Not to be Missed: Specialist’s Picks from the Artadia Benefit Auction
With the auction season upon us, the Artadia Benefit and Live auctions officially launch a season of sales on Artsy designed to raise necessary funds for some the nation’s most respected arts organizations. Over the past 18 years, Artadia has given more than $3 million in unrestricted, merit-based Awards to 310 artists in cities across the country. By providing artists with significant, unrestricted funds and access to a lifetime of professional support, Artadia enables individual artists to achieve a sustainable practice while fostering cultural vitality in the communities where they live and work.
Without buyer’s premiums and starting bids at 50% of the artwork’s retail value, these are the lots I’m watching as the auction clock counts down:
Marilyn Minter’s slick, wet, gritty imagery of high-heels and worn skin have enticed me for years. Her mastery of creating sexually-charged images has propelled her career to the highest echelon – solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, and a major retrospective "Dirty/Pretty" most recently on view at the Brooklyn Museum.
LA artist Math Bass has made a name for herself with her well-known painting series “Newz!,” in which Bass employs the symbols and colors of sign systems to create a visual lexicon of her own. Works in the series are hard to come by making this painting, with a starting bid of $26,000, a prime example of the gift that keeps on giving. Bidding on this notable artist’s work not only adds value to one’s own collection, but helps to raise significant funds for Artadia.
Tauba Auerbach, A Half Times A Half Times A Half (Fine), 2008
Tauba’s work will forever be "the one that got away" from me. I had the immense pleasure of working with her at Deitch Projects and passed up an opportunity to buy one of her "Fold" paintings – a decision which still haunts me. And thus whenever a chance to collect Tauba’s work arises, I’m immediately drawn to it. Both this piece and it’s counterpart "A Half Times A Half Times A Half (Course)" are excellent examples of the artist’s analytical preoccupation and her beautiful ability to merge art and science.
Al Taylor’s simplistic ink markings read like a constellation. A pioneer of Process Art, it's a steal to potentially acquire his work for $5,000 – it’s hard to believe no one has bid on this yet!
Chan Chao, a Burmese native whose family moved to the United States when we was 12 years old, was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and has photographs in some of the nation’s most revered collections – the Hischhorn, SFMoMA, and LACMA to name a few. The intimacy of this image initially caught my eye and, as is the goal of a photojournalist, leaves me wondering about this duo’s story and circumstance.
These ombre, serene lithographs by Mika Tajima pair beautifully together. A recipient of a 2017 New York Artadia Award, Tajima is known for her large-scale woven works that reimagine how we "see" technology.
Beth DeWoody is a renowned collector who truly lives with her art. I would love to see how she incorporates her vast collection into her home and learn first hand how she engages with gallerists and artists to find the next generation of talent to fill her walls.
Explore Artadia: Benefit Auction 2017 on Artsy, and bid to support Artadia's mission while collecting works by iconic artists. Preliminary bidding for the live auction closes on October 10th, 2017 at 4:30 pm ET. Online bids will be transferred and executed at the benefit event later that night. The silent auction will close at 8:30pm ET also on October 10th, 2017.
