When it comes to gifts for art lovers, wrapping original art is the ultimate power move. But here’s the catch: collectors pour their hearts—and usually their bank accounts—into curating deeply personal collections. If you know your giftee very, very well, a piece of art can be a very, very good gift. You could also treat the collector in your life to a gallery outing or surprise them with a session with an art advisor. But if adding to their collection feels too ambitious, there are plenty of artsy presents for everyone on your list, from the absolute obsessive to the casually cultured. Whether you’re working with a shoestring budget or aiming for extravagance, there’s no shortage of options that are thoughtful, stylish and primed to impress. Enjoy our guide to the gifts guaranteed to thrill any art enthusiast.
On November 20, Sotheby’s generated a combined total of $304.6 million between the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection, Exquisite Corps and Modern Evening sales. Julian Cassady Photography / Ali
Of the $1.6 billion of art expected to change hands during this year’s November sales, $1.1 billion was secured by Sotheby’s when the evening sales concluded on the 20th. When tallied with the Day sales the following afternoon, the auction house’s fall marquee week sales had generated a total of $1.173 billion—the second-highest total ever after the $1.33 billion achieved in November 2021 at the height of the contemporary and ultracontemporary markets.
Following the success of the Leonard A. Lauder sale, which delivered a $527.5 million Evening total and a clean 100 percent sold rate for the $3.8 million Day sale offering (est. $3.2 million), Sotheby’s completed a full white-glove, three-sale marathon. It opened with The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection Evening Auction, which totaled $109.5 million, followed by the $98.1 million Exquisite Corpus sale and a $97 million Modern Evening auction. Driving many of the lots was strong participation from Asia, which accounted for 30 percent of total bidding, a reminder that Asian collectors respond enthusiastically when true quality comes to market.
Most importantly, if 2021 belonged to the contemporary and ultracontemporary frenzy, these marquee sales showed a clear pivot. Buyers turned toward art-historical touchstones by the most established names in Modern art or toward figures long overlooked and now undergoing reassessment. Across the November sales, Sotheby’s sold $843 million of Modern works, the highest total ever for the category in a single season. Prestigious provenance and strong storytelling were key in this inaugural auction round at the Breuer building for Sotheby’s, with single-owner collections accounting for 72.5 percent of the week’s total ($828,244,220 of $1.173 billion). And in the contemporary segment, it was the artists with the strongest institutional foundations who rose to the top.
“After years of uneven seasons, this week’s results demonstrate that the often quoted cliche of the three D’s (death, debt and divorce) powering the art market has never been truer,” Mari-Claudia Jimenéz, partner and co-head of Withers Art & Advisory, confirmed. For the industry’s seasoned expert, the abundance of fresh-to-market, extraordinary-quality estate properties inspired buyers to return with gusto to chase the best-in-class works with impeccable histories.
Sotheby’s evening marathon on November 20 began with the collection of Chicago’s Cindy and Jay Pritzker, who are best known for founding the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979. The sale immediately set the tone of the night, generating $109.5 million across just 13 works against a pre-sale estimate of $73.5 million to $88.5 million.
Leading the auction was Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a radiant still life from the artist’s Paris period in which a stack of yellow-bound books becomes a portrait of his voracious intellect and humanist curiosity. Boasting an extensive exhibition history, the canvas was pursued for at least seven minutes by five bidders and sold for a record-setting $62.7 million, well above its estimate of around $40 million and setting a new benchmark for any still life by the artist.
Deep bidding also accompanied the sale of Wassily Kandinsky’s musical watercolor “Ins violett” (Into Violet) from the height of his Bauhaus period, listed as No. 188 in his handlist. Sought by five bidders in a spirited exchange, it more than doubled its high estimate, fetching $2,368,000 (est. $700,000-$1,000,000).
Other Modern masterworks in the Pritzker collection prompted intense competition. Camille Pissarro’s Bords de l’Oise à Pontoise, dating to the beginning of the artist’s second sojourn in Pontoise in 1872, was pursued by four bidders and achieved $2.5 million against its $1.2-1.8 million estimate. Félix Vallotton’s poetic domestic scene, Femme couchée dormant (Le Sommeil), triggered an animated battle between six collectors on the phones and in the room, pushing it above its $1.8-2.5 million estimate to sell for $2.8 million. The canvas had been acquired by the Pritzkers from Wildenstein & Co., New York, in 1985 and remained with them ever since, as did most lots in the sale.
Lot 10, the Cubist Nature morte by Fernand Léger, also sparked back-and-forth bidding from five contenders, driving the work to $2,214,000, nearly double its $800,000-$1.2 million estimate. This was followed by a $9,200,000 result for Max Beckmann’s classics-inspired canvas, sought by five bidders, and Joan Miró’s uncanny sculptural reinterpretation La Mère Ubu, which achieved $5,052,000 after a battle between four bidders, landing near the midpoint of its $4-6 million estimate. The bronze had been acquired by the couple in 1980 from legendary dealer Pierre Matisse in New York.
Another highlight, Henri Matisse’s Léda et le cygne, sold for $10.4 million, meeting its high estimate with fees. One of the very few architectural pieces by the artist—the majority of which are in public spaces or museums—and the first of its kind to appear at auction, the unique work was commissioned in 1943 by Argentine diplomat Marcelo Fernández. Last exhibited publicly during the 1984-85 Matisse exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, it was acquired the following year by the Pritzkers from Feingarten Galleries in Los Angeles. But Paul Gauguin’s La Maison du Pen du, gardeuse de vache from his Nabis period failed to find enough bidders to meet its $6-8 million estimate, selling instead at its reserve for $4,930,000.
