SAN FRANCISCO — A never-before exhibited acrylic and oilstick painting by Jean Michel Basquiat called “Radium 23” sold for nearly $245,000 Wednesday.
The large painting with jagged splashes of orange, black and gray resembles an idle doodle on a cocktail napkin. There are two hastily sketched faces and the word “radium” written in the top right corner.
The unidentified buyer paid $244,875, according to Butterfields auctioneers.
Two additional Basquiat paintings, “Head” and “Sin Hueso” sold for $55,000 each.
The artist, played by Jeffrey Wright in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film “Basquiat,” was a former graffiti artist and friend of Andy Warhol. He died in 1988 of a heroin overdose at age 27.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: When he died in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven, Jean-Michel Basquiat left an astonishing body of work, remarkable in its diversity of subject matter, materials and quality. His greatness lay in his ability to integrate African-American culture, the love of music, pop-culture, and the history of jazz into an extraordinary visual language. Basquiat truly raised his voice above the din of the hectic era that was the 1980’s. His work exhibits a frenetic and driven need to express and define his role in the larger world, and within the urban multi-ethnic culture of New York. (Text courtesy of the Tony Shafrazi Gallery)
