Wet Paint: Avery Singer Is Officially the World’s Priciest Millennial Artist, Frieze VIPs Crash the Oscars, & 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.

HAU$ER $LINGING $INGERS

Today on the West Coast, VIP card-carrying collectors are
streaming into Paramount Pictures Studio and
gushing over the offerings at Frieze Los Angeles.
It’s clear that the event’s second edition has injected a jolt of
Tinseltown razzle-dazzle into the art-fair circuit. And if anyone
was hesitant to imagine that a Hollywood backlot could host a
globally important fair, they would be proven wrong after seeing
dealers pull out all the stops this year: Gagosian
treated VIPs to a booth with a full-scale Richard
Prince car sculpture and Chris Burden’s
LAPD Uniform (1993), while Pace and
Kayne Griffin Corcoran teamed up for a bravura
presentation of that master conjurer of California light,
James Turrell. But those seeking the hottest work
in Hollywood should make a beeline for the booth of Hauser
& Wirth, which has on view three works by Avery
Singer, the 32-year-old wunderkind who emerged as the star of last
year’s Venice Biennale. She signed with Hauser in
December, after a courting period from all the mega-galleries that
included rides on helicopters to the Hamptons
and—allegedly!—a $1 million signing bonus.

The gallery vehemently denied that any cash was offered up
front, but there’s no doubt joining the Swiss mega-gallery will
make Singer’s already in-demand and high-priced works harder
to get (and more expensive). But even speculators may not have seen
them getting this pricey: The largest of the
paintings at Frieze costs just under $500,000, while the smaller
two are $420,000, and in addition to the three in the booth,
there’s another in a private viewing room at the gallery’s downtown
LA space.

A for-your-eyes-only preview sent to tip-top advisors and
collectors stated that “the artist has asked that all four [works] go to institutions”—and, according to sources, Hauser already has
the new owners lined up to pledge the paintings as promised
gifts.

The price point is a serious uptick from just two years ago,
when Singer had her first (and only) solo show with Gavin
Brown’s enterprise and works topped out at $95,000, with
smaller ones available for just $40,000. That means that Singer’s
primary prices have increased more than 400 percent since 2018
(although, to be fair, they remain lower than her auction record of
$735,000). The price increase has made her the world’s most
expensive millennial artist, beating out Turner Prize-winner
Oscar Murillo, whose new works cost $450,000 from
David Zwirner. And with the sale of the four works
here in La La Land, Singer’s cut could reach $1 million… exactly
what that apocryphal signing bonus was supposed to be. That’s
showbiz, baby!

MOVIE PARTY PARASITES

The Sunday night before a major art fair is usually a somewhat
staid state of affairs, with everyone resting up before a week of
nonstop openings, dinners, and parties. Not so this year in Los
Angeles, as the Sunday before the Frieze was also… Oscar
Sunday, the Super Bowl Sunday of celluloid. And so the art
world got all dressed up and hit the party circuit. Larry
Gagosian started the evening at the annual Vanity
Fair viewing dinner, where he completed perhaps the most
intriguing quadfecta of the evening: Joan Collins,
Tom Ford, and Monica Lewinsky,
all huddled around a table with Larry. Meanwhile, collector
Elton John had his annual gala, and afterward,
Jumex juice heir Eugenio López led revelers
to his masterpiece-filled Bel Air manse for a banger that went into
the wee hours. Later, the team behind Best Picture-winner
“Parasite” threw a raucous Soho House bash to
celebrate its surprise victory. As the global k-pop
sensation A.C.E. entertained the crowd with
increasingly elaborate dance routines, Hauser & Wirth LA director
Graham Steele looked on and took pictures, a natty
tux-clad Alex Israel—in sunglasses at night, as
always—popped in on his way to Madonna
manager Guy Oseary’s ultra-exclusive house
party, and MOCA director Klaus
Biesenbach chatted with Miky Lee, the
Samsung heiress who produced “Parasite” and has done much to hype
independent Korean cinema around the world. The director of the
hour, Bong Joon-Ho—whose film “The Host”
graced the cover of Artforum in 2007—arrived around 12:45
a.m. alongside the cast, all of them clutching their golden
statuettes. Remember how, when Bong accepted the Best Director
trophy, he said he would be “drinking until the morning”? Let’s
just say that, yes, that did indeed appear to be the case.