Frida Kahlo’s $54.7 million record
The evening continued with a section entirely dedicated to Surrealism, as the movement continues to gain momentum, further ignited by the major Surrealist show that has just opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and as its unsettling aesthetic resonates uncannily with the chaos, sentiments and desire to exorcise it that define our time. In only one night, Sotheby’s placed more than $123 million of Surrealist works, the highest total for Surrealist art ever sold in one evening at Sotheby’s.
Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) from 1940 achieved $54.7 million with fees, becoming the most expensive work by a female artist. Sotheby’s
The dedicated single-owner sale Exquisite Corpus offered works from one of the most distinguished private Surrealist collections, accumulated over four decades, yet kept rigorously unnamed in keeping with the movement’s aura of mystery. Nonetheless, given that many of the lots appeared in the Guggenheim’s 1999 exhibition “Surrealism: Two Private Eyes,” which celebrated the collections of Daniel Filipacchi and record producer Nesuhi Ertegun—who together assembled the most important grouping of Surrealist art in private hands—we can reasonably speculate that the consignor is most likely the Ertegun estate, especially once noticing that several works list in their provenance that they were acquired from the Parisian dealer Daniel Filipacchi, ruling him out as the consignor. Artnews reached the same conclusion, reporting that the 1940 Kahlo was consigned by the estate of Selma Ertegun, who built the collection with her late husband Nesuhi Ertegun. The session closed with a white-glove result of $98.1 million, with 67 percent of works selling above their high estimates.
The undisputed star of the collection was Frida Kahlo’s masterpiece of mystery and spirituality, El sueño (La cama), which ignited spirited international bidding before hammering at $47 million, or $54.7 million with fees, to Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of the Latin American art department. The result not only set a new record for the artist but also for any woman artist at auction, surpassing the previous $44.4 million benchmark set by Georgia O’Keeffe in 2014. The mystical canvas had been purchased by the consignor at Sotheby’s in 1980 for $51,000 and remained in the collection since then, marking a return of roughly 107,000 percent.
Depicting a skeleton floating above the artist as she lies in her bed—herself suspended midair as a fragile terrestrial vessel—Kahlo visualizes what art historian Whitney Chadwick describes as the “Mexican belief in the indivisible unity of life and death.” Considered a key work in Kahlo’s career, where she reached the height of her symbolic and psychological resonance, the canvas boasts a major exhibition history, having appeared in “Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti” (1982-83) at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the Haus am Waldsee in Hamburg, Kunstverein Hannover, Kulturhuset Stockholm, New York University’s Grey Art Gallery and the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City. It also featured prominently in the Guggenheim’s 1999 show “Surrealism: Two Private Eyes,” and in the Tate’s landmark Kahlo survey in 2005, which later traveled to the Walker Art Center and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007-08.
We will see this masterpiece again soon in a slate of upcoming exhibitions, including “Frida y Diego: The Last Dream” at MoMA in New York (March 22-September 7, 2026), “Frida: The Making of an Icon” at Tate Modern in London (June 25, 2026-January 3, 2027), “Frida Kahlo—The Painter” at Fondation Beyeler in Basel (January 31-May 17, 2027), and “The Autonomous Gaze” at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Kunstmuseum Basel, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art and BOZAR Brussels (December 2026–July 2028).
Another standout of the evening, Salvador Dalí’s jewel-like Symbiose de la tête aux coquillages, captivated several bidders with its hallucinatory power, reaching $4,198,000 (est. $2-3 million) on the phone with an Asian bidder. With a distinguished exhibition history—from the Hayward Gallery’s Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (1978), to Centre Pompidou’s “Salvador Dalí: rétrospective, 1920-1980 (1979-80),” to the Guggenheim’s “Surrealism: Two Private Eyes (1999)”—the work was acquired from Daniel Filipacchi in Paris in 1977 and remained with the consignor ever since, meaning they were also responsible for these museum loans.
The market for Paul Delvaux also remains strong, with his haunting Composition reaching the high end of its estimate and selling for $3.8 million (est. $2.5-3.5 million).
Female Surrealists remain a bright spot. First exhibited in 1953 as part of her solo show at Alexander Iolas in 1958 and formerly in the collection of William N Copley, Dorothea Tanning’s otherworldly Interior with Sudden Joy sold for $3.2 million (est. $2-3 million), setting a new record for the artist. Her previous record, Endgame (1944), achieved $2.3 million at Christie’s last May.
Dorothea Tanning’s otherworldly Interior with Sudden Joy sold for $3.2 million (est. $2-3 million), setting a new record for the artist. Sotheby’s
Highly coveted among collectors are the extremely rare paintings on masonite by Remedios Varo. Created shortly after Varo fled war-torn Europe, marking a pivotal shift in the artist’s storied practice, her Sans titre from 1943 approached the million mark after fees, landing at $952,500 (est. $500,000-700,000). Her current record, Revelación, was set last May at Christie’s at $6.22 million, surpassing her earlier $6.19 million record for Armonía (Autorretrato Sugerente) in 2020. Reflecting the growing curatorial effort to decentralize Surrealism beyond Paris, the recent major survey celebrating the movement’s centenary dedicates its final room to a compelling dialogue between Varo and Leonora Carrington.
