ART MAKING
MILLIONS ON DISPLAY
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted January 16, 2018)
Many eyes
popped in disbelief when Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Untitled’ skull painting broke
art auction price records last year.
It sold for
USD110.5 million at Sotheby’s art auction, making it the sixth most expensive
artwork ever sold at auction at the time. It went to a Japanese billionaire Yusaku
Maezawa who is making news now because he’s putting Basquiat’s 1982 work on
display at the Brooklyn Museum later this month.
The painting
is expected to attract large crowds, but not just because the late
African-American artist of Caribbean descent has a significant fan-base. Nor
will it be because people understand the emotive power of the piece or the
artist’s explosive use of color, line and design.
It will
partly be because Basquiat’s painting joined what The New York Times described
as ‘the rarefied $100 million-plus club’.
Apparently
only ten other artworks have broken that $100 million mark. That puts Basquiat
in the same league with world class artists like Pablo Picasso and the British
painter Francis Bacon.
The ‘Untitled’
skull painting is not the first work by Basquiat that Mr. Maezawa owns. The
41-year-old founder of Japan’s large online fashion mall, Zozotown bid and won
the artist’s large Horned Devil at an art auction held the previous year at
Christie’s. For that piece, he only paid $57.3 million.
But Mr.
Maezawa, who is also founder of the Contemporary Art Foundation, doesn’t plan
to simply keep his Basquits on walls back in his hometown of Chiba, Japan. He
has told the media he intends to one day establish an art museum in Chiba. But
first, he apparently feels he has a higher calling which is to expose the world
to the artist’s works. Both were painted in 1982 using oil sticks and spray
paint. But for more than 30 years, he’s said the works were ‘unseen’.
Back in 2016
when he obtained the Horned Devil, he was already intent on loaning (for a fee)
that first Basquiat to institutions around the world. But having won the bid on
the “Untitled’ Skull and clearly having generated even more of a buzz in the
art world over it, Mr Maezawa chose to premier Basquiat’s Skull over his Devil
in New York in this new year.
Why all this
news may be of some interest to Kenyans is not necessarily because they
appreciate the colorful artistry of this African-American painter who started
his career as a self-taught graffiti painter.
Nor is it
because they have seen art by the Kenyan painter Ehoodi Kichapi which bears
some resemblance to Basquiat’s million dollar work. (In 2017 Kichapi had
successful exhibitions at One Off Gallery and at The Attic.)
I am told
that many Kenyans are more keen on making money than making art. Not many
believe that making art can be a way of also making money. But Mr. Maezawa has
illustrated how not only the artist but the owner of the art can make money
from the creative process.
Sadly,
Basquit died of a drug overdose at age 27 in 1988, so he is not around to enjoy
the dollars that his art earned him. Nonetheless, the public can at least see
the incredible potential the creative process has if only parents would
encourage their children to express their imaginative powers freely.
In the past,
Kenyans have been told that buying a work of art need not be only to hang on
their walls or stand in their gardens or at their front doors. They have been
encouraged to see the purchase of art as an ‘investment’. That is to look at a
painting or a sculpture like a stock that can rise or fall in the art market
which in Kenya is rapidly developing now that Nairobi has its own annual art
auction launched several years ago by the Circle Art Gallery.
But in Mr
Maezawa’s actions, one can see that he has not only bought Basquiat’s works
because he loves the art. He is also speculating that the works will not just
accrue in value. Public interest in them is also likely to rise such that art
institutions will be happy to pay the Japanese billionaire for his loaning them
Basquiat’s celebrated works.
So while Mr.
Maezawa has told the world how happy he is to own ‘a masterpiece’, referring to
his most recent procurement, he is also thrilled to be taking it around the
world and making money in the process.
Not a bad
deal if you’ve got the capital and the desire to rub shoulders with art connoisseurs
all the world.
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