«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

“Basquiat’s strength was in his ability to merge imagery from the streets, newspapers and TV with the spiritualism of his Haitian heritage, injecting both into an intuitive understanding of the language of painting,” Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, says. Deitch’s opinion is reflected in the wide base of collectors for Basquiat’s work. The list of lenders to the Beyeler show reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary collecting, including the Miami-based Rubells and the Bramans, hedge-funder Steve Cohen, London jeweller Laurence Graff and tennis champion John McEnroe. The Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Zurich-based Daros Foundation have also loaned works. Other collectors include star names from pop music and Hollywood, such as Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio.“Major collectors of modern art view [Basquiat’s] work as comparable to that of Picasso and Dubuffet,” explains Beyeler director Sam Keller. “He was prolific, and produced 900 to 1,000 paintings and 2,000 to 3,000 works on paper. This amount is a condition for an active and sustained market.”

The Art Newspaper
June 17 2010