KAWS for Concern? Sotheby’s Is Selling Off 25 Works by the Street Art Star From the Collection of the Late Video Game Entrepreneur Ryan Brant

Is it time to cash in on KAWS?

Sotheby’s has announced plans to sell 25 works by the art-market
phenomenon (also known as Brian Donnelly) from the collection of
the late collector and video game entrepreneur Ryan Brant. The wave
of works by the in-demand artist will be offered at a series of
auctions worldwide over the next six months.

The KAWS haul is part of 130 works assembled by Brant, the
founder of software and video game company Take Two Initiative and
the son of top collector and publishing magnate Peter Brant,
heading to the block. The younger Brant died this past March at age
47 from cardiac arrest.

KAWS’s market has been heading into overdrive lately. This past
spring, The Kaws Album (2005) sold for a record-smashing
$14.8 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, shattering its $1 million
high estimate. The artist’s 15 highest auction prices have all been
achieved within the past 12 months, with notable buying from Asian
collectors.

Now, market-watchers can buckle up for a whole lot more thanks
to Brant’s collection. Three KAWS works from the haul will be
featured in Sotheby’s “Contemporary Curated” sale in New York this
week, with seven others on offer at the Hong Kong contemporary art
auctions in early October. A further nine will be included in the
New York prints sale in October, and seven more will be offered in
an online-only sale of works from Brant’s collection that same
month. Don’t Sink (2013), a circular painting that will be
offered this Thursday, is estimated at $250,000 to $350,000.

KAWS parted ways with his
longtime dealer Emmanuel Perrotin this past summer and is now
exclusively represented by Skarstedt Gallery, which has branches in
New York and London. KAWS’s first London show with the gallery,
“KAWS: Blackout,” opens on October 1. He will present 10 new
abstract paintings priced between $450,000 and $575,000 each,
according to the
FT, as well as two bronze sculptures ($850,000 each).
KAWS is also the focus of a current sprawling exhibition at the
National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

With all this activity, should KAWS collectors worry about the
market getting flooded? Neither Perrotin nor Skarstedt responded to
artnet News’s request for comment by publication time. But
Larry Warsh, an early and ardent supporter of KAWS, is not
worried.

“Ryan [Brant] was a very astute buyer from what I can see, with
the genetic intuition that his father, Peter Brant, had,” Warsh
told artnet News. “He certainly understood artists and what it
means to anticipate what happens when an artist gets popular, He
was very smart about the KAWS works he collected.” Warsh added
considering the current level of global demand, the estimates
appear “reasonable.”

Brant’s holdings also include work by Francesco Clemente and
Kenny Scharf as well as design pieces by the Campana Brothers and
Gaetano Pesce. Notably, the house will also offer a 2013 palm tree
oil painting by Josh Smith that appears to have been
subject to legal action last year. (Sotheby’s did not immediately
respond to a query confirming the work’s provenance.)

According to the Miami
Herald, Anthony Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan,
sued Brant after he placed the winning $70,000 bid for a green and
yellow piece by Smith at a charity auction in 2013 but failed to
make good on his pledge.

“He was supposed to pay the charity for the developmentally
disabled within days, but days turned to weeks, months and years,”
the Herald wrote. “After several
reminders two years later, the charity received Brant’s check
for $10,000 and another for $25,000. Both bounced. Brant sent two
more checks for the same amounts, and the one for $10,000 cleared.
The other bounced again.”

According to the report, a judge eventually ordered Brant to pay
$60,000 of the $70,000 he owed. The Josh Smith in the Sotheby’s
sale carries an estimate of $77,000 to $128,000.

The post KAWS for Concern? Sotheby’s Is Selling Off 25 Works
by the Street Art Star From the Collection of the Late Video Game
Entrepreneur Ryan Brant appeared first on artnet
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