Photo: courtesy Mossgreen-Webbs
Don Binney
La Chute d'Icare (the Fall of Icarus), Pureora: The Last Flight of the Kokako.
Oil on Board, 1979
H2130mm.
One of the highlights from the Warwick and Kitty Brown art collection at Mossgreen-Webb's was lot 18, a major ornithological and environmental artwork from New Zealand artist Don Binney.
Estimated at $300,000 - $500,000, it was hammered down for $529,000, a clear auction record for the artist. Prices have seen a dramatic upward trajectory in recent years for his bird paintings. 
The artwork was created at the request of an environmental group looking for a fundraising postcard to help save the ancient forests at Poreora.
The provenance and a perfect culmination of the artists technique (combed paint and palette-knife application), environmental vision and a deep admiration of New Zealand birdlife saw this painting make a deserved artist auction record and a worthy place in the canon of great New Zealand paintings.

Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby's. Artist: Basquiat Untitled 1982.
RECORD AUCTION PRICE FOR BASQUIAT and RECORD PRICE FOR AN AMERICAN ARTIST AT AUCTION. 

​A 1982 untitled artwork by American Jean-Michel Basquiat reached dizzying new heights at Sotheby's contemporary art auction  in New York. The artwork sold for US$110.5 million (including buyer's premium), to Japanese collector Yusaka Maezawa, who is currently establishing an art museum in Chiba, Japan.
​This price puts the artwork in the top ten most expensive artworks ever sold at auction.
The artwork was originally purchased in 1984, for US$19,000 by an astute collector, whose daughters were selling the picture.
​The previous auction record for a Basquiat was sold at Christies, in May 2016. Also another untitled artwork from 1982, for US$57.3 million (including buyer's premium).
Basquiat died in 1988 aged 27.