ArtCurial’s second Graffiti art sale at the Hôtel Dassault in Paris on Feb. 18, following the auctioneer’s debut sale last June, totaled E461,000 ($677,700) for about 75 lots offered.
PARIS—ArtCurial’s second Graffiti art sale at the Hôtel Dassault in Paris on Feb. 18, following the auctioneer’s debut sale last June, totaled €461,000 ($677,700) for about 75 lots offered. The result, says auctioneer Francis Briest, “confirms the emergence of graffiti art as a significant sector of the contemporary market.”
There were record prices for Crash (John Crash Matos), whose Call Card, 1988, in acrylic and spray paint, sold to a French collector for €43,400 ($63,800); and for Futura 2000, whose Mutual of Omaha, 1983, in spray paint on canvas, fell to the British trade for €29,700 ($43,700).
Solid prices were hammered down for Blade (Steven Ogburn), who once ruled the roost in the New York subway—notably the €37,200 ($54,700) given for his Beyond the Wall, 1984, in spray paint and marker on canvas; and an above-estimate €35,900 ($53,000) paid for his spray-painted Candy Land, 1983. Both pictures went to French collectors. Seven lots by Jonone (John Perello), born in Harlem but settled in Paris since 1987, took a combined total of €70,600 ($104,000).
Among other established names on the Paris graffiti scene: Alex & Tieri, who rated €7,400 ($10,900) with a 2007 Portrait of Basquiat; and Sunset, who scored €7,200 ($10,600) with 70 millions de morts en temps de paix, 2007. The pick of the stencil works was Blek le Rat’s The Fawn, 1993, which took €18,600 ($27,300).
