Pronunciation is closely tied to the market status of the artist. In 1981, when art critic René Ricard published the landmark essay "The Radiant Child" in Artforum, Basquiat was just beginning his meteoric ascent. Within three years, he formed his famous, complex creative alliance with Andy Warhol, producing collaborative canvases that merged Pop Art silkscreens with Basquiat’s furious Neo-expressionist brushwork.
By the mid-1980s, gallerists like Annina Nosei, Mary Boone, and Bruno Bischofberger were marketing his work to elite international collectors. Yet archival video recordings from 1980s television broadcasts show interviewers and newscasters consistently butchering his name, treating him as an exotic downtown novelty rather than an artist with deep historical and cultural lineage.
The market has corrected any doubts about his importance. When Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa purchased Basquiat’s 1982 skull painting, Untitled, at Sotheby’s New York in May 2017 for $110.5 million, the artist set a record for the highest price ever achieved at auction by an American artist. In contemporary secondary-market sales, his estate consistently generates tens of millions annually.
Every time his name is spoken on the rostrum at Christie’s, Phillips, or Sotheby’s, auctioneers pronounce it with precision: bah-skee-AH. Speaking the name correctly acknowledges his position at the apex of art history, stripping away decades of casual mispronunciation.
