
Former Christie’s chairman Loïc Gouzer sold an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat drawing for $10.8 million on his new auction app, Fair Warning, this past Thursday. Prior to the July 30 sale, the work was estimated at $8 million to $12 million, with viewing open to collectors at Gouzer’s Montauk residence. So far, Gouzer has placed works by Basquiat, David Hammons, Steven Shearer, and Steven Parrino totaling some $13.5 million with buyers through the digital project.
The acrylic and oil stick on black paper measuring about 4 feet by 6 feet is among the highest selling works on paper by the artist to be publicly recorded. In June, a Basquiat work on paper featuring a scrawled head similar to a coveted painting at the Broad museum in Los Angeles went for $15.2 million in Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale, beating the previous record $13.6 million scored by a Basquiat drawing in 2016.
In his first sale on the app, Gouzer set a new benchmark for contemporary Canadian artist Steven Shearer with the sale of a 2018 portrait, “Synthist,” which went to a private European collector for $437,000, more than three times its low estimate of $180,000. The work surpassed the artist’s last auction price from five years ago for the 2004 painting Hash, which sold for $164,016. Additionally, he sold a David Hammons body print for $1.3 million from his own collection for more than four times its presale $500,000 estimate. Steven Parrino‘s Screwball beat its estimate to make $977,000.
The Hammons and Parrino works were sold by Gouzer himself to prime the consignment pump. The success of the Basquiat drawing is potentially a significant moment for Gouzer’s fledgling auction app as it moves from experiment to regular sales channel. On Monday, Gouzer used his Instagram account to tease another work as he moves his regular sale time from Sunday night at 5 pm to Thursday night at 5 pm EDT.
George Condo’s 2010 Dreamscape, another large yellow work, is on offer with a $2.8 million low estimate, carrying a third-party guarantee.