A college student bought a $10 Ashtray at a Goodwill. It turned out to be a Yoshitomo Nara:
Yoshitomo Nara, the Japanese artist whose market rise has sent shockwaves through the art market in the past several years, has become equally sought-after by a whole different type of art buyer: vintage shoppers on TikTok.
In the art world, the 62-year-old Japanese artist may be best known for his meteoric market rise. His impish subjects have been shown at blue-chip spaces like Pace, Blum and Poe, and Marianne Boesky. In 2019, his set an auction record for his work at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when it brought in a whopping 195.7 HKD, or about $25 million.
Owning a Nara work, in other words, is like hitting the jackpot, which is exactly how Terrelle Brown, a 22-year-old student at Wheaton College in Illinois, felt when he spotted something special at his local Goodwill. “I was just out hitting the thrifts looking for stuff to add to my rotation,” he told Artnet News over the phone. As an avid vintage buyer who recently opened his own shop via TikTok, Brown is mostly into clothing.
But in a glass cabinet behind lock and key at Goodwill, he spied a familiar figure of an indignant looking girl puffing a cigarette on an ashtray.