Jean-Michael Basquiat’s “Jim Crow” sold for £17.7 million in Paris’s FIAC-week auctions tonight. It is the highest price for a painting sold in France in 2017 and the most for a Basquiat in the country, Christie’s said.The FIAC auctions are sometimes the little sister of those held earlier in October for London’s Frieze Week, so this price puts down an important marker.The formal price with fees was €15 million against a hammer price estimate was on request. The 1986 work, executed in acyclic and crayon on wood, was part of the sale collection of Jean-François (who died in 2011) and Marie-Aline Prat, which so far has raised €36.5 million. The estimate for the day and evening sales of the couple’s works had been put at €29 million-€40 million, with Christie’s Global President Jussi Pylkkanen taking the rostrum for the first time in Paris.The result is the latest sign of demand for the short-lived Basquiat. Call him enfant terrible, call him a bad boy, his prices at Sotheby’s this year broke through the $110 million mark. He remains a staple of evening contemporary sales, his allure undented by a few failures sometimes put down to over-ambitious estimates. His “Red Skull” led the Christie’s October sale in London at £16.5 million (about $21.6 million). The November sales will include one owned by Yoko Ono for 25 years, seen as fetching $9-12 million, partly to raise money for charity.There were also French records for Jean Dubuffet (€5.56 million, against a presale estimate of €3.5 million-€4.5 million), Lucio Fontana (€4,207,500) and Sigmar Polke (€3,532,500).
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