Here Are the 6 Most Expensive Works at the Virtual Frieze New York Fair (and 5 Affordable Ones, Too)

The virtual Frieze New York Art Fair—now running online through
May 15—offers a (browser) window into the way many people will be
experiencing art fairs for the foreseeable future.

And while it remains to be seen how much buying activity will
take place beyond some high-profile purchases on the first VIP day,
one thing is for sure: galleries are becoming increasingly open to
price transparency. Frieze encouraged dealers to post prices along
with their works, noting that it lowers the barrier to entry for
prospective clients, and many galleries listened. The platform also
offers users the ability to search by price bracket—which allowed
us to do something we’ve always wanted to do at an IRL fair:
identify the most expensive and most affordable items alike.

There are 32 works listed in the $1 million-and-up category
(though, frustratingly, roughly half were “price on request”) and
around 1,500 in the under-$10,000 category. (There were also some
glitches: it’s not possible to further classify these results from
highest to lowest, and the under-$10,000 category has numerous
six-figure items included by mistake. We excluded the lower-priced
non-profit editions outside of the regular gallery sections.)

Armed with a fast internet connection and many cups of coffee,
we combed through hundreds of works to find the priciest—and the
most eye-catching examples under $5,000.

The Most
Expensive

Jean Michel
Basquiat, Untitled (Venus 2000 B.C.) (1982)
Price: $5.5 million

Blue-chip Acquavella Galleries accounted for the bulk of the
priciest works on offer, including this 1982 acrylic and oil stick
on canvas work by Basquiat, priced at $5.5 million. Works from
1982—when a series of solo shows rocketed the young artist to
art-world stardom—tend to be his most prized, although one work
doesn’t boast a particularly complex composition. The price
represents a considerable premium from its last sale, in 2017, when
it fetched $2.7 million at Phillips. Yet another work by Basquiat
from 1982, an untitled oil stick on paper depicting a head, is on
offer at London’s Waddington Custot gallery with an asking price
“in the range of $4.5 million to $5.5 million.”

Alexander
Calder, Petits Disques Blancs (Small White
Discs) (1953)
Price: $3.8
million

The floating white discs that hover like snowflakes in this
mobile reflect Calder’s skill in translating organic forms into
enchanting sculptures. Small White Discs, made in 1953, is
also at Acquavella—which, like some other galleries, may
be approaching the viewing room concept as a chance to find
previously unknown buyers for inventory that has been slow to move.
This work last sold at auction in 2012, when it fetched $2.4
million at Christie’s in London. It failed to sell three years
later at Christie’s Paris.

Keith
Haring, Untitled (1982)
Price: $3.2 million

Day-glo enamel colors are combined with Haring’s distinct style
of bold brushstrokes to create this densely patterned work. The
painting, which last sold at auction for $1.2 million at Sotheby’s
London in 2017, is reminiscent of Haring’s famous Pop art-style
street murals, which he often used to raise awareness for social
causes. It’s available at—you guessed it!—Acquavella.

George
Condo, Distanced Figures (2020)
Price: $2 million

The high-end offerings at the fair included several works priced
at $2 million, including this recently executed (and almost
immediately sold) painting by George Condo on the theme of
isolation and social distancing. It was offered by Hauser &
Wirth.

Richard
Prince, The House (2007)
Price: $2 million

Also priced at $2 million is a Richard Prince “joke” painting,
The House (2007), which last sold at auction in 2017 for
$996,500 at Sotheby’s New York. It’s for sale at (where else?)
Acquavella.

The Most
Affordable

Dana Lok, Assume
(Take) (2017)
Price: $4,500

The Brooklyn-based artist has said she sometimes thinks of
painting as a theater set. Milan’s Clima Gallery is showing several
of Lok’s skillfully rendered paintings, like Assume
(Take), that play with framing, point of view, illusion,
and flatness. We love the mix of futuristic imagery and painterly
touch in this one.

Sarah Ann Weber,
Solstice (2020)
Price: $4,000

The Los Angeles-based artist works primarily with
watercolor and colored pencil on paper, as in this recent work on
offer at LA’s Anat Ebgi Gallery. Focusing on floral, exotic,
and invented organic forms, she bestows her compositions with a
distinct sense of psychedelic dreaminess that combines ’70s
nostalgia with our culture’s current obsession with all things
witchy.

Jiha Moon,
Immortal Dessert (Dixie) (2020)
Price: $4,000

Contemporary artists are finding increasingly inventive ways to
reinvigorate ceramic and porcelain, and Jiha Moon is among them.
Her vessels and masks mix traditional Asian-inspired porcelain
painting with contemporary Western allusions (like popular brand
logos) that reference cultural displacement and miscommunication.
“I want to create objects that are imaginative, mischievous, and
fun, and remind people of something alive,” the artist says of her
work, on view at Derek Eller Gallery.

Jagdeep
Raina, A Tangible Expression Part
1 (2019)
Price: $3,500

Fresh off an MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design,
the Canadian-born artist has developed a wide-ranging practice that
spans drawing, textiles, writing, video animation, photography, and
ceramics. The artist engages with personal and public archives
to find source material with a particular focus on images of
the Punjabi community in Canada. This work is presented by
Cooper Cole Gallery.

César A. Martínez,
La Chata (2019)
Price: $2,000

Martínez’s portraits are inspired by the way Mexican-American
family photographs have served as intimate, personal portraits at
times when only white individuals or groups were being memorialized
in grand paintings. The often-melancholic individuals he depicts
are actually hybrids derived from various photographs found in high
school yearbooks, obituaries, newspapers, and other public sources.
His work has been collected by the Smithsonian American Art
Museum and is on offer at the San Antonio gallery Ruiz-Healy
Art.

The post Here Are the 6 Most Expensive Works at the Virtual
Frieze New York Fair (and 5 Affordable Ones, Too) appeared
first on artnet News.