U2 Selling Off Basquiat Painting in London

An interesting tidbit from The New York Times: U2 is selling a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that its bassist, Adam Clayton, bought at a New York gallery in 1989. According to Bloomberg, the band is expected to fetch as much as 6 million pounds (that’s $11.7 million) at a Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction in London on July 1. The auction record for a Basquiat work is $14.6 million.

The painting, a 6-foot-square acrylic, oil stick and collage canvas, was completed in 1982 (some reports say 1983) when the artist was 22 years old. He died of a drug overdose in 1988.

“It seems especially appropriate that a work by Basquiat should end up in a music studio, since so much has been said about the relationship between his art and music,” Oliver Barker, of Sotheby's Contemporary Art department, told the BBC. The painting had been hanging in U2’s studio until now.

No word on whether Bono plans to do something philanthropic with the money.