Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Company, via Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin via The New York Times
From The New York Times about Art Basel. Definitely in the "things I never thought I'd see together" category.
There was a commotion on the second floor of Art Basel shortly after the fair opened here on Tuesday. Crowds gathered around a darkened alcove, listening with rapt attention to Pharrell Williams.
This 36-year-old recording artist and producer wasn’t talking music, nor was he discussing his personal art collection, which includes paintings by Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami. Rather, Mr. Williams, wearing a red-checked gingham shirt, a brown fedora and baggy blue jeans, was explaining a group of objects that had been carefully arranged in the open mouth of a whimsical fiberglass monster.
“They’re the things in life that get overlooked,” Mr. Williams said. These particular things — a miniature ketchup bottle, a can of Pepsi, a pair of sneakers, a cupcake, a condom, a bag of Doritos and a bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby lotion — were impeccably made in various types of gold and encrusted with 26,000 inlaid diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds.
“The taste of a cupcake is worth more than diamonds,” Mr. Williams went on, offering an interpretation of the sculpture, “The Simple Things,” on which he collaborated with Mr. Murakami.
Within 30 minutes of the fair’s opening, four people were fighting to buy the $2 million piece. It ended up being purchased jointly by two collectors, one who lives in Paris and the other in Los Angeles. “They’re friends and they intend to share it,” said Emmanuel Perrotin, the Paris dealer in whose booth the sculpture was for sale.
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