On Wednesday night time, Marlene Dumas was newly topped the most costly dwelling feminine artist on the earth when her 1997 portray Miss January, that includes a lady with a ghostly white face who’s bare from the waist down, offered for $13.6 million with charges at a Christie’s night sale. Understandably, the public sale home has trumpeted the achievement. And whereas he work was successfully pre-sold, coming to the block with a third-party assure, it is a win by most measures.
Most measures, that’s, that don’t account for broader market traits. Think about the truth that Miss January wasn’t even the priciest work offered final night time at Christie’s. Naturally, that work was by a person: Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose 1982 portray Child Increase offered for $23.4 million with charges. Which means one Child Increase is almost value two Miss Januarys. (Child Increase, in the meantime, is value a fraction of the untitled 1982 Basquiat cranium portray that offered in 2017 for $110.5 million. That’s about eight Miss Januarys.)
To date, Dumas’s portray is the most costly one by a lady, dwelling or useless, offered anyplace at public sale this week in New York, whose huge three homes—Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips—are all trotting out their glitziest works as a part of the annual Might marquee auctions. The gross sales are generally handled as a barometer for the market, and so it’s carefully watched by sellers, advisers, collectors, and extra.
However the Dumas didn’t even crack the highest 5 priciest works offered this week. All 5 of these works had been by males: Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Rene Magritte, and Piet Mondrian. As for that final artist, his 1922 portray Composition with Massive Pink Aircraft, Bluish Grey, Yellow, Black and Blue offered at Christie’s for $47.6 million, simply shy of his public sale report.
Maybe it’s an unfair comparability. Everybody is aware of that works by useless artists promote for increased sums. However contemplate, then, the data for different dwelling males represented in that Christie’s sale.
Damien Hirst’s stands at $19.2 million, set in 2007 by a tablet cupboard sculpture; Christopher Wool’s at $29.9 million, notched in 2015 by a portray spelling out the phrase “RIOT”; and Ed Ruscha’s at $68.3 million, minted final yr by a portray of a Commonplace gasoline station that when belonged to an oil inheritor. None of those market stars had works that offered for practically a lot final night time at Christie’s, which is itself notable—even when Dumas’s benchmark lags behind theirs. Ladies artists have come a good distance at public sale, and final night time’s Christie’s sale is proof.
Dumas wasn’t the one lady to interrupt her report final night time—Simone Leigh did too, with certainly one of her sculptures promoting for $5.7 million, and so did Emma McIntyre, whose $201,000 portray was one of many solely works not assured to promote. However none of those figures are Mondrian numbers, as a result of no lady artist, dwelling or useless, has ever reached Mondrian numbers at public sale. (And Mondrian numbers aren’t even Picasso numbers!) The market nonetheless has a whole lot of work to do.
Marlene Dumas, Miss January, 1997.
Christie’s Photographs Ltd. 2025
At occasions, it looks like regardless of the accolades, the retrospectives, or vital reward they obtain, girls artists all the time get the brief finish of the stick. That’s one thing you possibly can study by glancing at Dumas’s CV, which incorporates a few of the exact same achievements as a few of her male colleagues.
Dumas’s figurative work, lots of them finished in pallid shades of gray, have lengthy been widespread in the marketplace, although she has her institutional bona fides too. In 2008, she was the topic of a Museum of Trendy Artwork retrospective, and on the 1995 Venice Biennale, she represented the Netherlands, the nation the place this South African–born artist relies. She has appeared in 4 Venice Biennale most important exhibitions and two Documentas. In 2022, billionaire artwork collector François Pinault, a board member at Christie’s till final yr, even as soon as turned over certainly one of his Venice museums to Dumas’s work. But her artwork continues to be priced at a lot decrease values than that of many different males.
Values can inform quite a bit about how marketeers assume: the upper the sum, the higher the art work, or so the pondering goes. Miss January is a top-notch Dumas, which can be why the mega-collecting Rubell Household held on to it for about 25 years earlier than promoting at Christie’s. Like a few of her finest works, it raises thorny questions on appropriation and voyeurism.
Dumas based mostly the picture on footage from pornographic magazines, giving it a title that refers to centerfolds. What’s on provide shouldn’t be precisely horny, nonetheless: the girl wears drag-like make-up, a sheer prime, and a single pink sock, hardly the get-up designed to induce racy fantasies. Although she bares her nether areas for all to see, her expression isn’t very inviting both. And she or he is painted at a grand scale—9 ft tall, to be precise, which implies she intimidatingly towers over all who stand earlier than her.
“Why do I take advantage of supply supplies from porno books as fashions for my figures if it’s not the pornographic that I’m after? As a result of I can’t see myself after I do the issues I do,” Dumas informed the MoMA in an audio tour for her 2008 survey. “I don’t understand how I look after I have a look at you.” Miss January is part of that quest to higher perceive what it means to behave like a feminine voyeur and gaze again guiltlessly.
The work is as conceptually wealthy as blue-chip work go. However these concepts appear to have steered the piece solely to date. The work missed its excessive estimate of $18 million, and discounting charges, the portray offered for simply $11.5 million—which was even beneath its low estimate. Miss January generated only one minute’s value of bidding. One adviser even called the portray’s sale “unexciting.”
Marlene Dumas.
Getty Photographs
Costs don’t equal art-historical value, after all, and greenback indicators don’t confer worth upon artworks (for folks and not using a vested curiosity available in the market, anyway). And in addition to, more often than not, artists don’t even make cash when their work is offered at public sale. So why care? As a result of success at public sale affords visibility for artists, who’re then given additional alternatives in museums and galleries. Plus, increased costs on the block imply that sellers can cost extra at gala’s and galleries, locations the place artists usually do see cash from their gross sales.
Prefer it or not, public sale costs matter. And as we noticed final night time, they’re half of a bigger artwork ecosystem that continues to carry girls again.
However there are indicators of hope. A fiber piece by Olga de Amaral, a nonagenarian with a just-opened retrospective on the Institute of Up to date Artwork Miami, offered at Phillips on Tuesday for $1.2 million, surpassing her prior report by greater than $400,000. That sale additionally set data for Ilana Savdie, Grace Hartigan, and Kiki Kogelnik. And on Thursday night, Sotheby’s appears poised to interrupt the report for Laura Owens, the painter answerable for the year’s best New York gallery show so far.
Progress has clearly been made. When Jillian Steinhauer surveyed the most costly works by girls offered at public sale for Hyperallergic in 2014, not a single dwelling artist ranked within the prime 10, and just one work, a portray by Georgia O’Keeffe, had offered for greater than $15 million. That list looks very different today, as Sarah Belmont showed in ARTnews in March.
The issue is that stated progress has plodded alongside at a glacial tempo. Dumas’s report re-set the one made by Jenny Saville in 2018, when certainly one of her work offered for $12.4 million at Sotheby’s in London. That was seven years in the past, which implies it took greater than half a decade for a piece by a dwelling feminine artist to even cross the $13 million mark. Let’s hope it doesn’t take one other seven years for Dumas’s report to fall.
