David Velasco’s memoir for the October issue of Harper’s orbits two events: his friendship with Brent Sikkema, a prominent art dealer who was found stabbed to death in his home in Rio de Janeiro, and Velasco’s ouster from Artforum, where he served as editor in chief, following publication of an open letter calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in Gaza. These losses occurred just months apart; here, they are pulled into exquisite, compelling dialogue. Brent—”a particularly vivid friend”—is a singular, lively presence throughout, helping to power Velasco’s scrutiny of virtue.
Many people have years like this, I tell myself. And they get through them. Or, variously, I tell myself that very few people have years like this, and that those who do do not get through them, or el…
David Velasco’s memoir for the October issue of Harper’s orbits two events: his friendship with Brent Sikkema, a prominent art dealer who was found stabbed to death in his home in Rio de Janeiro, and Velasco’s ouster from Artforum, where he served as editor in chief, following publication of an open letter calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in Gaza. These losses occurred just months apart; here, they are pulled into exquisite, compelling dialogue. Brent—”a particularly vivid friend”—is a singular, lively presence throughout, helping to power Velasco’s scrutiny of virtue.
Many people have years like this, I tell myself. And they get through them. Or, variously, I tell myself that very few people have years like this, and that those who do do not get through them, or else emerge as wraiths. I look around for examples, wondering what anyone else would do in my situation, all the while doing exactly what someone in my situation would do, and so, over time, becoming an example.
In October 2024, a year and a day after my final dinner with Brent, I stumble upon a Wright auction online that features a dozen or so of his designer lamps. Of the many things you could count on Brent for, taste was definitely among them. I am unemployed and broke, but I feel an unbearable pull to have something of his. I bid on a lot at one of the lowest price points, a 1975 Kazuki floor lamp by Kazuhide Takahama, a Japanese designer who spent most of his working life in Bologna. It consists of a single light bulb housed beneath a white-jersey cloche pulled taut over a three-foot-tall aluminum frame, and its soft glow will someday illuminate my bedroom. It looks like a ghost, and I will talk to it as though Brent’s in there.
The lighting in Brent’s places was sophisticated without being pretentious, mostly postwar Italians—Castiglioni, Joe Colombo, Carlo Nason—and these objects left a strong impression. I feel like I remember the Takahama lamp from one of Brent’s homes, but I don’t know if this memory is real or imagined. There are certain things I remember intensely, but there are also many holes. What art was hanging on the walls of his apartment? Who was the eighth person at our last dinner? What did he tell me he said to Tina Turner when he met her in Basel? What else is gone, never to be restored? “Nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde,” reads the bio for his murderer’s still-active profile when I look it up on WhatsApp: “No one knows what he has until he loses it.”
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