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Lot Essay
'BJ: If you didn't paint, what do you think you'd be doing?
JMB: Directing movies, I guess. I mean ideally, yeah.
BJ: What kind of movies would you want to do?
JMB: Ones in which black people are portrayed as being people of the human race. And not aliens and not all negative and not all thieves and drug dealers and the whole bit. Just real stories...'
(Basquiat, interview with B. Johnston and T. Davis, 'I have to have some source material around me', Beverly Hills 1985).
'If you read the canvases out loud to yourself, the repetition,
the rhythm, you can hear Jean-Michel thinking'
(Fab 5 Freddy, quoted in I. Sischy 'Jean-Michel Basquiat as Told by Fred Braithwaite, a.k.a Fab 5 Freddy', in Interview, 22 October 1992, p. 120).
Lead Plate with Hole is a particularly raw example of Basquiat's works on canvas, combining a wide array of visual iconography and vibrant colour, with profound energy. Derived from the vast range of popular, historical and scientific literature that Basquiat had a predilection for, Lead Plate with Hole creates an intense visual narrative describing the artist's mental outpourings. Anchored by two striking primitive African masks in each corner, the main body of the composition is a frenetic assembly of urban signifiers, scientific notations and verbal graphics. An alien space ship hovers ominously above a scarlet Chinese pagoda, a city of minarets, and the Empire State Building, in a scene that is more distinctly global than much of Basquiat's earlier work. The 1980s were a decade which saw the rapid acceleration of global interconnections. Whilst Basquiat had never visited China or the Middle East, these pivotal global powers and the force of globalisation clearly fascinated the young artist. The scene resonates with those filmic representations of alien invasion that splice together scenes of international terror for dramatic effect. Here, Basquiat's alien is perhaps representative of the black American, marginalised by dominantly white society and treated pejoratively by popular culture. Scientific jargon was also a consistent source of curiosity for Basquiat. Proliferating throughout the scene are references to chemical compounds and mechanical equations. Indeed, the title Lead Plate with Hole refers to the atomic experiment Basquiat illustrated, demonstrating the movement of alpha particles through space. The same experiment recurs in his works Cathode and Alpha Particles both created in the same year. The shrieking yellow canvas in Lead Plate with Hole bursts with a vibrancy and animation unique to the artist. At the same time its surface is partially obscured through the use of pentimenti and verbal erasure.
The vigorous brush strokes of semi-opaque white paint, which overlay the canvas, project a degree of mysterious association between its labyrinths of symbols. Like Robert Rauschenberg's Skyway (1964), Basquiat's Lead Plate with Hole filters through a wealth of memories and contemporary signifiers, creating an improvised pastiche of street and pop imagery. Basquiat's technique in Lead Plate with Hole is an original interpretation of the silkscreen, juxtaposing mechanical reproduction with his own creative draftsmanship. Interestingly, 1984 was also the year that Basquiat began a number of fruitful collaborations with the pop artist, Andy Warhol.
Here, Basquiat highlights what he considered to be the misconception and alienation of black Americans. It is a theme that runs through his recurrent motif of primitive African masks. At the time of Lead Plate with Hole's making, Basquiat had not yet visited Africa however he was still drawn to its cultural legacy. In an interview, Basquiat said: 'I have never been to Africa. I'm an artist who has been influenced by his New York environment. But I have a cultural memory' (Basquiat, interview with D. Davvetas in New Art International, no. 3, October-November 1988). New York was by this time a hybrid island, combining a polyphony of Afro-Cuban, Afro-Jamaican, Afro-Domincan, and Afro-Puerto Rican identities within its neighbourhoods. Basquiat's grim faced black masks in Lead Plate with Hole, with their hollowed eyes and bared teeth confront the carousel of white racist projections and expose the shortcomings of societal integration. In his attention to primitive art and ethnographic subject matter, Basquiat follows in the tradition of Picasso; an artist, who for different motivations considered similar themes. In Lead Plate with Hole, Basquiat perhaps pays homage to the artist, drawing an outline reminiscent of Picasso's 1942 Tête de taureau, created out of the saddle and handle bars of a bicycle. Basquiat himself was once described as a 'Black Picasso'; a comparison that he considered flattering and demeaning in equal measure.
