This New York Street Artist Was Unknown. How He Joined the $100 Million Art Market Club.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Crowns (Peso Neto).” (Courtesy Sotheby’s)

Key Points

• A 1982 Basquiat work sold for $110.5 million in 2017, placing him among artists whose works exceed $100 million at auction.
• Doug Woodham’s new book, “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon,” explores Basquiat’s early life and market development.
• Sotheby’s will offer Basquiat’s “Crowns (Peso Neto)” in November, with an estimated sale price of up to $45 million.

In 2017, an untitled 1982 work by Jean-Michel Basquiat was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for a shocking $110.5 million, purchased by Japanese e-commerce billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

The sale placed Basquiat among a rarefied group of artists that included Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Francis Bacon, whose artworks have sold for more than $100 million at auction.

The story of how Basquiat—a New York street artist who died in 1988 of a drug overdose when he was only 27—reached this pinnacle is told by Doug Woodham, managing partner of Art Fiduciary Advisors and a former president of the Americas at Christie’s, in a new book, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon.

Backed by extensive research and more than 100 interviews, Woodham fills in several gaps in Basquiat’s traumatic early history, including the dissolution of his parents’ marriage and the subsequent mental illness of his mother, Matilde.

The book also details how Basquiat’s father, Gerard—who held the copyright to all Basquiat’s work through his son’s estate—controlled the narrative of his life after his death, discouraging museums and galleries from describing the artist’s drug use, bisexuality, and his early history, including how he grew up in a multigenerational Puerto Rican household. The Making of an Icon doesn’t include any images of Basquiat’s art because of the inclusion of this history.

Woodham also describes the central role that three collectors—Jose Mugrabi, Peter Brant, and Enrico Navarra—played in boosting Basquiat’s market. Navarra, for instance, spent five years creating a two-volume illustrated catalog of 850 works by Basquiat—80% of his output—that he gave away so more collectors would gain a fuller understanding of Basquiat’s art.

Doug Woodham Photo: Drew Masangkay

This November, Francis Lombrail, a French actor, is reported by ArtNews to be the seller of Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto), a painting the publication said was once owned by Mugrabi. Sotheby’s is offering the artwork at its New York November sale for an estimated $35 million to $45 million. It’s just the latest example of how Basquiat’s legend—and market—endures.

Barron’s recently spoke about the book with Woodham. An edited transcription of the conversation follows.

Barron’s: Why did you write a book about Basquiat?

Doug Woodham: I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a book that went beyond the narrative of [Basquiat’s] lifetime. Much of what makes him the artist that people know today—the reason that kids in Singapore and Rio wear [Basquiat] T-shirts—has to do with what happened after he died. I also wanted to dig into the business, the marketing, of how the art world selects the folks that they’re going to evangelize.

What surprised you most about Basquiat himself?

The thing that always amazed me was the breadth of subject matter he chose to pack into his works. I always wondered where it came from. The standard narrative was—like for most artists—that he had an inquisitive mind, great graphic sense, and was inspired by so many things.

When I interviewed family members and came to realize that he was an intellectually gifted child—that was when the door swung open for me to understand his artwork. He was beyond inquisitive. He was reading New York Times articles when he was in first grade. Gifted children tend to pursue interests passionately. They don’t forget things. They’re able to find patterns between data when they’re very young. It’s a source of strength for them, figuring out the world that can also be terrifying as an adolescent or as a young child because they see things beyond what their maturity and emotional connection can help or deal with.

That was the door opener for understanding his subject matter, but also for understanding how he was able to navigate the art world at a young age, when he was 20 and when Black artists were not enthusiastically embraced.

What surprised you about how the market for Basquiat’s work was shaped?

Because of the professional role I played at Christie’s, I had an understanding of who Jose Mugrabi was, who Peter Brant was, and who Enrico Navarra was. I knew the depth of what they did, the passion with which they pursued it, and how contrarian it was at the time. The stories of the three of them—hoovering up everything they could put their hands on, creating package shows to go to museums…they were critical ingredients in pushing Basquiat back to relevance and into the stratosphere.

There were lots of Black artists active in the 1980s and 1990s who were doing great work. Basquiat is a terrific artist—I love his work; he’s justly in the right spot, particularly for works from ’81 to ’83/’84. But the role [of Mugrabi, Brant, and Navarra] has never really been talked about.

What was the role of Basquiat’s father, Gerard, in his son’s market success?

Gerard was an ambitious fellow. He left Haiti when he was 20, came from an affluent family, came to the U.S., speaks French, doesn’t speak English. He was a striver. He wanted to achieve upper-class stability. He’s sort of a classic immigrant story.

