George Michael art collection auction: Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin among works to be sold
- Works from the late pop legend’s private collection going under the hammer will be previewed in Hong Kong and Shanghai later this month
- Many of the artists he collected reshaped the landscape of Britain’s art scene, exposing the vices, anxieties and pleasures of the postmodern age
Contemporary art from the private collection of the late British pop legend George Michael will go on display in Hong Kong and Shanghai later this month, previewing a Christie’s London auction of works belonging to the artist, who died in 2016.
The stopovers in Hong Kong and Shanghai are particularly fitting for artwork collected by the pop icon. Before launching his Grammy-gilded solo career, Michael’s pop duo Wham! made history as the first major Western act to play in China in 1985 after the country’s reform and opening up began the previous decade.
Such status-quo-breaking moves defined Michael’s career and also underlined his taste in visual art. He supported the work of a number of artists, in particular his contemporaries and friends who came of age in Britain’s explosive 1980s and 1990s visual arts scene.
The collection of 200 pieces, which go up for auction in March, is an energetic gathering of works by many of these contemporaries, including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas – all of whom led the iconoclastic Young British Artists (YBA) movement.
Like Michael, whose chart-topping music shocked listeners with its overt sexuality, many of the artists he collected reshaped the landscape of Britain’s art scene, exposing the vices, anxieties and pleasures of the postmodern age.
Among the highlighted works travelling to Christie’s Hong Kong (viewable from February 19 to 22) include an appliqué blanket by Tracey Emin emblazoned with the words “Drunk to the bottom of my soul” and one of Gary Hume’s In the Park enamel-on-aluminium works crafted with the bold, colourful shapes typical of the artist.