A commercial statement filed in New York this summer has raised questions about the circumstances surrounding the sale of a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat at Christie’s, New York, on 13 May.
The work, The Field Next to the Other Road (1981), was consigned to the auction house by the dealer Tony Shafrazi and included in the Post-War and Contemporary evening sale where it sold for $37.1m, the sixth-highest price of the night. The identity of the successful bidder is unknown but dealer Christoph Van de Weghe was the underbidder. “I was sorry not to get it,” he told The Art Newspaper.
However, a publicly available document known as a Uniform Commercial Code-1 (UCC1) filing statement reveals that Shafrazi still owned the Basquiat painting two months after the auction. UCC1 statements serve to publicly declare a debt so that the same object cannot be used as collateral in more than one deal. The statement filed in relation to the Basquiat painting is dated 28 July and reveals that Christie’s loaned money to Shafrazi and his gallery, with the dealer using the painting as collateral.
The document raises the possibility that the successful bidder for the work backed out of the deal after the auction. It is also possible that the buyer had not paid for the work by late July, so title to the painting remained with Shafrazi, who had used it to borrow money from Christie’s against the forthcoming proceeds of the sale.
Shafrazi declined to comment. “We can confirm the lot was sold at auction,” said a spokeswoman for Christie’s, who declined to comment further.