"If someone had told you during the 1980s that works by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat would become the most expensive produced in the decade, you probably would have been highly skeptical. But that's exactly what happened. Sure, paintings by Eric Fischl have had some spectacular results at auction recently, but overall, no artist from the 1980s can touch Basquiat's spectacular price gains.

"This sunny picture has one problem, however: Basquiat's prices have gone up way too fast. Back in 1997, a six-foot-square Basquiat painting would routinely bring $200,000-$300,000 at auction. Only one year later, that same painting was being knocked down for $400,000-$600,000. One major painting, Self-Portrait (estimate $400,000-$600,000), went wild and sold for $3 million (a price that, according to published reports, resulted from 'chandelier bidding' and was later reduced to $1.5 million after protests from the buyer -- but that's another story)."