Last week at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction, an anonymous buyer swooped up Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting Mecca. Today the New York Postclaims that it was Jay Z who dropped $4.5 million on the painting of the Empire State Building with Basquiat's signature crown.
Jay has voiced his admiration for Basquiat on many of his raps, and the rapper already owns at least one of the New York artist's paintings. Yesterday, he signed Jeezy to Roc Nation and posted a picture in front of his Basquiat painting with the caption "It's Official Now" on his site Life + Times.
The Art Market Monitorwarns to take this news of Jay's new Basquiat with a grain of salt, pointing out that the NY Post has already been wrong about one Sotheby's sale.
The same night Jay Z allegedly purchased his new work, Sotheby's experienced the highest-grossing night in history, selling off a record-breaking $105 million Andy Warhol silkscreen.
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[via ARTINFO]