Another striking leap came for the French artist, illustrator and long-underrecognized Surrealist insider Valentine Hugo, whose Le Crapaud de Maldoror climbed to $825,555 after seven bidders pushed it far beyond its $150,000-200,000 estimate. And for those who enjoy the footnotes of Surrealist intrigue, the piece dates from the period when Hugo was also romantically entangled with André Breton.
New attention to Surrealist influences in Latin American modernism also propelled Óscar Domínguez’s La Machine à écrire, which more than doubled its high estimate and sold for $3.7 million (est. $1-1.5 million). More broadly, as institutions work to broaden the canon, overlooked figures outside Surrealism’s Parisian core are gaining the long-overdue recognition they deserve.
One of them is Austrian-Mexican artist Wolfgang Paalen, a member of Abstraction-Création from 1934 to 1935, who joined the Surrealist movement after relocating to Mexico in 1935 and remained a significant figure until 1942. His revelatory, surreal landscape, Fata Alaska, set a new auction record for the artist at $1,016,000 (est. $350,000-450,000).
Another double record arrived courtesy of Hans Bellmer, who broke his auction record twice in one night. First, his uncanny gouache Main et Bras achieved $508,000 (est. $100,000-200,000). Then, a rare and intensely erotic oil on canvas—a medium he rarely used, being far better known for his photographs of dolls—nearly reached the million-dollar mark, fetching a record-setting $942,000 (est. $300,000-400,000). “The starting-point of desire, with respect to the intensity of its images, is not in a perceptible whole but in the detail,” Bellmer wrote in his anatomy of image. “The essential point to retain from the monstrous dictionary of analogies/antagonisms which constitute the dictionary of the image is that a given detail, such as a leg, is perceptible, accessible to memory and available, in short, is real.” It is a reflection that perfectly encapsulates the tension between fascination and horror, erotism and violence that animates all his seductive yet unsettling work.
A $97 million Modern Evening
The evening concluded with the core offering of the Modern Evening auction, which across its 29 lots generated $97 million, surpassing the pre-sale estimate of $71.1-101.9 million. One of the evening’s most anticipated lots, René Magritte’s Le Jockey Perdu, led the sale, achieving $12.3 million after fees. The exquisite gouache encapsulates Magritte’s signature play with visual paradoxes, maintaining the sense of spatial disorientation and uncanniness—alongside the sly playfulness—that runs through his entire oeuvre. First conceived as a papier collé in 1926, the motif was quickly followed by an oil of the same title, which headlined the artist’s first one-man exhibition in 1927 at Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels. Evidently fascinated by the theme, Magritte returned to the image of the lost jockey in multiple gouaches and oils throughout his career. The work came from the collection of the late real estate magnate Matthew Bucksbaum and his wife Carolyn, whose group of works in the sale brought a combined total of $25.2 million.
Despite the nearly three-hour marathon, the Modern session opened energetically with Joan Miró’s oil-on-burlap panel, Personnages et oiseau devant le soleil, also from the Bucksbaum Collection. It prompted a dynamic bidding battle between seven contenders, rapidly pushing it far beyond its $400,000-600,000 estimate to land at $2,368,000. The couple had acquired the work in 1998, when it last appeared at Sotheby’s, consigned by Perls Galleries.
Other top results of the evening included Georgia O’Keeffe’s Large Dark Red Leaves on White, which landed at $7.9 million, just shy of its high estimate. Jean Dubuffet’s Restaurant Rougeit II sat comfortably within its range, selling for $7.5 million. Degas’s pastel of three ballerinas, Trois danseuses, was chased by five bidders and fetched $5.8 million.
René Magritte’s Le Jockey Perdu led the Modern Evening sale, achieving $12.3 million after fees. Sotheby’s
A Modern sale would be incomplete without Monet. One of his famed Impressionistic views, capturing the shifting light around Rouen Cathedral, more than doubled its low estimate, selling for $7.4 million after a lengthy bidding war among six bidders in different geographies. The painting was practically fresh to auction, having remained in the Schlumberger collection for over 60 years, and appeared at auction for the first time last night.
Another artist who inspired strong interest was Childe Hassam, one of the leading American Impressionists and a central figure in what became known as the “Ten,” the group that broke from the Society of American Artists to champion a more progressive, modern approach at the turn of the 20th century. His Newport, October Sundown from 1901 was fiercely pursued by four bidders, achieving $2,002,000 above a $1.8 million high estimate. The painting came from the Sam and Marilyn Fox Collection, two prominent patrons and civic leaders from the St. Louis region, whose group generated a total of $2.7 million, exceeding its high estimate of $2.4 million.
As MoMA finally pays overdue tribute to the work of Cuban artist Wifredo Lam with a show that opened earlier this month, his Ídolo (Oyá/Divinité de l’air et de la mort) drew strong attention in the room, selling for $7.4 million and marking the second-highest auction price ever achieved for the artist. The renewed institutional spotlight clearly reinforced market confidence, positioning the canvas as another highlight of the evening and Lam as a name we will likely see rise further at auction in the coming seasons.
While the Modern section closed with white gloves, several lots still fell below their low estimates. Arthur Garfield Dove’s Rose and Locust Stump, backed by a guarantee and irrevocable bids, sold for $681,000, nearly half its low estimate, despite its extensive exhibition history. Andrew Wyeth’s dark landscape, East Waldoboro, also sold below expectations at $3,588,000 (est. $4-6 million). Jacques Lipchitz’s sculpture Baigneuse assise went for half its low estimate at $381,000, despite its prestigious provenance from the Geri Brawerman Collection, which generated a total of $16.7 million during the night.
