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$110 Million Basquiat Unseats Warhol as America’s Most Expensive Artist at Sotheby’s Sale
Artsy ^ | 5/19/17 | ANNA LOUIE SUSSMAN

Posted on 05/21/2017 10:37:49 AM PDT by Timpanagos1

Seasoned art collectors know it’s usually wise to go into an auction with a set budget; otherwise one can get carried away by the adrenaline. It helps when that budget is about $100 million.

Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese e-commerce billionaire, hewed to what appears to be his annual $100 million high-profile spring auction season spend, with his purchase of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) at Thursday night’s Contemporary Art evening sale at Sotheby’s. The canvas was hammered down at $98 million after a dramatic 10-minute bidding war, coming to $110.4 million with the buyer’s premium. It marks the highest auction price ever for an American artist—unseating Andy Warhol, whose $105 million auction record was set by Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) at Sotheby’s New York in November 2013—and the second-highest price for any contemporary work.

Maezawa purchased $98 million of art at last year’s spring auctions, in a spending binge that included a $57.3 million Basquiat, then a record for the artist.

Bidding began at $57 million, a sum that sounded a little cheeky at first, and drew murmurs from the crowd. The murmurs morphed into gasps as that figure, and with it Basquiat’s record, receded into history and the bidding soared. Sotheby’s specialist Yuki Terase, on the phone with Maezawa, used incongruously slight gestures—a delicate wiggle of a finger—to indicate she was ramping up the price by another million.

(Excerpt) Read more at artsy.net ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: basquiat; ugly
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1 posted on 05/21/2017 10:37:49 AM PDT by Timpanagos1
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To: Timpanagos1

Wow. You could buy an awful lot of heroin with that kind of money.


2 posted on 05/21/2017 10:42:23 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Abortion is what slavery was: immoral but not illegal. Not yet.)
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To: Timpanagos1

I would not pay 10 cents to buy that to use as a backdrop for an outdoor urinal. It’s ugly.

That is not art. Art is beautiful because it reflects the harmony of nature. This reflects the cynical scratchings of a talentless fool.


3 posted on 05/21/2017 10:44:41 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Acting consistently in a way that is contrary to nature results in insanity.)
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To: Timpanagos1

Mental illness.


4 posted on 05/21/2017 10:45:13 AM PDT by beethovenfan (I always try to maximize my carbon footprint.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
Why is Modern Art so Bad
5 posted on 05/21/2017 10:45:20 AM PDT by HarleyD
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To: Timpanagos1

Man, did I ever pick the wrong career path...


6 posted on 05/21/2017 10:47:20 AM PDT by econjack
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To: Timpanagos1

I was involved in that auction. I bid $12 for the painting, as it reminded my of an old girlfriend. You can well image my shock and disappointment when I lost to that Japanese fellow.


7 posted on 05/21/2017 10:47:30 AM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
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To: Timpanagos1

Art is trash.


8 posted on 05/21/2017 10:51:34 AM PDT by wastedyears (Prophecy of sky Gods, the sun and moon)
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To: ClearCase_guy
****Wow. You could buy an awful lot of heroin with that kind of money.*****

And paint more repulsive stuff!!!

Art just ain't what it used to be. Cannot imagine daubing paint on a canvas, like that c#ap in school without being thrown out of class. Makes me think perhaps I'm Renoir;) LOL!!!

9 posted on 05/21/2017 10:55:23 AM PDT by sodpoodle (Life is prickly - carry tweezers)
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To: HarleyD

Good video. Worth spending 5 or 6 minutes to see it.

I also like Tom Wolfe’s book “The Painted Word”. Tom also does not care for this modern crap.


10 posted on 05/21/2017 11:00:22 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Abortion is what slavery was: immoral but not illegal. Not yet.)
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To: I want the USA back
Art is NOT necessarily beautiful.

But I agree that the piece in question is ugly and pretty pointless.

11 posted on 05/21/2017 11:00:35 AM PDT by Artemis Webb (Ted Kennedy burns in hell.)
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To: sodpoodle

“Art just ain’t what it used to be.”

And that has been true for every point in art history.

I’m not saying that I would have paid $110 million for this piece, but the guy who bought it for $19,000 in 1984 sure is looking smart today.


12 posted on 05/21/2017 11:01:52 AM PDT by Timpanagos1
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To: ClearCase_guy

dumb money


13 posted on 05/21/2017 11:02:50 AM PDT by vooch (America First)
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To: vooch

“dumb money”

There is no such thing as dumb money.


14 posted on 05/21/2017 11:04:33 AM PDT by Timpanagos1
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To: I want the USA back

Modern art has abandoned and rejected beauty. To quote an “artist” (Grosz) from early in the Twentieth Century, “I drew and painted from a spirit of contradiction, and tried by means of my work to convince the world that it is hideous, sick and dishonest.”


15 posted on 05/21/2017 11:05:47 AM PDT by Hiddigeigei ("Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish," said Dionysus - Euripides)
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To: econjack

Eh, it’s not like JMBasquiat got to enjoy that kind of wealth. Even 10 years ago these paintings were only selling at $5,000,000 and he’d been dead for decades at that point.

Dead at 28. The fortune comes to those flipping the works after he’s dead.

And these prices are just a proxy for moving large amounts of money around.


16 posted on 05/21/2017 11:05:49 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (patriots win, Communists and Socialist Just-Us Warriors lose)
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To: ClearCase_guy

It took a lot of heroin to make that canvas.


17 posted on 05/21/2017 11:07:25 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (Progressivism is 2 year olds in a poop fight.)
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To: Timpanagos1

Hideous.


18 posted on 05/21/2017 11:08:05 AM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: Artemis Webb

Pablo Picasso

well,
some people try to pick up girls
and get called an _________
this never happened to pablo picasso
he could walk down your street
and girls could not resist to stare
and so pablo picasso was never called an _________

JONATHAN RICHMAN

That particular painting might make them reconsider.


19 posted on 05/21/2017 11:14:20 AM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: Artemis Webb
I never cared for "Guernica" myself ...

Unless you know the history of it, it's just a mess of images. Without knowledge of history, of which .. it must be admitted .. most people younger than 30 have no idea, it's meaningless scribblings.

20 posted on 05/21/2017 11:17:44 AM PDT by BlueLancer (Ex Scientia Tridens)
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