Basquiat’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict will be offered in Sotheby’s Evening Sale in London on Tuesday, June 25, estimated at £15-20 million (approx. $19 - 25 million), with a third-party guaruntee.

Although I usually appreciate ARTnews for its comparatively straightforward coverage of the art market (relative to other major publications), Daniel Cassady premised his article about this offering, “Basquiat Triptych to Sell at Sotheby’s London for Half Its Price from Two Years Ago”, on an inaccuracy.

Cassady notes that the painting was offered at Christie’s in 2022 with a $30 million estimate. However, he cites the present estimate as 15-20 million USD (NOT GBP, as it should be). Today’s GBP-to-USD currency conversion is 1.27, so his numbers were off by a lot. Sotheby’s low estimate is nearly two thirds, not half the previous estimate, and it certainly may sell above this guaranteed price.

Most works that are withdrawn or bought-in and then offered for public sale again just two years later would be unlikely to carry low estimates that are much higher than 2/3 of the previous unmet estimate. Not even Basquiat is immune from the strong drive among collectors to buy what's fresh to market — and to expect to pay much less for what is not.

Furthermore, a repeat sale which is guaranteed to fetch nearly two thirds of an overconfident estimate from just two years prior does not necessarily reflect what Cassady refers to as a “dip in prices.”

To express this point, Cassady cites the sale of Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR) at Phillips, New York last month for $46.5 million against an estimate (on request) of $60 million — but is this a dip? One must keep in mind that this price was far higher than any other auction price realized for a Basquiat containing Xerox collage.

Also this season, The Italian Version of Popeye has no Pork in his Diet (1982) sold for $32 million at Christie’s NY, slightly above its EOR of $30 million, and Sotheby's eclipsed the record for a Basquiat/ Warhol collaboration with the sale of an untitled 1984 painting for $19.3 million. And Kenny Schachter reported that Ken Griffin bought the Basquiat from Maezawa for $200 million this year, turning a profit of nearly $90M in just seven years.