{"id":208224,"date":"2025-10-18T06:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208224\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T06:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T06:19:10","slug":"how-basquiat-became-one-of-the-worlds-most-valuable-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208224\/","title":{"rendered":"How Basquiat Became One of the World\u2019s Most Valuable Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September, Gaston & Sheehan, a tiny auctioneer in Pflugerville, Texas, sold<\/a> Red Man One, a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, for $22,002,790, after 456 rounds of bidding from 13 different bidders, all of which were in multimillion-dollar territory. The price marked a 519% increase from May 2009, when the painting was sold<\/a> at Sotheby\u2019s for $3,554,500, and a 139% increase from March 2013, when the Helly Nahmad gallery in Manhattan sold it<\/a> for $9,191,040 to Jho Low, who was shopping for a present for his pal Leonardo DiCaprio. (More on him later.)<\/p>\n

Fine art has historically been seen as a consumption good \u2014 buying it was considered an expense, not an investment. Basquiat, a high-flying neo-expressionist who died of a heroin overdose at 27 in 1988, has come to exemplify art\u2019s transformation into objects that are increasingly bought in the expectation that they will rise in value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In September, Gaston & Sheehan, a tiny auctioneer in Pflugerville, Texas, sold Red Man One, a 1982 painting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1897,6225,6485,6486,84,5490,1120,89694,96,66147,89696,89695,11349,263,1758,2931,3329,89697,56,54,55,10940],"class_list":["post-208224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-business","tag-career","tag-design","tag-doug-woodham","tag-entertainment","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york-times-co-a","tag-peter-m-brant","tag-pursuits","tag-review","tag-shopping","tag-sothebys","tag-texas","tag-thames-hudson-ltd","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weekend-edition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}