Sotheby’s continued with its day sales on November 21, which delivered an additional aggregated total above $51 million, between the $46,404,999 of the Modern Day Sale and the $4,912,868 for the Exquisite Corpus Day session. Sotheby’s Contemporary day sale, held a few days earlier, generated $111.4 million, the highest total ever for a Day sale at Sotheby’s. The white-glove offering for the Lauder day session brought the total for the Lauder collection to $531.3 million.
Ultimately, Sotheby’s was the clear winner this round, generating a solid and unequivocally successful $1.173 billion with its Evening and Day sales. Meanwhile, Christie’s fall marquee sales totaled $965 million, while Phillips brought in $92,139,589 across its various sessions. In total, across all three auction houses, the November marquee sales have generated more than $2.2 billion, a number that suggests the market has rediscovered some of its energy. Miami, however, will be the real litmus test of the season, because what we saw in action and at auction this week was only the very top of the market.
Luke Agada’s work is deeply rooted in the “third space” concept. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
Since earning an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago last year, painter Luke Agada’s career has taken off. Early showings at group exhibitions spanning continents—“Collective Reflection: Contemporary African and Diasporic Expressions of a New Vanguard” at Gallery 1957 in Accra, “Unusual Suspects” at African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos and “Where The Wild Roses Grow” at Berlin’s Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery—established Agada as an artist with a knack for expressing cultural identity, ambiguity and introspection in surrealist works rendered in color palettes reminiscent of his native Lagos. His first U.S. solo exhibition at Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery in September of 2023 was followed by a standout showing at Art Basel Miami Beach, where Roberts Projects featured his work in what quickly became one of the fair’s most buzzed-about booths.
All this from someone who not terribly long ago was making and selling paintings in his spare time while pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine. But just a year into his veterinary career, the Nigerian-born, Chicago-based artist quit to focus on art full-time—a pivot that involved moving from Lagos to the U.S.
“Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work,” Agada told Observer. “The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces.”
Agada’s style is a confluence of Surrealism and postcolonial theory, and much of his work explores the “third space” concept popularized by Homi K. Bhabha. With earthy tones, shadow and light, he depicts clashes of memory and migration in psychologically engaging landscapes where intersecting cultural identities and shifting power dynamics create tension-filled environs populated by distortions representing not individuals but states of being.
On the occasion of the opening of “Between Two Suns,” the artist’s first solo show in Los Angeles now on at Roberts Projects, Observer connected with Agada to discuss his influences, how his life’s journey has shaped his work and what he hopes people will take away from the show. With his star on the rise, expect to see more of him.
The surreal distortion in your figures is uncanny—what shaped your visual vocabulary?
In the early stages of my practice, I was heavily influenced by European surrealists such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and René Magritte, which grounded my work in traditional figure drawing. I later became intrigued by various modernist movements, particularly the impact of modernism on American art that challenged conventional representations of the human form. This interest sparked my desire to push the boundaries of representation in my work.
Upon moving to the U.S. for my MFA at SAIC, my approach shifted significantly. Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work. The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows, and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces. My interest in Postcolonial theory grew during a class on the subject, as I found it deeply relatable.
Encountering the works of the New York School painters opened a new avenue for developing the visual framework of my practice. The emotions embedded in their work were palpable; they were invested in infusing meaning into forms that resonate with the entire human experience. Their unique way of freezing moments within the intermediate zones of image-making further fueled my interest. Consequently, I shifted my focus from purely orthodox surrealists to artists like Arshile Gorky and Joan Miró, who employed an automatist approach while drawing on their surrealist influences.
Luke Agada, Therapist. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
Who are those ghostly figures meant to be? You? An everyman?
Although I deeply connect with the emotional and psychological states of the figures in my paintings, they are not biographical assertions of myself. Rather, they are representations of states of being, some of which are tied to specific stories or events.
What should people know about your approach to painting?
My relationship with painting has gradually shifted or evolved over time. Earlier, I paid more attention solely to the representative image, which had a major focus on the well-defined identity of the subjects. However, I soon developed an interest in how the idea and approach to representation of the figure amongst modernist painters of the 20th century evolved. This made me realize that the theme of identity is not the only foundation or final form that my work can take. I saw the need to go beyond just the reconstruction of identity.
The transformative property of painting, amongst other things, contributed to my interest in the organic and biomorphic forms that sit at the border between the Representative and Prefigurative Image, which accurately reflects my thoughts about some of the conversations I am interested in.
I am interested in challenging the anatomy of forms and the new meaning they assume as they adapt to a new space. Doing this creates tension between them and the space they occupy. The spaces are a mix of memory and imagination, yet they’re not purely autobiographical, as I am sometimes making a space that can only exist in a painting.
“Between Two Suns,” installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Paul Salveson
I desire the paintings to have a life of their own, so there is always an ongoing negotiation between my hand and the material to capture the poetics of the moment as I layer up, add and remove paint to reveal the underpainting. I am gradually embracing the plurality of perspectives because it opens for me an infinite number of possibilities and entry points into the painted picture. Picasso and Georges Braque breaking down the picture plane into the fourth dimension was a good example for me.
Although ideological concepts are important, I do not prioritize them over painterly values. This is because painting often operates beyond the artist’s intentions, especially upon first encounter. The meaning of a picture often reveals itself later. Therefore, I approach my work with an open mind, staying highly observant and sensitive to where the process leads me, even when working through a specific idea.
