Sotheby’s has unveiled that Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Famous Negro Athletes (1981) piece is headed for its forthcoming auction, hailing directly from the collection of deceased art critic Glenn O’Brien. The artist’s signature use of unidentifiable figures offers particularly distinctive commentary in this work, reflecting on the idea that certain groups — namely black people — are pigeonholed into specific careers and roles due to society’s stereotypes.
“The piece was political in the sense that it presented so simply how society expected black people to be athletes and not painters,” O’Brien previously noted of the drawing. Basquiat originally created the work as a graffiti mural in downtown New York, later gifting a paper edition to O’Brien after the two had formed a friendship. Featuring four intensely scrawled faces above a single baseball, Famous Negro Athletes quite pointedly asserts that the sports industry is often one of the few leading outlets for black people — and furthermore, a sense of individuality isn’t typically necessary to get the job done.
Since it’s creation, the artwork has appeared in exhibitions around the world, including in Milan, Miami and Paris. Most recently, it was featured in Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks at the Brooklyn Museum in 2015.
Famous Negro Athletes will go up for bidding on November 14 at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York. The piece is expected to sell anywhere from $2.5 million USD to $3.5 million USD.
Basquiat’s work has long inspired collaborations across several areas. Recently, the MoMa printed some of the artist’s graffiti tags on colorful water canteens.
The MoMa Design Store has launched its Fall/Winter 2019 collection, showcasing product from the likes of Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol and more. Within the assortment, items such as sculptures, housewares, games and skateboards have been designed with artists’ signature touches, including several styles exclusively created for the MoMa Design Store.
Highlighted pieces include the Andy Warhol Sunset Triptych Skateboards, which are based on a series of the artist’s sunset screenprints from 1972, as well as the colorful Murakami Flower Cushion that features the popular smiling face motif. Kusama’s recognizable pumpkin and polka-dots are spotlighted in a set of snow globes, while Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti tags are printed on a selection of stainless-steel water canteens. Other items such as Nir Chehanowski’s Globe Light, Takao Inoue’s Van Gogh Sunflower Object d’Art and the Keith Haring Chess Set bring in a variety of other categories to the mix.
Prices range from $38 USD for the chess set, up to $600 USD each for the Warhol skateboards. Check out the styles now and view the entire collection by visiting the MoMa Design Store’s e-commerce shop.
A long-lost masterpiece from Italian pre-Renaissance painter Cimabue — also known as Cenni di Pepo — has just sold for a record-breaking €24 Million EUR in an auction. The painting, known as Christ Mocked, was discovered just last month in northern France, where it spent years sitting above a hotplate in a French woman’s kitchen in the city of Compiègne. She believed that it was no more than just an old religious painting with very little value, but was later convinced by an auctioneer who came across it to have the piece evaluated by experts.
Upon evaluation, which included the use of infrared light to verify its authenticity and similarities to other works by Cimabue, experts valued the painting at roughly €6 million EUR. Surprisingly, an anonymous buyer also from northern France placed a winning bid of a whopping €24 Million EUR (approximately $27 million USD), exceeding the estimated value fourfold. “When a unique work of a painter as rare as Cimabue comes to market, you have to be ready for surprises,” commented auctioneer Dominique Le Coent. The hammer price marks the highest amount ever paid for a medieval painting at an auction.
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