Top-100 artists:
We use our proprietary AI - LiveArt Estimate™ to calculate current market value for each artwork. Based on this data LiveArt is able to provide numerous insights into artist and artwork financial performance, including:
See the measure of artist investment performance relative to risk. A higher ratio suggests better risk-adjusted returns, indicating more consistent performance with less risk.
Explore the most prolific periods in an artist's career based on artwork production volume and current market value. It also segments these periods by category, offering insights into when the most valuable pieces were created in each category.
Free to sign up. No credit card required.
| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jun 26, 2013 | Sotheby's | London | Contemporary Art Evening Auction | 40 | $****** - ****** | Quij |
paintings
238.8 x 188 cm (94.02 x 74.02 in)
acrylic, silkscreen and xerox collage on canvas
signed, titled and dated 85 on the reverse
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Note: Quij is a highly significant example from a group of works which reached their peak between 1984 and 1985, in which Jean-Michel Basquiat employed a combination of collage and silkscreen techniques in order to reproduce miniature versions of his earlier paintings, forming an intricately patterned and highly decorative background. Dominated by a vibrant yellow windmill and glowing industrialised motifs, and imbued with a visceral energy and dynamic vigour, Jean-Michel Basquiatâs Quij exerts a powerful impact on the viewer through its assertive composition and distinctive palette. Basquiat wittily surrounds the actively rotating windmill with elements connected to the harvesting of electricity through the utilisation of natural resources, primarily wind and water, as though parodying the format of a school exercise book. Arrows circle the windmill, denoting the presence of a breeze, whilst a grouping of horizontal lines at the right-hand side of the canvas suggests a vastly simplified representation of the basic Water Cycle: a diagrammatic depiction of a power socket absorbs the energy created through forcefully directed arrows and dotted lines. Basquiat had employed an identical diagram as the subject of a 1982 drawing entitled Windmill, and his decision to elaborate on the subject on a grander scale three years later can be connected with a visit the artist made to Amsterdam in the same year. The Netherlands was the final stop in an extensive tour of Europe that took in Paris and Florence as well as Amsterdam in the company of various friends: although the visit was a very brief one, the recurrence of a windmill as central motif in Quij arguably suggests the influence of Basquiatâs European travels during this period, as does the curiously âDutchâ sounding word of the title. The profusion of colour photocopies pasted to the canvas ground within Quij allows Basquiat to re-iterate the impact of a carefully chosen selection of his earlier works: the lower segment of Ren é Ricard (1984) can be glimpsed disappearing beneath a bright yellow packet of pills, whilst a selection of the artistâs iconic, mask-like heads can be seen towards the canvas edges. The addition of silkscreen above the coloured photocopies adds another level of complexity to the already multifaceted layers which make up Quij, revealing Basquiatâs remarkable command of a range of creative techniques and methods. Richard Marshall argues that Basquiatâs appropriation of the potentials of silkscreen can be connected to the impact of the works of Andy Warhol (with whom Basquiat was collaborating in the mid-1980s) and Robert Rauschenberg: â⦠Basquiat was certainly aware of these works. Rather than directly influencing him, however, Warhol and Rauschenberg, like other artists that Basquiat looked to, gave him a kind of art historical permission for his own endeavoursâ (Richard Marshall, âRepelling Ghostsâ, in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1993, p. 21). Basquiat's work is fundamentally rooted within a fascinating multilingual pluralism. Born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a Haitian father and a New York Puerto Rican mother, the artist grew up speaking English, Spanish and French. In simultaneously possessing a tripartite Haitian, Hispanic and African-American heritage, Basquiat sophisticatedly channelled a multitude of languages, both spoken and visual, to forge a vanguard dialogue at the forefront of postmodern and postcolonial expression. Striking out against the stayed and dry minimalism that saturated New York's Soho galleries, Basquiat emerged with a totally fresh and utterly different dialogue that was immediately accessible yet extraordinarily intelligent. Totally unprecedented, his work announced a form of neo-expressionism radically reflective of the contemporary moment, racial identity and the underground movement in downtown New York, whilst simultaneously forging a direct and encompassing challenge to the pantheon of art historical precedent. Quij was created at a moment when Basquiat had reached an absolute pinnacle of celebrity and recognition, following his rapid rise to artistic prominence since 1981 when his works were first exhibited in public. Represented in 1985 by two of the leading gallery owners of the day, Bruno Bischofberger and Mary Boone, Basquiatâs paintings attracted almost hysterical acclaim when exhibited, and seemed to epitomise the cultural zeitgeist of 1980s New York, a city unabashedly dominated by conspicuous consumption. In 1983 alone Basquiat had shown his work in seventeen group exhibitions, had four major solo exhibitions in America, Europe and Japan, and was the youngest artist ever to be included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial: the creative confidence that this success instilled resulted in a newfound clarity of purpose and execution. Basquiatâs dominance and conquest of the New York art world was reinforced by his presence on the cover of The New York Times Magazine on 10 February 1985, accompanied by an effusive article written by Cathleen McGuigan. McGuigan declared: âThe extent of Basquiatâs success would no doubt be impossible for an artist of lesser gifts. Not only does he possess a bold sense of colour and composition, but⦠he maintains a fine balance between seemingly contradictory forces: control and spontaneity, menace and witâ¦â (Cathleen McGuigan cited in: Ibid., p. 246). Ultimately through its display of a wide selection of earlier pictures , Quij is a masterful recapitulation of the primary concerns and ideals that had dominated Basquiatâs corpus prior to this point within his meteoric career: a magnificent and highly distinctive work produced by an artist at the very apex of his renown.
Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vol. II, Paris 1996, p. 142, no. 8, illustrated in colour; Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vol. II, Paris 2000, p. 238, illustrated in colour
