The international art auction house’s sale focused specifically on artworks created within the last 20 years. Brice’s artwork was the first lot, and despite estimates of $200 000 to $300 000, even before auctioneer Oliver Barker opened the bidding, someone shouted out an amount of $500 000! This was immediately followed by an enthusiastic rejoinder of $600 000! “You’re going to do my job for me, thank you very much, this is the best start to an auction I’ve ever had,” Barker remarked.
The Sotheby’s sale catalogue described the artwork as one that “confronts the history of female figuration, the male gaze and gender politics through a deeply evocative and chromatically vibrant neon bar scene.” It was finally hammered down for $2.6m ($3 166 000 with fees), a world record for the artist, and 91 times her previous auction record, according to Sotheby’s.
The two-and-a-half metre tall artwork is a tribute to Trinidadian artist Embah (Emheyo Bahabba), whom Brice considers an influential mentor. It takes inspiration from the bar across the street from their studios in Trinidad, where they would drink beer together and philosophise about art, life and creativity. “He loved conversation, and he had wisdom. One piece of advice he gave me was, ‘Invade your own privacy.’ He would come up with lines like that. He was a much-loved friend and mentor, generously sharing his profound wisdom, guidance, music, dance, and infectious laughter with me and everyone who knew him,” she told Vogue magazine before her 2017 exhibition, ‘Boundary Girl’, at the Salon 94 Bowery gallery in New York.
“The fact that Brice’s work was sold alongside contemporary giants such as Yoshitomo Nara and Banksy not only cements her status as a leading South African contemporary artist but also as an artist with global stature and significance, alongside other celebrated contemporary South African artists such as Marlene Dumas and William Kentridge,” says Jean Le Clus-Theron, a senior art specialist at Strauss & Co. “We have sold some of her work, the most recent being two mixed media sculptures on the Strauss & Co November auction, from her ‘Staying Alive’ series produced in the 1990s. It’s going to be interesting to see what impact the Sotheby’s sale will have on the value of her work on the secondary art market, going forward,” Le Clus Theron remarks.
Did you know:
- Lisa Brice was born in 1968 in Cape Town and graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 1990.
- Her work frequently reinterprets the female nude, re-casting it in terms of empowerment and self-possession. “As a figurative painter, I find it significant that historical figuration seems invariably created by white men for an audience of predominantly white men. Sometimes the simple act of repainting an image of a woman previously painted by a man – re-authoring the work as by a woman – can be a potent shift in itself,” Brice remarked in an interview with Tate Etc.
- The central standing figure in the painting ‘No Bare Back’ was inspired by a photograph of the Trinidadian-born singer-rapper Nicki Minaj.
- Brice is especially fond of a specific shade of cobalt blue, which she uses frequently in her paintings including for the central figure in ‘No Bare Back’. “I did my first blue drawing in an attempt to imitate the blue light of neon signs, which led to trying to capture the fleeting colour of twilight in paint. It has gone on to accumulate further meaning as the work has progressed. I associate it with the Trinidadian ‘Blue Devil’, a formidable Carnival character.”
Notes
Aïcha Merhez, ‘Q&A: Lisa Brice’, Tate Etc., No. 43, May 2018, (online).
Dodie Kazanjian, ‘Lisa Brice, Peter Doig, and Chris Ofili Bring Trinidad to New York’, 20 September 2017 (online).
Sotheby’s, The Now Evening Auction, auction catalogue, 18 November 2021.
