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Lot Essay
'[Basquiat] was sketching up a storm and studying those books. He told me he was ripping off ideas from the Masters, because how else were you supposed to learn anything. He seemed to appropriate the most from the Picasso book'
(T. Lhotsky, quoted in P. Hoban (ed.), Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, New York 1998, pp. 194-5).
Basquiat's Untitled from 1984 is an outstanding painterly example of the artist's signature anatomical figure. Created at a time when the artist had become the darling of the New York art scene, Basquiat was still reaping the rewards of this newfound recognition from the year before, including his first solo exhibition at Mary Boone in May 1984 and his first one-man museum exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, which later travelled to Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. Towering almost two metres high, Basquiat brings his figure to life with dramatic gestural sweeps of teal blue from which a bone white anatomical cross section emerges. The Cubist presentation of the head which simultaneously captures the profile of a face inside a larger frontal-facing visage, indicates the influence of the great portraits of Picasso, which Basquiat admired. In Untitled, Basquiat takes a similar visual language, but adds a vast dose of energy, both in the form of its colours and in its intense, vivid and vigorous brushwork. The conflation of darkness and lightness in the figure's profile invokes a reading of the Jekyll and Hyde aspects of the artist's impassioned, artistic personality. The completeness of the composition makes it an exceptional example from the artist's practice, offering particularly visible evidence of the artist's painstaking build-up of complex layers of colour and brushwork. Untitled follows in a series of large-scale works focusing on single figures against a monochromatic background of which Melting Point of Ice (1984) from the Eli and Edyth Broad Collection is an example.
In its anatomically-inspired imagery, Untitled explores subject-matter of a personal nature for the artist, recalling a traumatic childhood experience. In September 1968 Basquiat was struck by a car playing in the street, leaving the then-eight year old Basquiat bed-ridden in hospital for a prolonged period of time. This event, one which the artist notes as his most vivid childhood memory, led to a life-long fascination with the human body. The anatomical components in Basquiat's work stems from a copy of Gray's Anatomy which Basquiat's mother gave to him when he was hospitalised to have his spleen removed following the car crash, in hopes of providing him with 'a diagram for healing' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 1998, p. 19). Indeed the fragmented and diagrammatic rendering of the figure in Untitled undoubtedly finds precedent in this medical textbook which Basquiat studied avidly as a child, the images and information presented by sketches, labels, and identifying markers and symbols clearly finding resonance in the young artist. He continued to refer to the book in his creative pursuits as an adult, including song lyrics for his band, Gray, a name the artist possibly derived from the tome.
Incorporating the full range of the artist's artistic vocabulary, in Untitled we see Basquiat intuitively and poetically juxtapose subject-matter from scientific textbooks and street art, the vibrant passages of colour combined with the artist's signature text and enigmatic symbols results in a canvas that pulsates with energy and intrigue. The head of Untitled simultaneously recalls a diverse range of inspiration from the Cubist works of Picasso to African tribal masks to scientific cross-sections denoting skeletal and tissue connections. The alternating black and white eyes, nasal passage and bared teeth partially swathed in blood red extends into a expressionist layering of vibrant pops of yellow and orange. It is in the facial features of Untitled that we perhaps gain insight into Basquiat's intuitive technique where he uses more than five different layers of paint-white, teal, black, blue, red, green and yellow-to form the figure's head. Moving down the torso, Basquiat focuses his painterly attention on the inner-workings of the human body, the composition belying the artist's extensive knowledge of structural anatomy. Here the artist traces delicately assured threads of blue and red, miming medical code for de-oxygenated and oxygenated veins respectively, and their path to and from the heart. Basquiat includes a right hand, complete with its branched veins, the fourth finger, regarded as magical in many cultures, articulated in royal blue. The roughhewn black circle in the middle of the torso is perhaps an allusion to the hole left in the artist when his spleen was removed, and adding an element of the autobiographical to the work. Calling upon this dramatic event, Basquiat translated it into an important part of his artistic inspiration and visual element in his paintings. This interest would later permeate throughout his art and when rendered in his characteristic repertoire of expressive lines and forms, the resulting images of skulls, bones, limbs and other anatomical details began to populate many of his most epic canvases.
