Uncanny everyday life

10 May 2022: The painting Summertime (2020) opens the 21st Century Evening Sale at Christie's New York. It shows a young woman with her head resting on a tabletop. Her shiny, perfectly combed hair spreads out like a fan on the wood of the table, her eyes are half-closed. The woman seems lost in thought, melancholic. Next to her, a simple flower arrangement in a dark vase. The flowers are already brown, there is no summery atmosphere. The painting is kept in brown tones overall, the background black. It looks like a work of the early modern period, art critics emphasise the technical skill of the author. She deals intensively with human emotions, uncanny thoughts and situations as well as modern absurdities. The public's approval is remarkable.

The painter Anna Weyant cannot watch the auction, she is too nervous. After eight minutes her friends come forward, Summertime sells for 1.5 million US dollars. That is five times higher than the estimated price, which was already well above the 12,000 US dollars for which Weyant sold it shortly after it was painted. Only a few days later, Falling Woman (2020) fetched 1.6 million US dollars at Sotheby's. Since then, the young artist has been the star in New York.

Weyant comes from Calgary, Canada's fourth largest city, where she was born in 1995. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in painting in 2017 from the Rhode Island School of Design, she studied painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. The sepia-toned landscape surrounding the city of 12 million still informs her colour choices today, her impasto brushstrokes smoothed over time. After seven months in China, she moved to New York. There she worked as a studio assistant for artist Cynthia Talmadge while creating her own work. »Being new, confused and homesick in a new country, I was just scared. I remember thinking that if I could transfer my fears to the woman I was painting, at least I had another person in the conversation with me,« she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.

On Instagram, she posted pictures of her paintings, which caught the eye of art critic Jerry Saltz. His reposts led to Weyant's notoriety and, in 2019, her first solo exhibition at Gallery 56 Henry. The works shown in Welcome to the Dollhouse sold for between $2,000 and $12,000 each.

»It’ll usually start with just an idea, something in my head. I will sketch it out in my head, and then sketch it out a few different ways on paper, and then I’ll either set it up to photograph, or set it up to paint as a still life«, Weyant explains her working method. A muted colour palette defines her works: Shades of green, brown and dark pink often appear against dense black. The mostly young, female figures are part of tragicomic or ironic stories, sometimes with dream-like elements. They represent femininity in contemporary American society, but do not fade into symbols. The figures captivate with sensitive depictions of emotions that make them individual and also mysterious.

The Canadian artist blends personal experiences from the 21st century with painterly traditions, primarily from the 16th and 17th centuries. She cites, for example, the Dutch painters Frans Hals (1582-1666) and Judith Leyster (1609-1660) as inspiration. It is therefore not surprising that her oeuvre includes a number of still lifes with irritating or ironic nuances.

In Buffet (2020), for example, a slice of bread standing upright by itself with a knife, a basket with eggs and two fish − probably piranhas − are lined up on a silver tray on a table in front of a black background. The table is covered with a white cloth. The buffet seems uninviting and sparse, not like its centuries-old models, the splendid still lifes from the Dutch Golden Age.

The implied violence − the crushed bread into which the knife appears to have been rammed, the piled eggs and the dead piranhas, mainly scavengers and made to look more dangerous than they are by narrative − creates an uncanny atmosphere. Food is abundant in the 21st century, but with 800 million hungry people, the global system is truly not a buffet for all, distribution is not working. One may well assume that Weyant, whose references to historical painting are obvious, is not depicting the three foods known for their Christian symbolism by chance. The painting can be read as a commentary on the waning power of Christianity, possibly as a call for reflection on the values of this religion?

In 2021, the Blum & Poe Gallery in Los Angeles represented Weyant first. Collectors paid up to 50,000 US dollars for her paintings at the time. Shortly before the sensational auctions in May 2022, she switched to the Gagosian Gallery, one of the most important art galleries in the world. In total, Weyant has earned over 2 million US-Dollars from her paintings so far. »People kept congratulating me. All I felt was pressure«, she comments on her rapid rise.

In fact, she would be far from the first artist to be called a one-hit wonder. Jerry Saltz also expressed concerns about her success story. From her dealer Larry Gagosian, Weyant promises expertise and assistance. With a waiting list of several hundred, a wise consideration. She is the youngest artist Gagosian has represented. The two have been in the headlines lately because of rumours of a relationship. Gagosian commented that he treats the painter the same as all his other clients.

New York is impatiently awaiting the artist's first Gagosian exhibition. Baby, It Ain't Over Till It's Over opened on 3 November 2022 to mixed reviews. Weyant stayed true to her previous line, which some criticised as a lack of artistic innovation. On the other hand, the somewhat low-key exhibition stands as a sign of the beginning of a slowly evolving career that is not chasing the next big windfall.

On the auction market, meanwhile, her works have settled at a price range between 300,000 and 500,000 US dollars − still up to 100,000 US dollars above the estimated prices. On 17 November, an image reached the 1.5 million mark again with Loose Screw (2020). It remains exciting to see how the art star of 2022 will develop in the coming period. An early participation in the Venice Biennale has already been predicted by art world experts.