There's a Basquiat, a Frank Auerbach, and a Damien Hirst in the top lots.
David Bowie with Peter Howson’s Croatian and Muslim (1994).
Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features.
Sotheby’s is to sell 380 art works from the collection of rock star, David Bowie, who died this past January. Three sales, scheduled for November this year in London, are valued at “in excess of £10 million.”
Top lot is expected to be an over five foot 1984 painting, Air Power, by Jean- Michel Basquiat with an estimate of £2.5/3.5 million. Bowie bought it at Christie’s in London in November 1995 for £78,500 ($120,122) against a £40/60,000 estimate.
The connection between Bowie and Basquiat was established in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film Basquiat, in which he played the role of Andy Warhol, (whom he met in 1971) part-mentor and collaborator of the young artist. It is clear, however, that Bowie felt a strong connection to the artist and his method: “It comes as no surprise to learn that he [Basquiat] had a not-so-hidden ambition to be a rock musician,” wrote Bowie, “his work relates to rock in ways that very few other visual artists get near. He seemed to digest the frenetic flow of passing image and experience, put them through some kind of internal reorganization and dress the canvas with this resultant network of chance.”...MUCH MORE
