THIS WEEK'S HOT TOPIC
Sadly, Dolly Parton (RIP Queen) is not the only trailblazing, color-loving titan we’ve lost this month. The foundation of Yayoi Kusama confirmed last Thursday that the artist died in Tokyo on August 14. She was 97.
Kusama’s achievements are as expansive as her work. She was a pioneer of pop art and minimalism, a feminist icon and cultural conduit who helped introduce the language of contemporary Japanese art into the mainstream Western vernacular. She is simply one of the most successful and recognizable women artists in history.
Kusama reached peak popularity in the last chapter of her working life, becoming a true cross-over star and a cultural force in her own right. During this period, she collaborated with numerous merchandise companies and inspired the “experiential museum” craze, which both influenced museum strategies and led to a wave of increasingly silly pop-ups that tried and failed to capture the magic of her Infinity Mirror Rooms.
Of course, that’s not to say Kusama sold out. These late-life successes don’t undercut the groundbreaking triumphs of her early work; they speak to the enduring power of her vision and career-long talent for branding. Still, it’s hard not to wonder how much the last two decades will shape the legacy of a career than spanned seven.
3…THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MARKET FOR HOLLYWOOD COLLECTIBLES
1
If it seems obvious, and that's because it is: The collectibles that are most easily recognized tend to have the highest value when sold on the marketplace. Recognition equals value, which means Star Wars lightsabers, Harry Potter wands, or a pair of ruby red slippers, which sold for $32.5 million in 2024 at Heritage Auctions because they were the ones worn by Judy Garland. The bigger the blockbuster, the more worth your prop holds. But there are exceptions for the real film buffs. The Maltese Falcon might just be the most popular example of the film noir genre, starring Humphrey Bogart in all of his hardboiled coolness. The central prop of the movie, the original statuette of the falcon seen on screen, was sold at auction for $4.2 million back in 2013.
2
Provenance is everything in the Hollywood collectible world. As in all collectibles (baseball cards and fine art included) fake, contested, and otherwise unverified examples run rampant. Work with a specialist before buying a piece at auction. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Heritage Auctions, Bonham’s, and Julien’s all have robust collectible teams who can sort out what's real and what’s not.
3
While the traditional auction houses do have their own teams and auctions dedicated to collectibles, the specific market for Hollywood ephemera has another big player: Propstore, which sells thousands of collectibles every year. Keep your ear to the ground for others as well: regional house Stair Galleries sold objects from Joan Didion's estate back in November 2022, including her iconic Celine sunglasses which sold for $27,000.
A NUMBER TO KNOW
$7.1 million
The final price of the painting that first made Yayoi Kusama the most expensive living woman artist at auction. White No. 28 (1960), which sold at Christie's New York in 2014, epitomized the aesthetic and the appeal of her series of Infinity Nets: flat works built up through hundreds of thin, arcing brushstrokes to create the illusion of undulating, three-dimensional lattices.
Although bidding wars shuffled Kusama in and out of position as art’s priciest living woman artist over what turned out to be her final 12 years, her outsized market success was only one dimension of her career. Instead, Kusama became a rare triple threat: a commercial sensation, an institutional favorite, and a mainstream phenomenon all rolled into one.
Between 1998 and 2017, she was the subject of major solo exhibitions at a who’s-who of global museums, including LACMA, MoMA, Tate Modern, the Whitney, the Centre Pompidou, the Reina Sofia, and the Hirshhorn. And man, were some of those shows mobbed. For example, in less than three months, Kusama and her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms drew almost 160,000 visitors to her 2017 Hirshhorn survey and 475,000 guests to the Hirshhorn's building and sculpture garden. The latter was the institution’s “highest recorded spring visitation since the museum’s opening in 1974 and double its average attendance,” per a press statement.
So yes, it’s true that Kusama had been displaced as the auction queen of living women artists well before her death in August. But it’s also safe to say that no salesroom or price record could ever contain her larger impact.
—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market
ASK: ACCESS SOPHISTICATED KNOWLEDGE
ASK: Yayoi Kusama is one of the most important artists of her generation, especially among women. How do you think she’ll be remembered? Where do you see her market going from here?
Josh Baer for NoReserve: Not only was Kusama important she was prolific. To non art world people, it might seem that rarity would ADD value to an artist’s market, but in fact it often LESSENS value. Think of the artists with a huge body of work: Picasso, Calder, Richter, Warhol, Basquiat—all with thousands of works and huge markets. For a painter, Kusama fits that mold with over 60 year’s worth of paintings. I often joke that Vermeer, who only made around 35 paintings total (some with disputed authenticity), would never hack it in today's market as he couldn't handle a dealer's needs. Just imagine: "Hey Johannes, I need a painting for Art Basel and three shows this year."
Kusama’s market may face a temporary lull; we’ll see how many works she kept back at her death and what will happen to them.
She will probably be remembered most for her Infinity Mirror Rooms that tens of thousands of people lined up to take selfies with, but she was indeed more than that, and the story of her life both in the States and later living in unusual circumstances will be told forever.
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