New auction sale record set by woman

The record for an art work sold at auction by a woman artist has been broken by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Jimson Weed/ White Flower, pictured above, broke the previous record of £7.5 million with an untitled art work by artist Joan Mitchell, O'Keeffe has swooped in with £28.8million, having broken the £9.5 million estimate that Sotheby's New York had set. This upturn is most welcome, as the record price of an art work sold at auction stands at £90.8 million, but to male counterpart and master painter Francis Bacon.

According to reports by BBC News, the estimated price began to swell following a rivalry between two bidders that pushed the price of the work up dramatically. Put up for auction by The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in New Mexico last week to raise funds for the organisation, the macro view of the painting follows the artists oeuvre of close ups of flora, the painting that sold is a hugely popular piece, that once belonged to George W. Bush. However, BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz has called into question the museum selling off parts of O'Keeffe's portfolio to raise funds as a betrayal of keeping her work for public viewing. Having lived her last years before her death in 1986 at the age of 98 in New Mexico, much of her work reflects the landscape there, further calling into question the museums decision. The UK's major galleries tend to follow a very different protocol, with organisations raising funds from public drives, private collectors and funding bodies to keep important works in the public collections.

 

 

However, for us at CDG the most striking feature of this sale is the discrepancy in prices for top selling men at £90.8 million to women at £28.8 million doesn't correlate with the market as we know it. Of Curious Duke's top five selling artists, three of them are women: up and coming artists are closing the gender gap, with gallery representation and art sales slowly becoming equal within new art. However, this has yet to permeate into the art world at large with only 20% of Turner Prize winners being women since its launch in 1984, with three of those in the last four years. Perhaps this upturn signals a growing shift that will finally break the myth of men as more masterful as creatives, with O'Keeffe erasing the idea that masters of art belong solely to men over the last one hundred years.

 

See some of CDG talented female artists:

Hannah Adamaszek

Simone Truong

 

Kate Knight

 

-Sinéad Loftus

 

Image source The Guardian

Jimson Weed/ White Flower No. 1, 1932.