Off-the-Wall Totals at ArtCurial Reflect Reach of Graffiti Market

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).