At Richard Gray, gallerists clinked champagne flutes after Hockney’s Studio Interior #2 from 2014 sold for $8.5m. Pace, the mega-gallery which has made headlines recently for cutting a third of its artist roster and a fifth of its staff, had chosen to “hold back” their Hockney, an iPad painting, by placing it in the fair’s newly launched Basel Exclusive category. This meant dealers and collectors, who usually hear about sales in advance, only found out about the work when they cast eyes on it on the first day of the fair. “It added a nice bit of surprise,” said Rebecca Riegelhaupt, Pace’s communications director. Marc Glimcher, the gallery’s chief executive, said selling Hockney’s work after his death was “an incredible honour”.
