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*Hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has been revealed as the buyer of Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall’s “Past Times,” which sold at auction last week for $21 million, a price said to be the maximum paid for a living artist.
Marshall’s New York dealer, Jack Shainman, revealed to the New York Times that Combs is the work’s buyer.
“I know that this work has found a home in a collection with purpose and an eye toward preserving legacy — that of Sean Combs, and that means a lot,” Shainman said in the Times report.
According to the Chicago Tribune, “Past Times” depicts black Americans picnicking, waterskiing and listening to music in a Chicago park. It was acquired by McCormick Place in 1997 as part of an acquisition project aimed at bringing art to the city’s main convention center, hung in the South Building for years.
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P. Diddy hired art adviser Maria Brito when he began collecting art. In a 2014 Daily Beast profile, Brito said, “I don’t want to take credit for bringing him into the art world, but before me, he didn’t really have any art. … He never had a chance for someone to explain things to him in a way that would engage his mind, like how to look at contemporary and conceptual art.”
When Marshall’s “Past Times” was offered for auction, the piece purchased for $25,000 had a maximum estimate of $12 million.
Diddy went to Sotheby’s auction house to view the picture, according to reports. Other artists included in his collection are Ai Weiwei, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Sean Combs is part of a growing list of celebrities and rappers who are art collectors, such as Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz, who has a substantial collection.
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