Auction of the Week: Jean-Michel Basquiat Print Doubles Estimate and Fetches $1.1 Million

On November 1, Doyle set a new world auction record for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1983 print Back of the Neck. With an estimate of between $500,000 to $700,000, the work caused an intense bidding frenzy among interested buyers, eventually reaching $1.1 million—a record price for the print.

From an edition of 24 prints and 3 artist’s proofs, Back of the Neck was consigned by the estate of a prominent New York chef who chose to remain anonymous. The striking piece was created during a banner year for the artist. In fact, the years ’81 to ’84 were a brief period of intense artistic output that cemented Basquiat’s place within the canon of art history. Initially working under the moniker SAMO, Basquiat, a friend of artist Keith Haring, became an integral member of the social circle around the Mudd Club, a club-gallery in downtown New York. He had his first show in ’81, before two solo shows at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York and Gagosian in Los Angeles in ’82, before being included in the Whitney Biennial in ’83.

Basquiat also holds the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for artwork by an American artist in a public sale, for his painting Untitled, 1982, which sold in May 2017 for $110.5 million.

This sale of Back of the Neck at Doyle confirms the steady and continued demand for the artist and the boom in the market for prints.