Basquiat's 'Untitled' sells for $110.5 million

On Thursday, former graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Untitled' became the highest priced painting, by an American artist, ever sold at auction. (One of his works also set the record last year.) It was purchased at Sotheby's in New York by Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. The artwork was created in 1982 when Basquiat was only 22 years old. He died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Jonathan Jones from the British newspaper The Guardian states: "It is a painting that bleeds history. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) portrays a black skull scarred with red rivulets, pitted with angry eyes, gnashing its teeth, against a blue graffiti wall on which someone has been doing their sums. Perhaps the street mathematician was calculating how many Africans died on slave ships in the 18th century, or how many people lived in slavery in America, or how many young black men have been killed by police guns in the last few years."