Wet Paint: Daughter Behind $450 Million Trove Is Pals With Tiffany Trump, Poker Pro Banned From Frieze Game, & More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Every Thursday afternoon, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint,
a gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate
Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate
at nfreeman@artnet.com.

INTERVIEW WITH THE ART HEIRESS

Yesterday, the estate of the
late collector Donald Marron shocked the art world
by turning down $300 million in guarantees from
Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and
Phillips respectively and making the
virtually unprecedented decision to consign the financier’s
massively important trove to a triumvirate of Manhattan
dealer-kings: Larry Gagosian, Bill
Acquavella, and the father-son duo Arne
and Marc Glimcher at Pace. And
while Marron was incredibly generous during his lifetime, giving
$40 million to New York University and more than 500 works to the
Museum of Modern Art (where he also served as board president), he
left the rest of his collection—worth an estimated $450 million—to
his family.

That means the sale will be
quite the windfall for his widow, Catie
Marron, a Vogue contributing editor
who runs Good Companies, a consultancy and
community for fledgling non-profits, and the couple’s
children: William Marron, who could often be
seen leading his father around fairs and evening sales, and
Serena Marron, an early Instagram influencer and
New York socialite. (Donald also had two children from a previous
marriage, and four grandchildren.)

It is Serena who is probably the
most conspicuous of all. In those heady days of the mid-aughts
club-hopping, she could often be seen out with billionaire
collector Peter Brant’s son
Harry, Henri Matisse’s
great-great granddaughter Gaia Matisse, as
well as, yes, Tiffany Trump. Marron attended
the first daughter’s 21st birthday, held at the Trump
Soho (remember when that was a thing?) and hosted by future president
Donald Trump himself. Her classmates at
Barnard were so taken
by her jet-set lifestyle that she was profiled in The Tab, a
network of college campus blogs, and the ensuing
2015 article—titled “The
Lion, the Betch and the Expensive Wardrobe”—is about as
Gossip Girl as
it gets. While sipping spritzes at the Baccarat Hotel, the then-20-year-old
Marron offered up some truly epic quotes, including “I’m excited to
ride some diamond-covered camels” and “By the way, next year I’m hoping to rent this
private island for my 21st birthday.” When asked,
“Do you see yourself as a normal
20-year-old?” she responded, “How can I answer this question
without sounding like a raging douchebag… um… definitely
not.”

The story also steals some snaps
from her (currently private) Instagram account, including an image
of one of her family’s Andy Warhols—a purple
“Fright Wig” work that looks remarkably similar to the
Self-Portrait (1986) that sold at Sotheby’s for $32.6
million in 2010, having been consigned by the fashion designer
Tom Ford. Of the five large-scale “Fright Wig”
works, three are in museum collections, with the other owned by
Brant. The galleries declined to comment on whether the Warhol is
among the Marron works available for purchase, or if it will be
installed alongside other masterworks from the collection at
Gagosian and Pace’s Chelsea galleries in May. 

FRIEZE VIPS FOLD ON POKER PRO

To a somewhat alarming extent,
the art market in Los Angeles revolves around
a few semi-regular poker games, where rival dealers and artists
talk shop over hands of Texas Hold ‘Em. Art star Jonas
Wood first met the dealer Jeff Poe
through gambling sessions with artists Mark
Grotjahn and Matt Johnson, which is how
Wood got introduced to his first New York dealer,
Anton Kern. (The rest, as they say, is history.)
And so it’s no shock that the card-hustle circuit would want to
host a few games for out-of-town dealers during Frieze Los Angeles
last week. But ahead of the action at the Hollywood
Roosevelt Hotel, word got out that a ringer might be
joining in for a few hands: Justin Smith, the
collector who hauled away more than $500,000 after placing second
in the 2010 World Poker Tournament at the
Bellagio in Las Vegas. Since he retired from
professional poker five years ago—after earning more than $2.2
million—the 31-year-old has become a rising collector (he is known
to work with the local dealer-slash-Svengali Stefan
Simchowitz). But some of the card-playing VIPs got spooked
by his prowess, so the organizers ultimately rescinded the
invitation, saying that out-of-towners just wouldn’t feel
comfortable playing with a pro. Smith, who now works as a movie
producer, is a regular at amateur games with actors and Hollywood
types. But apparently the art world is a bit more squeamish when it
comes to losing money. 

