Jean-Michel Basquiat headlines New York art auction season

PanARMENIAN.Net - Jean-Michel Basquiat occupies star billing on the auction block in New York this season, catapulting the artist into the rostrum of 20th century greats nearly three decades after his death, Art Daily said.

Riding high on last year's $57 million auction record set when a Japanese billionaire snapped up a self-portrait, at least 14 works by the US wonderkid of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent are on sale at Christie's and Sotheby's next week.

"He was a street artist so it took a bit of time for him to be assimilated," explains Loic Gouzer, chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie's. "Now every museum in the world is begging to get Basquiat."

Christie's and Sotheby's -- the esteemed houses founded in 18th century London -- are chasing combined sales of at least $1.1 billion when they auction hundreds of contemporary, modern and impressionist works of art from May 15-19 in New York.

The top estimate for the week is a 1982 Basquiat, "Untitled" -- a skull-like head on a giant canvas in oil-stick, acrylic and spray paint, for which Sotheby's hopes to smash a new record at more than $60 million.

It has been held by its current owners ever since being bought in 1984 at Christie's for $19,000.

The Brooklyn-born artist died of an overdose aged 27. Artprice says the value of Basquiat works rose 506 percent from January 2000 to October 2016.

"It's the golden kid, it's the one that died young, lived strong and has been creating a body of work that looks like nothing before and looks like nothing after," says Gregoire Billault, Sotheby's head of contemporary art.

An African American in a white art world, much of his work focused on ordeals endured by blacks -- a subject of renewed resonance in the wake of nationwide US protests since 2014 about the shootings of unarmed black men by police.