From Bloomberg:
What’s in Ivanka Trump’s Art Collection, and What Is It Worth?
Ivanka Trump’s apartment, which stars in many of her 2,781 Instagram posts, seems to telegraph contemporary good taste. There’s a funky light fixture by designer Lindsey Adelman in the dining room, vintage chairs and a shiny gold coffee table by the Belgian designer Fernand Dresse in the living room, and a custom-made whitewashed driftwood table in the foyer designed by Kelly Behun. The overall aesthetic is that of low-key affluence, the likes of which is found in hundreds of upscale hotels around the globe.
The art in Trump’s apartment is a different matter.
In one post, Trump shimmies in front of a Dan Colen “chewing gum” painting; a comparable work sold for $578,500 at Phillips New York in 2012. In another post, Trump’s child plays the piano in front of a “bullet hole” silkscreen by Nate Lowman; a bullet-hole painting in the same palette sold for $665,000 in 2013 at Sotheby’s in New York. In yet another post, taken from a Harper’s Bazaar shoot, Trump poses at her dining table in front of a work by Alex Israel. A similar painting by Israel sold for $581,000 in 2014 at Phillips New York.
I am sure the artists loved that the Trump checks do not bounce but they want their cake and eat it too:
To that end, the Halt Action Group (HAG), founded by Gingeras, Powers, artist Jonathan Horowitz, and several others, initiated a campaign called “Dear Ivanka.” The group has an Instagram feed in which they repost glossy stock images of Trump along with earnest appeals about what they foresee as the dire consequences of her father's politics—topics addressed include global warming, universal health care, and contraception policy. Hoping to "thwart the normalization of what was unfolding in front of our eyes,” Gingeras said, the group, comprised of artists, dealers, psychoanalysts, and even a few collectors, reached out to the artists featured in Trump’s Instagram feed. They asked the artists to join them and ask Ivanka "to answer for some of the hypocrisy she embodies,” Gingeras said.
Many of the artists contacted by HAG responded forcefully. Underneath a photo of Trump posing in front of a painting by Da Corte, the artist wrote: “Dear @Ivankatrump please get my work off of your walls. I am embarrassed to be seen with you.” Under a different post, Israel wrote: “Please stand with artists and so many people around the world who believe that America means equality for all people.” Lowman and fellow artists Cecily Brown and Rob Pruitt joined a HAG-organized march outside the Puck Building, which is owned by Trump’s husband’s family.
An artist's job is to make people think, not to tell people what to think. They may excel in one field but that doesn't make them experts in everything else. I would like to see one of them run a large enterprise for six months without it falling apart.
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