ACES OF SPADE

Andy Spade—the designer who co-founded
Kate Spade with his late wife, who died by suicide
in 2018—has begun to offload his collection, a large sea of stuff
studded with some serious gems. A PDF with hundreds of works has
been circulating among advisors and collectors, with items on offer
by the likes of James Nares, Roe
Ethridge, Donald Baechler,
Christopher Knowles, Spencer
Sweeney, Hanna Liden, and many others.
The PDF also reveals how much Spade paid for the works at the time,
displaying his knack for buying hot artists early. For instance, it
was very smart to pick up Genieve Figgis’s
Royal Friends (2014) from the East
Hampton gallery Harper’s Books in the
summer of 2014. Spade paid $8,500 then, and could certainly sell it
for much more now. Lager works by Figgis have sold for more than
$300,000 at auction, and in December, a work of similar size to
Spade’s was offered in Artnet News columnist Kenny
Schachter’s The Hoarder Sale at
Sotheby’s. Estimated to sell for $5,000 to $8,000,
it ended up fetching nearly $70,000.

INSTAGRAMMABLE SCHNABEL

You know who has a very, um, interesting social media
presence these days? Stella Schnabel, the second
eldest daughter of Julian, erstwhile painter and
actor, Lucien habitué, and current
proprietress of a private Fort
Greene boutique selling, per the store’s own Instagram account, “Objects
Arts Antiques Custom Furniture.” Here’s an Instagram story she sent
out last week from her personal account to the 10,000
followers of @stella_stellina__, in which she tagged her sister
Lola Schnabel, her brother Vito
Schnabel, her mother Jacqueline Schnabel,
and Nina Clemente, the daughter of
Francesco Clemente. The photo of Jacqueline and
Nina’s mother, Alba, has since disappeared on Instagram. But it
lives on in screenshots making the rounds among art-world denizens
who can’t quite understand what would possess someone to share this
image with a tongue-in-cheek emoji in the year 2020.

Remember, kids: Instagram stories might be temporary, but
there’s no hiding on the internet.

POP QUIZ

Can you name the artist who made this work, which doubles as a
usable table? What about the work’s owner and its current
location?

As per usual, the first correct responder gets fame and glory
via a shout-out in next week’s Wet Paint. Speaking of which,
congratulations to last week’s Pop Quiz
winner… Lucas Casso!

WE HEAR…

LAXART founder Lauri
Firstenberg is being considered as the next director of
Frieze Los Angeles, as current director Bettina
Korek will depart following this edition to become
CEO of the
Serpentine Galleries in
London … the Thursday night Frieze party circuit
includes big-budget soirées for Pace at the
San Vicente Bungalows—where the performer is
not Kanye West, contra widespread
rumors—David Zwirner at Sunset
Tower, and the annual White Cube blowout
at the Chateau Marmont … Emma
Fernberger, formerly the director of the experimental
Artist/City program at Bortolami, has taken a
new gig as director at Eva Presenhuber’s New York
space … art prankster extraordinaire Eric
Doeringer has made replicas of 30 works owned by
the Broad for a booth co-run by Joel
Mesler‘s Rental Gallery and A Hug
From The Art World, an outfit founded
by Gagosian director Adam
Cohen, at the second annual Felix LA in
the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The presentation is called,
winningly, “The Brode.”

SPOTTED

*** Perry Rubenstein, the
dealer-turned-jailbird who served time after shirking CAA
co-founder Michael Ovitz on a deal for a Richard
Prince work, checking out Gagosian’s new exhibition of work by none
other than… Richard Prince! *** Jeffrey Deitch
giving Miley Cyrus a guided tour of his gallery’s
new show, “All Of Them Witches,” curated by Dan
Nadel and Laurie Simmons ***
Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, taking his
customary perch directly next to Larry Gagosian at
the mega-dealer’s dinner for Richard Prince at
Mr. Chow in Beverly
Hills last Thursday *** artist Susan
Cianciolo walking as a model in the Eckhaus
Latta show at the South Street Seaport in
New York during Fashion Week *** Gloria Gaynor
performing at the amfAR gala in Mexico
City during Zona Maco, held at a house
where, in the ’80s, a powerful government couple were murdered when
their grandson, angry over a lack of inheritance, hacked them to
death with a machete *** Jennifer Aniston at a
Frieze Week fête at the home of West Wing actress
Mary McCormack and her husband, director
Michael Morris, hosted by London dealer
Victoria Miro *** architect Kulapat
Yantrasast—whose firm wHY is responsible
for designing the tents that house all three Frieze fairs—and
artists Jon Rafman and Calvin
Marcus at a birthday party for the artist Ben Wolf
Noam, thrown by Clearing gallery at
the Echo Park art-word hangout El
Prado *** Lorna Simpson,
Thelma Golden, and Beth Rudin
DeWoody at the opening of Arcmanoro
Niles‘s show at UTA Artist Space in
Beverly Hills.

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: Avery Singer Is Officially the World’s
Priciest Millennial Artist, Frieze VIPs Crash the Oscars, & More
Juicy Art-World Gossip appeared first on artnet
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