Science and its apparent objective neutrality, was a subject which Basquiat also privileged in his 1984 work. The 'lead plate with hole' experiment illustrated in the upper right quadrant of the painting elaborates the trajectory of alpha particles from a radioactive source; a typical enquiry for higher level students but extraordinary given Basquiat's lack of formal schooling. Beneath, he drew an assortment of chemical compounds and scientific equations, offering manifestations of his deeply enquiring and fertile mind. Also in the upper right hand corner, a dense black area details New York street names and other verbal gestures. Basquiat hauntingly refers to the biblical 'Apple of Sodom'; the fruit Satan ate after tempting Adam and Eve to the tree of Good and Evil. Other words are simultaneously drawn, scored through, obscured and rewritten. Cy Twombly would most likely have provided Basquiat with the precedent for this language play. Whilst Twombly cancels to cancel however, Basquiat cancels to reveal. As the artist himself explained, 'I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.' (Basquiat, interview with R.F. Thompson quoted in 'Royalty, Heroism and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat', March 1987).
Lead Plate with Hole marks a technical departure for Basquiat. Starting in 1984, the artist began to increasingly overlay his compositions with layers of paint, complicating the visual clarity and pictorial elements of the work. As the artist himself described his practice, 'I scratch out and erase but never so much that they don't know what was there. My version of pentimento' (Basquiat, interview with S. Mallouk, quoted in J. Clement Widow Basquiat, Edinburgh 2000, p. 40). Basquiat's concept of pentimenti was derived from the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt, who re-used their canvases and carried out over-painting as a practical solution. With time, the aging of the paint would unintentionally reveal its former subjects. In Lead Plate with Hole, Basquiat positively engenders this effect with central elements of the silkscreened painting covered in semi-opaque white paint and subsequently scribbled over. Rather than abandoning the original motif, Basquiat draws a metonymic connection between elements, importing significance to them all. Indeed the spectator is drawn increasingly to the possibilities of what might be represented underneath rather than on top of the painterly smoke screen.
Although Basquiat's work is usually incorporated into the stable of Neo- Expressionism, the cryptic complexity of Lead Plate with Hole recalls elements of Surrealism, which explored and employed the unconscious, the random, primitive, and the insane for aesthetic purposes, but also to take a glimpse at the fundamentals of the human condition. Lead Plate with Hole is a unique pastiche of pictorial themes and artistic media. Created in 1984, it represents a confident Basquiat, excited by his new artistic collaborations, the elaboration of his own symbolic vocabulary and the possibilities of new techniques. Lead Plate with Hole is a resonant painting which projects its own sense of gravity.
JMB: Directing movies, I guess. I mean ideally, yeah.
BJ: What kind of movies would you want to do?
JMB: Ones in which black people are portrayed as being people of the human race. And not aliens and not all negative and not all thieves and drug dealers and the whole bit. Just real stories...'
(Basquiat, interview with B. Johnston and T. Davis, 'I have to have some source material around me', Beverly Hills 1985).
'If you read the canvases out loud to yourself, the repetition,
the rhythm, you can hear Jean-Michel thinking'
(Fab 5 Freddy, quoted in I. Sischy 'Jean-Michel Basquiat as Told by Fred Braithwaite, a.k.a Fab 5 Freddy', in Interview, 22 October 1992, p. 120).
Lead Plate with Hole is a particularly raw example of Basquiat's works on canvas, combining a wide array of visual iconography and vibrant colour, with profound energy. Derived from the vast range of popular, historical and scientific literature that Basquiat had a predilection for, Lead Plate with Hole creates an intense visual narrative describing the artist's mental outpourings. Anchored by two striking primitive African masks in each corner, the main body of the composition is a frenetic assembly of urban signifiers, scientific notations and verbal graphics. An alien space ship hovers ominously above a scarlet Chinese pagoda, a city of minarets, and the Empire State Building, in a scene that is more distinctly global than much of Basquiat's earlier work. The 1980s were a decade which saw the rapid acceleration of global interconnections. Whilst Basquiat had never visited China or the Middle East, these pivotal global powers and the force of globalisation clearly fascinated the young artist. The scene resonates with those filmic representations of alien invasion that splice together scenes of international terror for dramatic effect. Here, Basquiat's alien is perhaps representative of the black American, marginalised by dominantly white society and treated pejoratively by popular culture. Scientific jargon was also a consistent source of curiosity for Basquiat. Proliferating throughout the scene are references to chemical compounds and mechanical equations. Indeed, the title Lead Plate with Hole refers to the atomic experiment Basquiat illustrated, demonstrating the movement of alpha particles through space. The same experiment recurs in his works Cathode and Alpha Particles both created in the same year. The shrieking yellow canvas in Lead Plate with Hole bursts with a vibrancy and animation unique to the artist. At the same time its surface is partially obscured through the use of pentimenti and verbal erasure.
