It is in this spirit that some of us have chosen to come together, and endeavor to capture with extremely few exceptions -- the evolution of African related ideas in the World without compromising the integrity of existential dichotomy of the secular and sacred or the physical and spiritual, or the practical and the hypothetical. In African Views, there is harmony, rationale, logic, and sense of the universe. In our assessment, however imperfect, our observance of relative ideologies is not only of those with African heritage alone, but inclusive and encompassing of views, principles, and ideologies about Africa from the world. This makes our work permanent and cumulative from the transfer of the African ideologies of one generation to another and the more diverse they are, the better they become. Would it be something of value if those ideas can be captured, not only for documentary purpose but also for their utilitarian value; especially in the understanding and interpretation of historical challenges, engaging current challenges and preparing for future challenges. As Leopold Senghor puts it, our culture is a recourse to sanity. When we are lost, we turn to our cultural compass. This is the basis upon which we have formed the African Views Organization. Our research and analysis are based on linking transformative strategies with cultural harmony and finding the right balance for cultural sustainability through collaborative global intelligence framework. Paraphrasing Lincoln, all that binds us is the faith that right makes might; and with that faith, we dare to take this duty personal and give it our absolute best as we understand it for the benefit of all humanity-- to the end.
FINEST MOTHERS
Current State of the Art Market
WORTH KNOWING | YOUR ART COLLECTION AS LOAN COLLATERAL African art: a good investment? Fine art is a powerful financial asset that may be considered as part of your overall wealth management strategy such as using your collection as collateral to gain liquidity for other financial opportunities. This brings a new opportunity to the globalization of cultural trades, whether from the perspective of the artists, collectors, or custodians, auctions houses or museums. Not every collector and collection qualifies for art lending from the bank. Typically, a borrower must have a collection with an overall value of $10 million or more. Also, collections usually must have diversified holdings among artists and time periods, although we have selectively made art loans based on one particularly strong piece of art. The customary proposition is to lend against a diversified collection rather than one piece of art. Art is dynamic and serves many purposes that start with buying it for the love of the work, and then realizing its economic value. Borrowing against an art collection enables investors to unlock capital and take advantage of opportunities such as buying more art, investing in business ventures, gifting to heirs, giving to worthy causes or buying real estate. Doing this while maintaining the collection at home underscores the dual value of art – both consuming art’s aesthetic worth, while also accessing its economic and financial value. Arts organizations and private and artist-endowed foundations which support the arts are often challenged with managing many aspects of their businesses, from investing philanthropic capital, to determining effective grantmaking strategies and other governance best practices.
Pencil Artwork by Theo Pencil, Accra, Ghana
Board diversity is currently one of the prominent discussions in the art/museum world. It means not just addressing diversity in gender, race, or sexual orientation, but addressing cross-generational diversity as well. We are going to experience generational shifts on both ends of the age spectrum, with the large number of Baby Boomers retiring over the next two or three decades and the ascendance of the younger generations, like Gen X, Next Gen, and Millennials. Along with this comes the largest wealth transfer event in modern history. With this impending shift, the nonprofit art community will need to create more diverse revenue streams and broaden donor bases, working to create a diverse, vibrant board will be a key factor in promoting and sharing the deep cultural impact that art has both locally and globally – and one that is as important as ever. There is a compelling argument that African art might experience a boost similar to pieces of Chinese origin, where newly affluent Asian professionals are driving up prices. Certainly, prices of top contemporary African artists are surging, with antique tribal pieces snapped up for increasingly high sums. However, nothing will happen, or at least not fast enough, or be efficient enough, or rewarding enough, or be sustainable at all without the intra-cultural involvement in developing the economic infrastructure of appeal and appreciation from within.. (www.africanviews.org)