(T. Lhotsky, quoted in P. Hoban (ed.), Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, New York 1998, pp. 194-5).
Basquiat's Untitled from 1984 is an outstanding painterly example of the artist's signature anatomical figure. Created at a time when the artist had become the darling of the New York art scene, Basquiat was still reaping the rewards of this newfound recognition from the year before, including his first solo exhibition at Mary Boone in May 1984 and his first one-man museum exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, which later travelled to Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. Towering almost two metres high, Basquiat brings his figure to life with dramatic gestural sweeps of teal blue from which a bone white anatomical cross section emerges. The Cubist presentation of the head which simultaneously captures the profile of a face inside a larger frontal-facing visage, indicates the influence of the great portraits of Picasso, which Basquiat admired. In Untitled, Basquiat takes a similar visual language, but adds a vast dose of energy, both in the form of its colours and in its intense, vivid and vigorous brushwork. The conflation of darkness and lightness in the figure's profile invokes a reading of the Jekyll and Hyde aspects of the artist's impassioned, artistic personality. The completeness of the composition makes it an exceptional example from the artist's practice, offering particularly visible evidence of the artist's painstaking build-up of complex layers of colour and brushwork. Untitled follows in a series of large-scale works focusing on single figures against a monochromatic background of which Melting Point of Ice (1984) from the Eli and Edyth Broad Collection is an example.
In its anatomically-inspired imagery, Untitled explores subject-matter of a personal nature for the artist, recalling a traumatic childhood experience. In September 1968 Basquiat was struck by a car playing in the street, leaving the then-eight year old Basquiat bed-ridden in hospital for a prolonged period of time. This event, one which the artist notes as his most vivid childhood memory, led to a life-long fascination with the human body. The anatomical components in Basquiat's work stems from a copy of Gray's Anatomy which Basquiat's mother gave to him when he was hospitalised to have his spleen removed following the car crash, in hopes of providing him with 'a diagram for healing' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 1998, p. 19). Indeed the fragmented and diagrammatic rendering of the figure in Untitled undoubtedly finds precedent in this medical textbook which Basquiat studied avidly as a child, the images and information presented by sketches, labels, and identifying markers and symbols clearly finding resonance in the young artist. He continued to refer to the book in his creative pursuits as an adult, including song lyrics for his band, Gray, a name the artist possibly derived from the tome.
Incorporating the full range of the artist's artistic vocabulary, in Untitled we see Basquiat intuitively and poetically juxtapose subject-matter from scientific textbooks and street art, the vibrant passages of colour combined with the artist's signature text and enigmatic symbols results in a canvas that pulsates with energy and intrigue. The head of Untitled simultaneously recalls a diverse range of inspiration from the Cubist works of Picasso to African tribal masks to scientific cross-sections denoting skeletal and tissue connections. The alternating black and white eyes, nasal passage and bared teeth partially swathed in blood red extends into a expressionist layering of vibrant pops of yellow and orange. It is in the facial features of Untitled that we perhaps gain insight into Basquiat's intuitive technique where he uses more than five different layers of paint-white, teal, black, blue, red, green and yellow-to form the figure's head. Moving down the torso, Basquiat focuses his painterly attention on the inner-workings of the human body, the composition belying the artist's extensive knowledge of structural anatomy. Here the artist traces delicately assured threads of blue and red, miming medical code for de-oxygenated and oxygenated veins respectively, and their path to and from the heart. Basquiat includes a right hand, complete with its branched veins, the fourth finger, regarded as magical in many cultures, articulated in royal blue. The roughhewn black circle in the middle of the torso is perhaps an allusion to the hole left in the artist when his spleen was removed, and adding an element of the autobiographical to the work. Calling upon this dramatic event, Basquiat translated it into an important part of his artistic inspiration and visual element in his paintings. This interest would later permeate throughout his art and when rendered in his characteristic repertoire of expressive lines and forms, the resulting images of skulls, bones, limbs and other anatomical details began to populate many of his most epic canvases.