The vigorous brush strokes of semi-opaque white paint, which overlay the canvas, project a degree of mysterious association between its labyrinths of symbols. Like Robert Rauschenberg's Skyway (1964), Basquiat's Lead Plate with Hole filters through a wealth of memories and contemporary signifiers, creating an improvised pastiche of street and pop imagery. Basquiat's technique in Lead Plate with Hole is an original interpretation of the silkscreen, juxtaposing mechanical reproduction with his own creative draftsmanship. Interestingly, 1984 was also the year that Basquiat began a number of fruitful collaborations with the pop artist, Andy Warhol.
Here, Basquiat highlights what he considered to be the misconception and alienation of black Americans. It is a theme that runs through his recurrent motif of primitive African masks. At the time of Lead Plate with Hole's making, Basquiat had not yet visited Africa however he was still drawn to its cultural legacy. In an interview, Basquiat said: 'I have never been to Africa. I'm an artist who has been influenced by his New York environment. But I have a cultural memory' (Basquiat, interview with D. Davvetas in New Art International, no. 3, October-November 1988). New York was by this time a hybrid island, combining a polyphony of Afro-Cuban, Afro-Jamaican, Afro-Domincan, and Afro-Puerto Rican identities within its neighbourhoods. Basquiat's grim faced black masks in Lead Plate with Hole, with their hollowed eyes and bared teeth confront the carousel of white racist projections and expose the shortcomings of societal integration. In his attention to primitive art and ethnographic subject matter, Basquiat follows in the tradition of Picasso; an artist, who for different motivations considered similar themes. In Lead Plate with Hole, Basquiat perhaps pays homage to the artist, drawing an outline reminiscent of Picasso's 1942 Tête de taureau, created out of the saddle and handle bars of a bicycle. Basquiat himself was once described as a 'Black Picasso'; a comparison that he considered flattering and demeaning in equal measure.
Science and its apparent objective neutrality, was a subject which Basquiat also privileged in his 1984 work. The 'lead plate with hole' experiment illustrated in the upper right quadrant of the painting elaborates the trajectory of alpha particles from a radioactive source; a typical enquiry for higher level students but extraordinary given Basquiat's lack of formal schooling. Beneath, he drew an assortment of chemical compounds and scientific equations, offering manifestations of his deeply enquiring and fertile mind. Also in the upper right hand corner, a dense black area details New York street names and other verbal gestures. Basquiat hauntingly refers to the biblical 'Apple of Sodom'; the fruit Satan ate after tempting Adam and Eve to the tree of Good and Evil. Other words are simultaneously drawn, scored through, obscured and rewritten. Cy Twombly would most likely have provided Basquiat with the precedent for this language play. Whilst Twombly cancels to cancel however, Basquiat cancels to reveal. As the artist himself explained, 'I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.' (Basquiat, interview with R.F. Thompson quoted in 'Royalty, Heroism and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat', March 1987).
Lead Plate with Hole marks a technical departure for Basquiat. Starting in 1984, the artist began to increasingly overlay his compositions with layers of paint, complicating the visual clarity and pictorial elements of the work. As the artist himself described his practice, 'I scratch out and erase but never so much that they don't know what was there. My version of pentimento' (Basquiat, interview with S. Mallouk, quoted in J. Clement Widow Basquiat, Edinburgh 2000, p. 40). Basquiat's concept of pentimenti was derived from the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt, who re-used their canvases and carried out over-painting as a practical solution. With time, the aging of the paint would unintentionally reveal its former subjects. In Lead Plate with Hole, Basquiat positively engenders this effect with central elements of the silkscreened painting covered in semi-opaque white paint and subsequently scribbled over. Rather than abandoning the original motif, Basquiat draws a metonymic connection between elements, importing significance to them all. Indeed the spectator is drawn increasingly to the possibilities of what might be represented underneath rather than on top of the painterly smoke screen.
Although Basquiat's work is usually incorporated into the stable of Neo- Expressionism, the cryptic complexity of Lead Plate with Hole recalls elements of Surrealism, which explored and employed the unconscious, the random, primitive, and the insane for aesthetic purposes, but also to take a glimpse at the fundamentals of the human condition. Lead Plate with Hole is a unique pastiche of pictorial themes and artistic media. Created in 1984, it represents a confident Basquiat, excited by his new artistic collaborations, the elaboration of his own symbolic vocabulary and the possibilities of new techniques. Lead Plate with Hole is a resonant painting which projects its own sense of gravity.