How has your own cross-continental exposure impacted the evolution of your artistic style and/or narrative?
Learning how to truly “see” is one of the most valuable experiences I’ve gained as an artist. It has enabled me to view the world contextually, through the lens of the human story—understanding that each person’s perspective is filtered through their unique experiences, histories and cultural contexts. Despite the world being incredibly interconnected, with vast diversity among people of different cultural backgrounds and nationalities, the “single story” perspective remains prevalent. This oversimplification reduces complex individuals and experiences to stereotypical narratives. I have taken a keen interest in the subjectivity of forms across borders; recognizing that the interpretation and meaning of forms, as a visual language, are shaped by individual lived experiences and perspectives.
This realization became particularly clear to me when I encountered the work of some modernist painters, such as New York School and abstract expressionist painters. Engaging with their works awakened me to new sensibilities and revealed possibilities I had not previously considered in my own work.
I’ve read that you draw inspiration from both scholarly texts and literary works; what can you tell me about those influences in particular? How, for you, does text translate into the visual?
I recently developed an interest in postcolonial theory and literature, particularly some of the writings of Homi Bhabha that have helped in my understanding of the international and intercultural Third Space of migration, the binary opposition between geographies, between the East and West and how that is impacting the formation of hybridity and complex cultural identities in the globalized space. A part of my work has been derived from some of the lexicons, such as the migrant or alien, used to describe these new identities and their adaptation in the Third Space.
Luke Agada, Vestiges. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
The paintings actually do resist concrete references to the theoretical part of my influences. They only carry a sensation of my thoughts and imaginations as I sample through visual references that represent the information and feeling I am trying to convey. Hence there is nothing literal about the form of the paintings that directly references my interest in Postcolonial theory visually, the scholars have done great justice in theorizing that thought through text. It’s an interpretation of all the elements that work together in the paintings to evoke the same feeling we experience about the subject.
A direct translation of text to visual information or painting would be an unnecessary and overly illustrative narration of what has already been said. This would be a bit too much to ask of the medium of painting because it cannot have the desired impact that other media like film, animation or montage would have in doing the same thing. Rather than do that as a painter, I focus on the texture of sensations like tension, movement and transition.
Painting is slow, not just as a medium or in the process, but in its ability to become. It has the propensity for not just immediacy but also a prolonged impression or impact that has to be digested over time. Hence, I feel the purpose of painting lies in serving as a catalyst to stimulate feelings or thoughts about a subject, and an effective way of doing that is not by giving you all the visual information or telling you what you already know. Sometimes, a strong painting will not force down on you more information than necessary—that will become “propagandist,” it rather offers you a few essential ingredients to draw you in, and the rest is up to you. That’s why individual interpretations and the meaning we all ascribe to forms can be quite subjective. It’s like taking a Rorschach test- our personalities are revealed in how we see.
What do you hope people will take away from the totality of “Between Two Suns”?
First, I hope that they are able to visually digest, connect with and enjoy the formal component of the works. Through the conversations around it, I hope to invite them to meditate on the notions of displacement and hybridity and offer a visual meditation on the precarious balance between survival and dissolution. And by refusing the structuralist comfort of definitive meaning, I hope to leave space for the audience to confront their own assumptions about identity, migration and shared space.
Picture in Picture by Signe and Genna Grushovenko on display at this year’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Christa Terry
Ask locals where to see the best art in Denver and more than a few will point you toward the famously angular Denver Art Museum. Multiple Uber drivers will suggest you visit the trendy RiNo district. Both are good ideas, but keep pestering the nice people of Denver and the recommendations start to get more interesting. There’s the American Museum of Western Art. There’s Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, though I leave it up to you to decide whether that’s really art. There are the eye-catching public installations, many rather horsey, like Donald Lipski’s The Yearling and the sculptor-killer, Blue Mustang (Observer correspondent Nick Hilden rightly pointed out some months back that Denver has a thing for big blue mammals). Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s monumental dustpan, Big Sweep, is certainly something. And Leo Tanguma’s murals in Denver International Airport are said to hide the secrets of the Illuminati.
But I’m not here to see any of that. I’ve traveled to Colorado’s capital with a friend for the sprawling Cherry Creek Arts Festival—an annual juried event that attracts applications from thousands of artists and supports arts initiatives across the state. This year’s festival was spread out over six short blocks with tent after tent of exhibiting artists plus at least four cross streets with more artists’ booths and food vendors, live music, a silent auction and a crafty area for kids, which is where we stopped for shade and shaved ice on Day 0.
The Cherry Creek Arts Festival attracts thousands of artist applicants each year. Christa Terry
It wasn’t just the heat that got to us. As Jason Horowitz—now Rome bureau chief of the New York Times but once staff writer for this publication—put it in 2008: “Even if you are not thirsty, the one thing everyone in Denver tells you to do is drink water. That headache you feel is not a headache, it’s dehydration. Don’t take Advil, Bayer or Tylenol. Drink water. Lots of water. Keep water on your bed stand and water in your car. Put water in your backpack.”
My friend put water in her bag; I did not, but I did pack sumatriptan, and she was kind enough to share her water with me during our whirlwind semi-self-guided tour of what’s on in Denver. We had two days and two nights to experience as much art as possible—like a pub crawl of culture. Our host and home base: Hotel Clio, one of several upscale hotels in Denver, home to Toro Latin Kitchen & Lounge (more on this later) and the site of one of the most well-appointed fitness centers I’ve ever encountered. Also, deep, deep bathtubs. I took two baths per day, just because I could, but beyond the baths, here’s what our 48 hours of art in Denver looked like.
