A charity auction for Reform Alliance in Atlantic City this weekend provided the stage for the most exiting pairing of a football hero and a female celebrity this week—that is, if you don’t count Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
Tom Brady and Kim Kardashian were both interested in George Condo’s Standing Female Figure (2023) and let the room know by engaging in a friendly, albeit heated, bidding war over the work.
Kardashian opened with a $500,000 bid, the organizers told Artnet News. Brady quickly countered, and the two put in leapfrogging bids until Brady offered $2 million for the work, at which point the reality star realized she had been beaten.
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When Condo heard the two celebrities were vying for the work, a mixed-media drawing that prominently features a woman’s nude derrière, he agreed to create a matching work for Kardashian if she was willing to put up the same amount Brady did, $2 million.
That may seem like a hefty sum, but Condo’s auction record is more than triple that amount.
A work by Rashid Johnson, Fireflies (2023), also made its way to the auction block and was picked up by NFT advocate and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk for $1.5 million.
Reform Alliance, which advocates for reform in the criminal justice system, made $5.1 million in donations from the three works. A total of $24 million was raised over the course of the evening.
The comedian Kevin Hart emceed the fundraiser, which was attended by such notables as Travis Scott, Matthew McConaughey, Jack Harlow, Tiffany Haddish, Alex Rodriguez, and Jay-Z.