Metallica Drummer Lars Ulrich to Unload Basquiat Painting
10 October 2008
5 Comments
(from AP wire service)
Friday, October 10, 2008 4:25:01 PM
Lars Ulrich, songwriter and drummer for the heavy-metal band Metallica, is selling a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting from his art collection that could set a new auction record for the artist.
“Untitled (Boxer)” was painted in 1982 by Basquiat, a graffiti artist who died of a drug overdose in 1988 when he was just 27. It depicts a black heavyweight fighter with his arms thrust in the air against a graffiti-filled background.
Christie’s New York will sell it on November 12. It says the painting is estimated to bring more than $12 million. The current auction record for a Basquiat is $14.6 million for “Untitled,” a painting of a primitive figure with large hands that sold at Sotheby’s last year.
If this isn’t the best image to be in the possession of a drummer, then I don’t know what is. Can’t you imagine Lars thrashing the double-bass while staring intently at this? Why on earth is he getting rid of it? I thought Metallica was making a comeback?
I find it interesting that the AP reduced JMB to “a graffiti artist who died of a drug overdose.” Seems mildly marginalizing.
Yes, they could at least mention his impact, collaborations with Warhol and his enduring popularity, so that the uninitiated can see why this item is even newsworthy.
Not to mention the movie. I wonder if he’d be nearly as heroic if Julian Schnabel didn’t do the movie about him?
I do know he was a rockstar when I was going to art school in the early nineties before the movie came out. But I do think the movie did a lot to seal the deal with a lot of twenty somethings who went to art school most likely because of that movie if not only subconsciously.
I still want to live in a box in the park, and wake up one day to a solo show at Mary Boone.
I wonder if any artist will ever find any sort of fame and fortune that would even come close to comparing to the meteoric rise of Basquiat’s star ever again?
They don’t make art stars like they used to
They mass-produce them these days. There are so many art stars that a figure like Basquiat would be impossible to have now.
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