Gerard was an accountant by training, he understood business. He probably had a good understanding of people’s motivations in the business world. He started to learn about the art world when his son was alive because he would go to gallery openings. He would meet Jean-Michel’s friends. That was a thing that actually surprised me in the narrative about both his parents, that they remain involved in Jean-Michel’s life up until he died, showing up at events and even his mom hanging out with Andy Warhol while [he and Basquiat] were doing the collaboration paintings. The traditional narrative is that they leave the scene early and you never really hear about them.

I think Gerard was introduced to the art world and the glamour associated with it—how money was exchanged and how people were marketed during his son’s lifetime. He was a smart, ambitious guy, business-oriented, swift on the uptake. I think he felt managing his son’s legacy was the best thing he could do for a son with whom he deeply loved, but with whom he had a fractious relationship.

Gerard was an accomplished guy, and because he was an accomplished guy he could take his time to learn. He had a liquidity crisis in the first couple of years managing the estate because of estate taxes, lawsuits—navigating all of that is a testament to his strength of character and his determination.

In managing his son’s estate, Gerard also masked the realities of his son’s life.

Doing this book, I read everything that’s probably been written on Basquiat. Museum catalogs and gallery catalogs. None of them deviated from a standard narrative. It was like, there’s got to be more here! Basquiat’s mom, [for example,] always shows up in the beginning of his story and then drops away—the mom with mental health issues. They put her in a corner. I found my way to his mom’s youngest brother [Ruben Andrades, Sr.], who opened the door on what really happened with Matilde. Gerard used copyrights as his tool to control what was written. Virtually every gallery catalog, every museum catalog that was produced posthumously, has a sanitized narrative. One of my hopes with this book is that lots of people will realize that.

Basquiat did have a traumatic childhood—that is so material to understanding his imagery. I’m looking forward to an art historian embracing that idea and relooking at all the work. There is so much pain and agony in a lot of his work, and it isn’t just due to the fact that he’s a Black man. I’m not trying to attack the curators—they’re in the business of doing shows and oftentimes you have to acquiesce to whoever owns the copyright.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at the Factory, 1984. Photo: Courtesy Richard Schulman

What is the role of academics, art critics, and other market makers in shaping what the world knows about an artist?

The auction market, the high-end gallery market—those are the places that anoint who are the artists of note. Auction houses tend to follow. The only asterisk on that is because of all the publicity that surrounds auction sales—particularly when big prices occur—that publicity effect is important in cementing in people’s minds which artists are important, which artists are interesting to follow.

That’s why I trace when Basquiat broke the million-dollar barrier [in November 1998 with the sale of Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1982 at Christie’s in New York]—an incredibly important moment, particularly back when a $1 million painting was a much bigger deal than it is now. Part of the reason why so many people know Basquiat is because in 2017 something sold for over $100 million.

Critics and academics play an extremely important role because theoretically they’re not connected to the financial side, the market-making side of art. You hope they can be dispassionate and reflective and situational and provide context.

What do you think Basquiat would have thought about his father’s control of his story and his decision to license his iconic imagery?

From the people I interviewed, I got the sense Basquiat didn’t carry shame with him. I don’t think he was ashamed of his bisexuality. I don’t think he was necessarily ashamed of his drug usage. I don’t think he was ashamed of his childhood and his tortures. He did talk about this stuff with his friends. He felt very comfortable painting himself into the picture.

[Basquiat] would by and large like the licensing because it’s made him known throughout the world. I imagine he would have some difficulty with some of the choices that the estate has made on what items to license. I mean, there are floor mats by Ruggable. Like, really?

When I talk to 30-somethings about when they first learned about Basquiat, oftentimes it’s because of merchandise that they saw or a friend of theirs had a Basquiat tattoo. There are these things that are so far removed from the art world, that built awareness, and made somebody quizzically go, “Who is that guy?” I don’t view it as tainting him. I doubt he would be upset. Look, he admired Warhol. If you admired Warhol, how could you then be worried about the commercialization of your artwork images?

You detail the role of celebrity and culture in Basquiat’s market, such as U2 bass guitarist Adam Clayton getting the band to buy Untitled (Pecho/Oreja) using a new Irish pension-plan that allowed for investments in art. It hung in U2’s Dublin studio for years.

Pure luck, serendipitous. Look, there’s talent, there’s process, there’s a playbook. But there’s also just luck. U2 was really important. There are lots of people who are interested in art. There’s not that many people who want to buy it. Even [among] those who want to buy it, there are not that many people who are going to splurge. The fact that U2 could buy this painting and put it where the creative world came by and saw it—priceless placement.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com