According to multiple reports this week, rapper and record executive Sean Combs may see many of his assets seized by the Department of Justice if he is found guilty of sex trafficking, a charge that he has denied. Among those assets are art that he owns—including a prized Kerry James Marshall painting that he won at auction in 2018.
That painting, Past Times (1997), appeared in Marshall’s traveling retrospective and was won by Combs, also known by the moniker Diddy, at Sotheby’s. The painting sold in 2018 for $21.1 million with fees, setting an auction record for Marshall and making him one of the most expensive living artists.
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ARTnews previously reported that Swizz Beatz, a collector in his own right, had encouraged Combs to buy the Marshall painting. “I was like, ‘This Kerry James Marshall has to stay in the culture,’” Beatz said.
The depth of Combs’s collection is not entirely known, but Artnet News reported in 2014 that he was actively buying work, with Maria Brito as his adviser. “I don’t want to take credit for bringing him into the art world,” Brito said in a profile for the Daily Beast, “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.”
But by 2024, with five civil suits pending against Combs, Artnet was speculating that he might soon sell art, not buy it. “I don’t think he plans on selling anything,” Brito told Artnet in that report, which noted that he had bought a Tracey Emin piece for $95,000, as well as pieces by Random International and Brett Murray.