Sean Diddy Combs has been revealed as the buyer of Kerry James Marshall's painting Past Times. The painting was sold for $21.1 million. The sum is believed to be the highest amount ever paid "for the work of a living African-American artist."
Via Fortune:
Sean Combs, the producer, rapper, and impresario better known by stage names including Diddy and Puff Daddy, has been revealed as the buyer of painter Kerry James Marshall’s painting “Past Times” (1997) at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. The $21.1 million dollar price tag is widely believed to be the highest ever for the work of a living African-American artist.
“Past Times” depicts a black family enjoying an afternoon at a lakefront park. Like much of Marshall’s work, the image balances anxiety and celebration, depicting a positive image of blackness that can’t avoid tension with America’s racial reality. The piece is 13 feet wide, one of many wall-sized paintings Marshall has produced since the 1990s. The record sale follows a landmark winter 2016 retrospective of Marshall’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.