Names and faces
Hip-hop entrepreneur Sean Combs has been identified as the buyer of a painting by black artist Kerry James Marshall that fetched $21.1 million at Sotheby’s this week. Combs, 47, bid through Sotheby’s staff member Jackie Wachter.
His friend, Swizz Beatz, was sitting in the front row of the salesroom on Wednesday, recording the bidding war on his phone and later Facetiming with Combs.
Jack Shainman, who represents Marshall in the U.S., confirmed that Combs was the buyer, setting an auction record for a living black artist. “He’s a visionary,” Shainman said, referring to Combs. “It’s a collection with an eye toward the future.” The New York Times identified Combs as the buyer Friday. Marshall is among the country’s top contemporary artists, with growing demand from museums and private collectors — and rising prices. The painting Past Times, 9 feet by 13 feet, depicts an idyllic scene in the shadow of a housing project. Black residents, clad in white, play golf and croquet, picnic on a red-and-white checkered blanket and water ski — a riff on Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, which is at the Art Institute of Chicago. The work was sold by a municipal authority in Illinois, The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which purchased it for $25,000 in 1997. The previous auction high for a living black artist belonged to Mark Bradford, whose painting Helter Skelter fetched $12 million at Phillips in London.
On Demi Lovato’s latest U.S. tour, she opened each show with “You Don’t Do It For Me Anymore,” an ode to shaking her addiction to substance abuse. But while the song is inspiring, it’s what happened before the show that seemed to matter most to her. Lovato, who says that she “thrives” with bipolar disorder, held what can be described as one-hour therapy sessions for a few hundred fans before she took the stage. “It’s something that I’m passionate about, mental health, and raising the awareness and taking the stigma away from it. So, if I can do that on tour then awesome,” Lovato said in an interview. Lovato has been a mental health advocate for several years and worked with a pharmaceutical-sponsored awareness campaign at one time. For her U.S. tour, she partnered with CAST Centers, wellness clinics that treat mental health and substance abuse issues (the sessions are not a part of her European tour that kicks off later this month). Lovato became a co-owner after being treated there in 2011. The sessions were free to those who purchased tickets to the concert, but spots were limited. Lovato attended them but was not the focus.