Donald Lipski’s The Yearling. Christa Terry
Day 0
I pick up my friend at 4:45 a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. flight. Neither of us plans to check a bag, but I am naturally anxious and like to be in the terminal two hours before boarding to confirm that my gate actually exists. We breeze through security, our gate does in fact exist and we grab breakfast sandwiches that I can’t eat because who the hell is actually hungry before nine? I end up tucking into my gluey room-temperature egg and cheese on the plane while cringing through the new Mean Girls and then Jules, which I’d never heard of and am honestly still not sure I’d recommend. My friend graciously takes the middle seat and sleeps through almost the entire flight.
We land at Denver International Airport without incident and despite how much I’ve talked up the absolute weirdness of it—from the subterranean reptiles dwelling in the bunkers underneath to the Flat Earth propaganda in the murals to the resident ghosts—I’m too tired to even look for the famous gargoyles. I am, in fact, desperate for two things: to get more coffee and to get to the Uber that arrived roughly a minute and a half after I ordered it. Once on the road, we gaze unblinkingly out the windows, anxious for a glimpse of Blucifer, but we’re on the wrong side of the highway.
It’s too early to check in, and I don’t want to visit the Cherry Creek Art Festival until we talk to PR head Bryant Palmer, so we drop our bags at Hotel Clio—briefly admiring the art in the lobby on loan from Clayton Lane Fine Arts, which we’ll visit tomorrow—and head away from the long line of artists’ booths just around the corner. By now, we’re exceedingly hungry, but our first stop is Masters Gallery, which has a fun mix of bronzes and other sculptural works, paintings and glass art. We were particularly taken with Lawrence Feir’s fantastical metalwork wall sculptures that rendered the human form in something like chainmail (but make it sci-fi). Lunch is hand pies from the nearby Pasty Republic.
Artwork in the Hotel Clio lobby. Christa Terry
In the early afternoon, after checking in and refreshing ourselves—that’s bath number one—we have a quick meet and greet with festival PR head Bryant Palmer, who gives us the Media tags that will get us into the daily festival VIP lunch and hopefully make it less awkward when I ask artists if I can record them. During our brief chat, he tells us that last year’s participants sold $4.4 million worth of art, averaging out to about $18,000 per participating artist, which probably accounts for the popularity of this festival with artists.
Still, Palmer says, it’s a pretty accessible event, which is reassuring for us to hear, as our art buying budgets are relatively small. “You don’t have to spend fifteen thousand dollars to get something fantastic. You can if you want, it’s perfectly doable here, but you also can purchase original art for a lot less, too.”
Last year, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival drove $4.4 million in sales. Christa Terry
As we start down 2nd Avenue, the festival’s main thoroughfare, I am already grappling with how I will write about all this. There’s the by-the-numbers approach: the festival showcases the work of 250 artist exhibitors selected from among 1,942 artist applicants, with twenty returning award-winners from last year’s festival and five specially selected emerging artists, and so on. Booth 1 is a real eyecatcher, hung with the colorful, vintage-photo-inspired paintings of Signe and Genna Grushovenko. One large work, Picture in Picture, stands out: in it, two women browse artworks displayed on a city street. Very meta.
Darryl Cox’s “fusion frames” stood out. Christa Terry
From there, it’s a mad dash to see as much of the work of those 250 artists as we can while attempting to stay cool in the afternoon heat. My friend is immediately taken with the glass and ceramic art, and I can’t blame her. It’s not really my thing—I’m a painting person—but there are people here doing absolutely amazing stuff with glass and clay, from Amber Marshall’s modular pouffes to Randy O’Brien’s crackled wall pillows. Meanwhile, I gravitate toward the minimalist paintings of Ezra Siegel and similar works (I have a type) but nothing really has me overcome until I see Darryl Cox, Jr.’s striking amalgamations of frame and driftwood that are unlike anything I’ve seen before.
Amy Flynn creates robots sculptures made of vintage found objects. Christa Terry
Other booths that stand out on our first walkthrough of the festival include those of Amy Flynn, who builds whimsical robot sculptures out of found materials, Brice McCasland’s visually immersive collage paintings and Glory Day Loflin’s paintings inspired by fiber art and quiltmaking and based in her grandmother’s textile practice.
“Every festival is different,” she tells us when we ask about her Cherry Creek experience thus far. “One thing I’ve noticed about this one is I’m seeing a lot of traction with specifically what I’m creating: the color saturation and the high key colors. That’s really drawing people in.”
Artist Ezra Siegel discusses his art with a festival visitor. Christa Terry
All told, we spend about four hours roving from booth to booth, for both the artworks and the shade, but we have other places to be. First, the Toro Denver x Relevant Galleries kickoff cocktail event featuring drinks and small bites inspired by David Yarrow’s El Toro, during which I eat too much because everything is so damn good—including the company.
David Yarrow’s El Toro and a cocktail inspired by the work at Relevant Galleries. Christa Terry
“You really shouldn’t wait if there’s something you want to buy at the festival,” a gallerist warns us as we nibble. “I fell in love with this painting but decided to wait. When I went back, I got there just in time to see a couple walking away with it.” My friend and I briefly consider heading back out into the still-glaring sunshine to panic buy several things that had caught our eyes earlier in the afternoon, but by then the El Toro-inspired cocktails are working their magic and we strike up a conversation with a local art collector who, in one of those random coincidences, has friends who work at a distillery in my friend’s town.
