In 1986, 26-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat was earning $1.4 million a year making art. Dealers in the U.S. and Europe were wiring the onetime graffiti artist $40,000 in lump sums. But "the more money Basquiat made, the more paranoid and deeply involved with drugs he became," writes Michael Shnayerson in his new book, Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art. Less than two years later, Basquiat died of a heroin overdose. Then his prices really took off-his auction record, set in 2017, is $110.5 million for a 1982 painting of a skull.
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