An enormous canvas made as part of the high-profile collaboration between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat will be one of the highlights of the spring auction season at Sotheby’s in New York. With an estimate of around $18 million, it is expected to set a new record price under the hammer for a work from the series when it is offered at the auction house’s contemporary art evening sale this May.
The untitled 1984 painting is one of 160 works created by the two artists together over a two-year period, which would include some of the last years of their lives. Warhol died of heart arrhythmia in 1987 at the age of 58, and Basquiat died of a heroin overdose the following year at the age of 27.
Although Warhol and Basquiat are among the most successful and best-selling American artists of the post-war period, their collaborative work was largely panned by critics. When it was presented at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York in 1985, and before the exhibition closed, not a single painting was sold. Even since then, works from the series have performed worse at auction than their counterparts made by individual artists. It is the most valuable product of the partnership to be auctioned to date Zenith (1985), at Phillips’ May 2014 evening sale of contemporary art in New York, realized nearly $11.4 million with fees.
The collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat has also been re-examined in recent years. Playwright Anthony McCarten investigated their working relationship collaboration, which played in London and Broadway in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and is being adapted into a feature film. Others have accused Warhol of exploiting and manipulating Basquiat, who was then a rising star in the New York art world, through the joint project of the couple; The harshest of these critics may be the famous American author Ishmael Reed, whose fantastical and satirical play. The slave who loved caviar It involves an aging white vampire artist who absorbs the talent of a young Black collaborator to extend his career.
The untitled painting, which Sotheby’s plans to offer this May, last crossed the auction block in 2010, in another current evening sale at Sotheby’s in New York, where it earned nearly $2.7 million with fees. The work also traveled as part of a major Warhol and Basquiat collaboration exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Fondation in Paris in 2023, and a smaller version appeared at the Brant Foundation in New York that same year.
The 1984 work by Warhol and Basquiat is the second high-value lot offered at Sotheby’s New York contemporary evening sale this May. Last week, the auction house announced that it would sell a portrait of Francis Bacon’s lover George Dyer, which was expected to fetch $50 million.