Our next stop is Toro proper to make a late-ish dinner reservation that now feels a little too early given how much we’ve accidentally eaten. But I’m a completionist, so I gamely dig into scallops with pork belly and pepita rosemary butter and a plate of sweet corn empanadas. Let me tell you something: should you find yourself in the neighborhood of Hotel Clio, have dinner at Toro. And when you have dinner at Toro, order the sweet corn empanadas. And when you eat the sweet corn empanadas, do not—I repeat, do not—neglect the accompanying chimichurri.
For the rest of the night, I gush about the Toro chimichurri—to our waiter, to chef de cuisine Tracey Todd and to Hotel Clio concierge George Maresh when I need his help figuring out how to access our museum tickets. I’m a little tipsy, and I’ve got chimichurri on my mind as I enjoy bath number two.
Day 1
After exhausting all the coffee pods in my room, I persuade my friend to grab to-go coffees in the Hotel Clio lobby and join me on my morning stroll. While I wait, I browse the Hotel Clio art collection on my phone—I am trying to have as many art experiences as possible, after all. Artists whose work is scattered around the hotel include Hannah Ehrlich, Kim Knoll and Jared Rue, and the common curatorial thread, marketing manager Christopher Polys tells me later, is “an appreciation for Cherry Creek’s past at the confluence of the Cherry Creek and Platte River where gold mining was prevalent.” Something I’ve noticed about art in Denver is that a lot of it is very much geographically grounded. Folks in the West really like Western art.
The festival doesn’t open until 10 a.m., and I’m interested in seeing more of the neighborhood anyway. We knew Cherry Creek was a little tony—there’s the country club, the independent pasty shop, the lovely little store specializing in Versace kitchenware, the new Vespas everywhere—but I find out just how tony when I look up the asking price of the townhouses with For Sale signs in the yards.
A room in the Clyfford Still Museum. Brent Andeck, courtesy the Clyfford Still Museum
Thoroughly caffeinated with muscles warmed and ready, our first stop of the day is not the festival but the single-artist Clyfford Still Museum, which opened in 2011, the culmination of Still’s wish that his body of work (much of which he retained until his death) would remain in storage until an American city built a museum to house his art “exclusively.” That city turned out to be Denver, and that museum in its beautiful building designed by Brad Cloepfil now holds more than 3,000 paintings and works on paper—roughly 93 percent of his lifetime output—in 30,000 square feet. Still once said seeing his work in its entirety was akin to “a symphony,” and I can’t disagree. I was only passingly familiar with the artist before this trip, and I find myself moving from painting to painting in rapt fascination. As it turns out, I really like Still’s monumental canvases and how the Clyfford Still Museum preserves and presents them—particularly how it makes every effort to incorporate the stories of both the women who launched his career and the women who were creating art at the same time but were excluded from the Irascibles.
A view of East 2 West Source Point by Larry Kirkland. Christa Terry
(Please forgive this digression, but Denver is weird. It’s obviously a city, but where are all the people? It’s a beautiful Saturday and the streets and greenspaces around the museum are practically empty. Our Uber driver tells us there’s been a population boom that started with the legalization of recreational cannabis and has since attracted tech companies to the region, but I’m not seeing it.)
We drop back in at the hotel for tacos in the VIP lounge with plans to tour a few of the local art galleries in between visits to the festival. The forecast says the high will be roughly ninety degrees in the late afternoon and I gratefully grab two of the branded paper fans I’d seen people the day before. Thank you, CherryArts! For the rest of the day, my maniacal fanning will prompt my friend to ask repeatedly if I’m okay, but it’s just hot and I’m starting to think Jason Horowitz was right about Denver and dehydration. Luckily, there’s an afternoon Arnold Palmer station (with syrups!) in the Hotel Clio lobby, where we stop after more time at the festival and before heading back to Relevant, where we meet with consultant Melissa Batie.
RELEVANT PHOTO
It is, she tells us, one of a veritable fleet of galleries operating under the umbrella of AD Galleries, a mini empire of fine art dealers built by Paul Zueger. Two other AD Galleries are right here in Cherry Creek: Masters Gallery, which we’ve already visited, and Clayton Lane Fine Arts, which is our next stop. “Each gallery has a different vibe,” Batie says. “If you walk into Masters Gallery over, you’ll see lots of bronzework and glass. We’re representing a lot of photography right now.” And so they are, with large-scale works by Yarrow, along with pieces by photographer and printmaker Russell Young (who works with diamond dust left behind by Warhol—look it up). Their roster also includes the estate of modern American bronze master Gib Singleton, painters like Earl Biss and others, whose works are rotated through the various galleries. While Relevant doesn’t bill itself a gallery of Western art, the thread of inspiration is certainly there.
Clayton Lane Fine Arts, just three doors down Clayton Street, couldn’t be more different, with its focus on Pop Art and Surrealism along with works by Old Masters like Rembrandt and, surprisingly, limited edition lithographs and serigraphs of the art of Dr. Seuss. There are works by Salvador Dali and Joan Miró, as well as pieces by rising stars in an eclectic mix of works that gallery director Carrigan Sherlock rearranges depending on the season. “It’s summer now” she says, “and I wanted something kind of fun and fresh so I put the Hamilton Aguiar ocean pieces up in the front windows.” She’s worked in Aspen and Vail but tells us she likes Denver, and this spot in Cherry Creek more particularly, because of the international collectors who come through.
