Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Untitled’ was sold for £68m at a recent auction during a period of record sums paid for artworks.
As a straight return on investment, it’s hard to beat “Untitled”, a 1982 work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the African American street artist who became a global cultural icon, featuring a horned African mask on an abstract background across a canvas almost 5m wide.
In 2004, the painting sold for $4.5m. Back on the market 12 years later, it fetched $57.3m, then a record for a Basquiat. This week, it went under the hammer in New York for $85m (£68m), including fees, to a buyer from Asia.
The Basquiat sale comes amid extraordinary sums paid for artworks. Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by Andy Warhol – Basquiat’s rival and sometime friend – sold for a staggering $195m earlier this month, and three paintings by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne fetched a total of almost $166m on Tuesday.
The second sale this week of works in the Macklowe collection – a court-ordered auction as part of an acrimonious divorce settlement between octogenarians Harry and Linda Macklowe – realised $246m. Total sales from the couple’s remarkable collection, which included works by Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, came to more than $922m.
‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ by Andy Warhol which sold for $195m earlier this month.
Another stellar collection of 12 works, including Monet’s Le Parlement, soleil couchant, that belonged to the late Anne Bass brought in $363m last week.
Sales of impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at the main New York auction houses – Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips – have raised more than $2bn this month, reported art market research company ArtTactic. Sotheby’s New York sales topped $1bn this week alone, with strong activity from Asia and online.
At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, soaring inflation and falling stock prices, the art market is beyond booming. The explosion is fuelled by a combination of an unusual number of highly desirable works becoming available, and an increase in those who can afford to buy them.
“The rich have got much richer,” said art market specialist and author Georgina Adam, pointing to Forbes’ tally of more than 700 new billionaires across the world in the past couple of years. “And if you’re mega-rich, there aren’t that many things you can acquire that are real trophies, that nobody else can have. Art is a real trophy.”