Basquiat Sells For $40 Million
A massive Jean-Michel Basquiat painting sold for $40 million at auction including fees Tuesday, ranking among the priciest pieces by the late artist.
The final bid of $37 million fell just below auction estimates, which pegged the painting to sell for between $40 million and $80 million. “The Guilt of Gold Teeth” is one of a handful of works Basquiat produced during a months-long stay in Modena, Italy, considered one of the most pivotal periods of the artist’s career.
The painting depicts Baron Samedi, who in Haitian voodoo tradition escorts the souls of the dead to the other side — but besides dying, he’s linked to revelry and safekeeping, “just as much about life as about death,” according to auction house Christie’s. Basquiat, whose father was from Haiti, portrayed versions of the figure in several of his paintings, and “The Guilt of Gold Teeth” is one of the earliest examples.
The consignor purchased the painting at Sotheby’s in 1998 for a below-estimate price of $387,500, and made an over 10,000 percent return when it hit the block. After the privilege of owning the painting for over 20 years the collector sold the work for a profit of over $36 million. Not a bad day for any collector. As we always espouse at American Fine Art, Inc. “Buy the best you can afford of what you love.”
The other paintings Basquiat completed during that year are some of his most well-known and expensive. “Untitled,” painted in 1982, sold for a jaw-dropping $110 million in 2017 to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the most of any of his works to date. In second place is “Untitled (Devil),” which sold for $57.3 million in 2016 and was also painted during the artist’s 1982 trip to Modena.
Basquiat’s work is having a resurgence more than three decades after his sudden death at age 27. In March, Basquiat’s 1982 piece “Warrior” became the most-expensive painting by a Western artist to be auctioned off in Asia when it sold in Hong Kong for $42 million. “Versus Medici,” painted by Basquiat in 1982, fetched $50.8 million at auction in May.