CLAYTON LANE PHOTO
There are still at least two short block’s worth of art festival we haven’t yet checked out. We do our best to take it all in from the relative quiet of the center of the street, but my friend and I are both suffering from acute art fatigue. Almost nothing stands out—imagine you’re at a wine tasting on your fifth vintage and you’re a little buzzed and suddenly it’s all just wine. I do stop and buy a bright Pop-y rooster print by Kenneth Kudulis. I almost buy a print by Tanya Doskova, who as far as I’m concerned dominated the festival with her deeply political and deeply weird works of magical Surrealism, and I’ll be forever sad I didn’t when I had the chance. We also pause and talk with painter Janina Tukarski Ellis, who tells us she landed on crowds as her primary subject because she likes the unity. “We may not know each other and we may not be interacting, but we’re all there for a similar purpose, whether that’s an adventure or an art show,” she tells us, and it feels like the perfect ending to our festival experience.
Works by Janina Tukarski Ellis. Christa Terry
I optimistically have two more gallery visits on the agenda, but Abend Gallery’s Cherry Creek outpost closed not fifteen minutes earlier. It’s small and has big windows, though, so I peer in and am taken with Patrick Nevins’ Playtime is Over, which I would buy in a heartbeat if I had the means. We briefly step inside Fascination St. Fine Art, which is worth a visit but much larger than it looks from the street—suddenly we’re traversing a Tardis-like maze of hallways and staircases that eventually dumps us back onto the sidewalk via a wholly different entrance.
Patrick Nevins’ Playtime is Over at Abend Gallery. Christa Terry
We hurry along to Cucina Colore, an Italian place founded by Venanzio Momo that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Though tempted by the pastas and mains, we opt for cocktails and a pair of pizzas—the Bergamo and the Carne—since Signor Momo’s first restaurant in Colorado was a pizzeria. The quality was top-notch; the quantity, too much. Unless you’re absolutely ravenous, one pizza and a shared app or salad will be plenty enough for two people. We do look at the dessert menu, but I order an after-dinner coffee as a balm for my uncomfortably overstuffed belly.
Back at Hotel Clio, George the concierge has sent two jars of Toro’s chimichurri to my room and the gesture has me feeling oddly emotional, which is how I know that this overtired art lover should probably go straight to bed. Instead, I go down to the hotel’s fitness center and do a mixed routine of strength, stretching and cardio, because I can’t resist the siren call of an on-site gym.
The Hotel Clio fitness center. Christa Terry
Day 2
After my morning bath, I spend some time gazing out my room’s window at the sun-kissed Rockies, which seem both loomingly close yet so far away. Striding along the squeaky clean and utterly empty sidewalks of Cherry Creek—yes, I have convinced my friend to go on another morning walk—you wouldn’t even know the mountains are out there. As we sip and stroll, we discuss our plans for our final half day in Denver.
Breakfast at Hotel Clio. Christa Terry
Do we want to go back to the festival after our final meal at Hotel Clio? Not really, we decide together. The Cherry Creek Arts Festival is great, but we’ve seen everything we wanted to see (in some cases more than once) and talked to everyone we wanted to talk to and bought everything we’re going to buy. And while there are other art galleries in Denver we could check out, it’s Sunday and some are closed and gallery hopping doesn’t sound particularly appealing after more than a day and a half of near-continuous art exposure.
We settle on a relaxed visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, a 27,000-square foot, environmentally sustainable institution housed in a Sir David Adjaye-designed building (the first U.S. museum commission for the now disgraced architect). We bring our luggage, and the people at the admissions counter are super chill about storing my bag and my recently purchased art.
Gala Porras-Kim’s “A Hand in Nature” at MCA Denver. Courtesy MCA Denver, photo Wes Magyar
Currently on at MCA Denver are “Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature” and “Critical Landscapes: Selected Works from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection.” The latter gives me space to hold forth about Ana Mendieta and the controversy surrounding her death and how Carl Andre was a piece of shit. The former wows me and my friend both. My only previous exposure to the work of Colombian-Korean-American artist Gala Porras-Kim was in a brief Observer writeup about last year’s Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, but I suggest you look her up. (In the words of my friend, Porras-Kim “is so smart and so driven to pursue fairness and justice for historically marginalized peoples.”)
The exhibition, which is focused primarily on climate change, is thought-provoking, but what stands out are the works in which Porras-Kim directly challenges the collecting practices of museums through letters and corresponding artworks. Leaving the institution through cremation is easier than as a result of a deaccession policy pairs a letter to Alexander Kellner, director of the National Museum of Brazil, which suffered a devastating fire in 2018 that destroyed much of a 12,000-year-old fossil nicknamed Luzia, and a tissue with a handprint rendered in ash from the fire that Porras-Kim calls the “closest thing to a cinerary urn” as she encourages Kellner to recognize Luzia’s personhood.
After seeing everything there was to see, we navigate MCA Denver’s narrow and echoing stairwell to the top floor where there is a small but engaging display of works by the museum’s staff. There’s also a rooftop garden cafe overlooking the quiet and strangely empty street, which is exactly what we need in that moment. I’m about to Uber back to the airport, which is sure to be busy given that this is the tail end of a holiday weekend. My friend tells me she’s thinking she’ll do a little more exploring before checking out the Denver Botanic Gardens, having dinner with a local acquaintance and finally returning to the east coast on a red eye. I order my usual latte. And my friend, because Denver is Denver and she is smarter than me, drinks more water.
Blucifer is much easier to photograph if you’re heading toward the airport. Christa Terry