TECH BROS LOVE LA

Dealers like to complain that
Silicon Valley’s mega-rich aren’t buying art like
gangbusters. (Surely a billionaire should be able to drop
a few hundred stacks on some new, I dunno, Nicolas
Party drawing without breaking a sweat, right?) Some
dealers have even moved away from participating in San Francisco’s
FOG Design+Art Fair due to what they charitably
call the “steep learning curve” of this prospective collecting
class. That’s why it was a bit surprising to see tech’s biggest
whales showing up to a fair in California’s other big
city. That’s right: these elusive kingpins were out in full force
during Frieze LA. Jeff Bezos may not have bought
at the fair (…that we know of), but he did attend Larry
Gagosian’s dinner for Richard Prince,
taking his usual perch next to the world’s biggest art dealer. And
as the fair opened, it was revealed that Bezos spent $165 million on
collector David Geffen’s Beverly Hills home, while
rumors were flying that the Amazon founder was
also the buyer of the
$52.4 million Ed Ruscha that sold at
Christie’s in November. Meanwhile,
the Pace
and Kayne Griffin Corcoran banger at the
San Vicente Bungalows brought out Mark
Pincus, the Zynga founder who donated $3 million
to James Turrell’s Roden Crater,
as well as Leonardo DiCaprio (OK, it’s a bit of a
stretch to call Leo a “tech guy,” but he is an investor in
the environmental startup Aspirational). Above
all, the biggest tech get of that particular party
was Tesla founder Elon
Musk, who made an appearance at the Bungalows to see
his girlfriend, the musician Grimes, spin a
surprise DJ set. 

THE CHATEAU PLAYS ITSELF

The wildest party of
Frieze LA was once again White
Cube’s go-for-broke bash at that infamous City of Angels
den of sin, the Chateau Marmont. This year,
Jay Jopling‘s London gallery managed to double
down on what made the party so nuts last year. Not only was there a
string of La La Land royalty haunting the hallways, but hotel owner
André Balazs decided to screen artist
Sarah Morris’s Los Angeles (2004)—a
slow-mo look into the celeb-obsessed mania of Tinseltown—on a wall
by the hotel’s famed pool. Like last year, the marching band from
Compton High School wound its way through the
bungalows and lounges, but there was also an acapella gospel group
to serenade guests as they came in through a special entrance to
the hotel. Expect the top-notch drumline to come in from Compton
again next year. 

POP QUIZ

Pop Quiz will return next week,
but in the meantime, let’s give a big round of applause to the
winner of last week’s
contest: Antoine
Simon of London, England. As Antoine correctly
answered, the work in the photo is by Urs Fischer,
its owner is dealer Jeffrey Deitch, and it
resides in the dealer’s house in the Los Feliz
neighborhood of Los Angeles—a house previously owned by
Cary Grant, who’s seen right there on the
table. 

WE HEAR…

Artist Robert
Janitz has left Anton Kern Gallery, where
he’s been on the roster since 2015, and has also pretty much
relocated his studio to the Juárez neighborhood of Mexico City …
art advisor Lisa Schiff negotiated the
purchase of Barkley Hendricks’s Father, Son,
And… (1969) at Frieze LA for one of her clients,
and Jack Shainman Gallery said the price for
such works range from $1.5 million to $5 million, making it
potentially the biggest sale of the fair … the keen-eyed artist and
critic Aria Dean is now represented by
Greene Naftali … Rob Pruitt and
B. Wurtz have work in the Maison
Margiela boutique in SoHo … the rapper
Pop Smoke, who died tragically in a home invasion
earlier this week, was a student of the artist Gina
Beavers when he took art classes in elementary school and
middle school … collector and chef Daniel
Humm has installed a work by Roni
Horn at his new London restaurant Davies &
Brook, inside Claridge’s … in addition to
buying a James Turrell on behalf of
Kendall Jenner, advisor Meredith
Darrow also bought another Turrell and a
Grotjahn from Blue & Poe at
Frieze, both for the same Los Angeles client (who is not Jenner) …
Rachel Comey, the designer of choice for female
power dealers around the globe, is opening a Paris pop-up in the
gallery-stuffed nabe of the Marais through March
with an installation by former Andrea Rosen artist
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili … Joel
Mesler, the artist and Rental Gallery
proprietor, wrote the press release for his new show at
Harper’s Apartment in the form of a hypothetical
letter to artist Darren Bader,
inviting him to the opening.

SPOTTED

*** Justin
Bieber in some very acid-washed jeans in the New York
backlot at Frieze Los Angeles, checking out the projects sector
alongside fair director Bettina Korek ***
Donald Glover (AKA Childish
Gambino) in Jeffrey Deitch‘s booth
at Frieze *** artists Jeff Koons, Judith
Bernstein, and Carroll Dunham—plus
Topeka and 10:04 novelist Ben
Lerner—at the opening of Peter Saul‘s
show at the New Museum *** Damien
Hirst installing five-foot-long fingers for an utterly
gigantic bronze arm that will serve as the spire of a chapel he’s
erecting at Château La Coste in the south of
France *** Johnny Depp at SPRING/BREAK
LA, hanging with singer Tom Waits at a
booth showing work by his daughter, Kellesimone
Waits.

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: Daughter Behind $450 Million Trove Is
Pals With Tiffany Trump, Poker Pro Banned From Frieze Game, & More
Juicy Art-World Gossip appeared first on artnet
News.