Basquiat painting sells for US$41.8 million, an Asian auction record for Western art
- The winning bid for Warrior, 1982 painting of a gladiator-like figure by the late American artist, was placed in Hong Kong by an unnamed Asian collector
- The Basquiat work’s sale eclipses the previous record price paid in Asia for Western art – US$27.7 million for a Gerhard Richter painting in October 2020
A painting by the late American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat has sold for US$41.8 million in a live-streamed Christie’s auction in Hong Kong.
The piece, titled Warrior, was sold in a single-lot event and is the most expensive Western work of art ever sold in Asia. Previously the highest price fetched by a Western artwork in Asia was the HK$214.6 million (US$27.7 million) paid for Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (649-2) in a Sotheby’s contemporary art sale broadcast live from Hong Kong in October 2020.
The Basquiat work was sold to an Asian collector over the phone in Christie’s Hong Kong sale room after an intense 10-minute bidding battle between Hong Kong and New York, the auction house said. The sale exceeded pre-bidding estimates of between US$31 million to US$41 million.
The auction was followed by back-to-back auctions in London of 20th- and 21st-century art as well as Surrealist art. Christie’s said more than 400,000 viewers tuned in to watch and participate in its global spring sales through Facebook, YouTube, Chinese online platforms WeChat, Weibo and Artron, online art consultancy ArtPro’s app, Christies.com and Christie’s Live, “highlighting the inclusive international nature of the interactive live stream”.
Painted in 1982 at the height of Basquiat’s artistic power, Warrior – made with acrylic and spray paint on a wood panel – depicts a powerful warrior wielding a silver sword. Its Christ-like, gladiatorial figure is a crucial subject extensively explored by the artist in numerous sketches prior to this work, Christies said, and Warrior can be interpreted as a semi-autobiographical work championing his creative vision as a black artist.