Christie collaborates with HomeArt to present an exceptional and historical group of eleven works by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Radiance: The Basquiat Show offers an outstanding opportunity to reveal Basquiat’s oeuvre to the Asian public, covering the artist’s most important years of production, from 1981 to 1986, each work has an iconic story to tell, and together, bear witness to the birth of a revolutionary visual language.
The exhibition builds on the enormous strides achieved by the auction houses in offering the very best Western Contemporary art in Asia, as well as a reflection of insatiable collector appetite, particularly for works by the iconic artiste. This exhibition and the offering of Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face) in the evening sale on May 24, perfectly complement to create a landmark moment for the artist in Asia this season, and build on the success achieved from selling the most valuable Western artwork at auction in Asia for the work Warrior.
The collection presented unveils a rich overview of Basquiat’s ethos — from self-portraits, to anatomical figures, to his collaboration with Warhol. Each work in the collection represents an expertly-chosen artefact from Basquiat’s short-lived yet prolific career, covering a breadth of medium, subject matter, and historical context. Many of the works were widely exhibited in many of the artist’s most important retrospectives and with impeccable provenance, including Jean-Michel Basquiat’ at Whitney Museum of American Art (1992), $B!F(BPop Life: Art in a Material World in Tate Modern (2009), Basquiat at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland (2010). Led by Dos Cabezas (1982), once in the personal collection of Andy Warhol, the works on display stand together as a connoisseurial survey of his stratospheric career.
Guillaume Cerutti, Chief Executive Officer, Christie’s, and Francis Belin, President, Christie’s Asia Pacific, commented, “This selection testifies to HomeArt and Christie’s engagement with one of the twentieth century’s most powerful artistic forces. For the first time in twenty years, Basquiat’s works are reunited in Hong Kong, and it is an honour for us to pay homage to one of the most emblematic artists of our times. We hope collectors and art enthusiasts in the region will be touched by this rare opportunity to witness one of the few most comprehensive and well-curated exhibitions of Basquiat’s works in Hong Kong.”