With one phone call, Jean-Claude Basquiat joined the rarefied club of artists whose works have crossed the $100 million mark. The late American artist was bestowed this honour yesterday at Sotheby’s, when Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa snapped up the painting ‘Untitled’ for a jaw-dropping $100.5 million.
According to the The New York Times, Basquiat’s 1982 painting of a skull is the sixth most expensive work of art ever to be sold at an auction, and the only one made after 1980 to have reached this milestone. The Times quoted dealer Jeffrey Deitch as saying, “He’s now in the same league as Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso”. The troubled artist was of Puerto Rican and Haitian origin, and died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.
The good news for art fiends is that despite shelling out a pretty penny for this Jean-Claude Basquiat painting, Maezawa doesn’t intend to keep it locked away in a mansion. He revealed he would house it in a museum he is building in Japan, but before that, he would like “to loan this piece — which has been unseen by the public for more than 30 years — to institutions and exhibitions around the world.”
