ArtPro
Language
HomeNewsThe Most Expensive Art in Asian Auction Market The Warriors by Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Most Expensive Art in Asian Auction Market The Warriors by Jean-Michel Basquiat

23 Mar 2021, 21:16

On March 23, 2021, Christie’s Hong Kong Evening Auction officially hammered "The Brave Without Fear: Basquiat's Warrior". With an estimation at 240-320 million HKD, Basquiat's "Warrior" was finally sold at 320 million HKD. Boarded the throne of "Asia's Most Expensive Western Art Auction"; this auction also kicked off the "20th Century Art Spring Auction". As an important part of the new international auction event, Christie's Hong Kong and ArtPro are going on tonight Live broadcasts all over the world, followed by the "20th Century Art Evening Sale" and "Surrealist Art Auction" in London.

Matilde Basquiat was from Puerto Rico, while the artist’s father Gerard was from Haiti. Jean-Michel was born in Brooklyn in 1960, the eldest of their three children. His heritage would prove crucial throughout his career.

‘The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings,’ he said in the mid-1980s, looking back on his formative years. ‘I realised that I didn’t see many paintings with black people in them.’

1960 - 1988

Part of the inspiration for Warrior seems to have been Ogun, the sword-wielding warrior deity of the Yoruba people of West Africa. Their beliefs had been transported to the Caribbean as a result of the transatlantic slave trade.

The subject’s scarified eyes and clenched jaw add to a sense of talismanic power. In his long thin toes, some also see a resemblance to nkisi nkondi idols from the Congo (see below), into which long thin nails were hammered.

Basquiat’s Warrior

Basquiat’s mother and father separated when he was seven and he ended up living with the latter. Gerald’s strict parenting, however, saw the teenage Jean-Michel rebel — to the extent of quitting school and running away from home.

In 1977, he started spray-painting graffiti on derelict buildings in New York’s Lower East Side and SoHo, a practice he would continue until around 1980, when his career really took off.

Though executed on a wooden panel rather than a public wall, Warrior shares a number of characteristics with Basquiat’s old street works, rawness and spontaneity being chief among them.

The wildly fashioned background was achieved with gestural brushwork in patches of yellow and blue. As for the subject, Basquiat marked out his silhouette in spray paint and oil stick — before filling in the body with harried layers of acrylic.

There’s no perspectival logic to speak of, or spatial recession. Figure and ground seem meshed together — bursting with the energy of a warrior.

We Are All Warriors: The Basquiat Auction
Christie's Hong Kong
23 Mar 2021, 21:00
18 Chater Road 22nd floor Alexandra House The James Christie Room, 22nd Floor Hong Kong
20th Century Evening Sale
Christie's London
23 Mar 2021, 13:00
8 King Street, St. James's London
Source: ArtPro