Jeff Bezos Reportedly Spent More Than $70 Million on a Kerry James Marshall and a Record-Shattering Ed Ruscha at Auction Last Fall

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has apparently burst onto the
international art-collecting scene after making some high-profile
purchases at New York auctions houses this past fall.

Bezos reportedly bought both Ed Ruscha’s Hurting the
Word Radio #2 (1964) for $52.5 million at Christie’s,
which shattered the record price for a work by the artist at
auction, and Kerry James Marshall’s Vignette 19
(2014) for $18.5 million at Sotheby’s, according to the Baer Faxt
newsletter.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s declined to comment and Amazon’s media
relations department did not respond to questions.

One source told Artnet News that Bezos’s newfound collecting
habit reflects the influence of his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez,
whom he has been dating since divorcing his first wife, MacKenzie,
in 2019.

Bezos is the richest man in the world according to Forbes, and has a net worth of over $125
billion.

Josh Baer, the editor of the Baer Faxt, declined to provide
further comment to Artnet News. But in a statement issued to
Bloomberg, he
said: “I stand by what I wrote.” He did not provide any clues
as to where he got his information on Bezos’s reported
purchases.

According to Bloomberg, Bezos was spotted at Sotheby’s
New York headquarters during an auction preview in November. The
winning bid for Vignette 19 was conveyed by Cassandra
Hatton, Sotheby’s vice president and senior specialist in the books
and manuscripts department, on behalf of an anonymous client.

The price for the Kerry James Marshall is the second-highest
ever achieved for a work by the artist, under the $21 million paid
for Past Times (1997), which also sold at Sotheby’s, in
May 2018. That piece was bought by producer and rap mogul Sean
Combs.

Meanwhile, the $52.5 million spent on
Ruscha’s Hurting the Word Radio #2 broke the
auction record for a work by the artist by more than $20 million.
The previous record, of $30.4 million, was set at
Christie’s New York in November 2014 for the 1963
painting Smash.

The post Jeff Bezos Reportedly Spent More Than $70 Million
on a Kerry James Marshall and a Record-Shattering Ed Ruscha at
Auction Last Fall appeared first on artnet News.