Within the sorry news of last week’s contemporary auction results is reason for hope and opportunity: the stellar performance of female artists. Perhaps because the women, with the exception of Jenny Saville and, arguably, Marlene Dumas, were never subject to the market manipulations, guarantees, fixed deals and hocus-pocus of manly males like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, their work stands to become a harbinger of selectivity and taste.
