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Lot Essay
'Jean-Michel Basquiat was an articulate and prolific spokesman for youth: insatiably curious, tirelessly inventive, innocently self-deprecating because of youth's inadequacies, jealously guarding his independence, typically disappointed by the inherited world he defensively mocked, yet filled with adulation for his heroes. His work is likely to remain for a long time as the modern picture of what it looks like to be brilliant, driven, and young'
(M. Mayer, 'Basquiat in History', Basquiat, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 46).
'I like the ones where I don't paint as much as others, where it's just a direct idea'
(J.-M. Basquiat, quoted in H. Geldzahler. 'Art: From Subways to Soho: Jean-Michel Basquiat', Jean-Michel Basquiat: Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, exh. cat., Museum Würth, Vienna, 1999, p. 21).
Painted in 1983, Year of the Boar was created at the very height of Jean-Michel Basquiat's artistic prowess and was exhibited in the artist's celebrated solo show the same year at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles alongside Hollywood Africans, 1983, now held in the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, Horn Players, 1983, housed in The Broad Art Foundation and Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown). Its title was taken from the Chinese horoscope for that year: 1983 represents an auspicious year for the artist with his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, making him the youngest artist to have represented America in a major international exhibition of contemporary art at the age of 22, having exhibited at Documenta VII, Kassel the year before. Wielding a masterful understanding of composition on an immense scale, this triptych of canvas and raw wood is branded with a solitary graffiti-like tag, and a copyright symbol scrawled defiantly below. Executed in startling red and white against a deep tar-like black paint, its textured surface replete with thick drips of paint, Year of the Boar appears like an urban prophecy for the city streets, reformulating the traditionally religious triptych for a contemporary audience.
New York City, where he lived his entire life, is one of Jean-Michel Basquiat's most prominent and recurrent themes. Here, the artist returns to the subject of the city, exploring its vibrant streets in painting, just as he so often did in life. A regular attendee of the Mudd Club at 77 White Street in what was then industrial Chinatown, now known as Tribeca, Chinatown was a familiar haunt for Basquiat. Indeed, the artist had shared a studio space in Chinatown with Fab 5 Freddy before moving to SoHo. A product of the streets, Basquiat's signature graffiti-like scrawls are imprints of this urban stream of consciousness, sampling from his city surroundings. This large-scale work rings in the Chinese New Year, a festivity the artist would have no doubt seen as he revelled downtown. Basquiat's absorption of imagery from the streets can be seen in the mask-like definition of the figure emblazoned at the heart of the triptych. Continuing his engagement with global aesthetics, Year of the Boar resonates with the iconography of African masks, Vodoun figurines, Western religious symbols such as angels, haloes, devils, with pop culture cartoon characters. Accentuated by the dark background, the sheer vibrancy of the China red splatters, explodes like fireworks against the night sky.
A product of the streets, Basquiat's signature graffiti-like scrawls are imprints of this urban stream of consciousness, readily visible in the raw energy of his words. Under the epithet SAMO, Basquiat had spray-painted stickmen across the streets of New York City. By 1983 this style had graduated into a more fully developed method, with figures emerging from his oneiric painting practice, which still never-the-less bore the unmistakable hallmarks of his days on the streets. Recalling the gritty urbanism of his street graffiti the words Year of the Boar scrawled across the triptych perform as a profound example of Basquiat's idiosyncratic visual vocabulary. With an unpretentious attitude and a determination to assert his purpose, Basquiat described his affinity for this type of painting by remarking, 'I like the ones where I don't paint as much as others, where it's just a direct idea' (J.-M. Basquiat, quoted in H. Geldzahler. 'Art: From Subways to Soho: Jean-Michel Basquiat', Jean-Michel Basquiat: Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, exh. cat., Museum Würth, Vienna, 1999, p. 21).
The raw vigour captured in Year of the Boar is imparted through Basquiat's frenetic creative process. Pheobe Hoban tells how the artist would drive around with his girlfriend or bouncer, collecting ephemera. 'The artist had once done his art in the street; now he found his art supplies there - cardboard, foam rubber, and discarded lumber' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 2008, p. 34).
This strategy was a theme the artist relied on, and represents the embodiment of the persona the artist was crafting as the street artist vagabond, and the early 1980s urban street culture around him. 'The first things I made were windows I found on the street,' the artist recalled, 'I used the window shape for a frame, and the painting was on the glass part' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 2008, p. 34). Conveying a snap shot of contemporary urban life, the raw essence of this urban chronicler remains distilled in the use of language brazenly branded across its panels.
(M. Mayer, 'Basquiat in History', Basquiat, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 46).
'I like the ones where I don't paint as much as others, where it's just a direct idea'
(J.-M. Basquiat, quoted in H. Geldzahler. 'Art: From Subways to Soho: Jean-Michel Basquiat', Jean-Michel Basquiat: Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, exh. cat., Museum Würth, Vienna, 1999, p. 21).
Painted in 1983, Year of the Boar was created at the very height of Jean-Michel Basquiat's artistic prowess and was exhibited in the artist's celebrated solo show the same year at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles alongside Hollywood Africans, 1983, now held in the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, Horn Players, 1983, housed in The Broad Art Foundation and Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown). Its title was taken from the Chinese horoscope for that year: 1983 represents an auspicious year for the artist with his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, making him the youngest artist to have represented America in a major international exhibition of contemporary art at the age of 22, having exhibited at Documenta VII, Kassel the year before. Wielding a masterful understanding of composition on an immense scale, this triptych of canvas and raw wood is branded with a solitary graffiti-like tag, and a copyright symbol scrawled defiantly below. Executed in startling red and white against a deep tar-like black paint, its textured surface replete with thick drips of paint, Year of the Boar appears like an urban prophecy for the city streets, reformulating the traditionally religious triptych for a contemporary audience.
New York City, where he lived his entire life, is one of Jean-Michel Basquiat's most prominent and recurrent themes. Here, the artist returns to the subject of the city, exploring its vibrant streets in painting, just as he so often did in life. A regular attendee of the Mudd Club at 77 White Street in what was then industrial Chinatown, now known as Tribeca, Chinatown was a familiar haunt for Basquiat. Indeed, the artist had shared a studio space in Chinatown with Fab 5 Freddy before moving to SoHo. A product of the streets, Basquiat's signature graffiti-like scrawls are imprints of this urban stream of consciousness, sampling from his city surroundings. This large-scale work rings in the Chinese New Year, a festivity the artist would have no doubt seen as he revelled downtown. Basquiat's absorption of imagery from the streets can be seen in the mask-like definition of the figure emblazoned at the heart of the triptych. Continuing his engagement with global aesthetics, Year of the Boar resonates with the iconography of African masks, Vodoun figurines, Western religious symbols such as angels, haloes, devils, with pop culture cartoon characters. Accentuated by the dark background, the sheer vibrancy of the China red splatters, explodes like fireworks against the night sky.
A product of the streets, Basquiat's signature graffiti-like scrawls are imprints of this urban stream of consciousness, readily visible in the raw energy of his words. Under the epithet SAMO, Basquiat had spray-painted stickmen across the streets of New York City. By 1983 this style had graduated into a more fully developed method, with figures emerging from his oneiric painting practice, which still never-the-less bore the unmistakable hallmarks of his days on the streets. Recalling the gritty urbanism of his street graffiti the words Year of the Boar scrawled across the triptych perform as a profound example of Basquiat's idiosyncratic visual vocabulary. With an unpretentious attitude and a determination to assert his purpose, Basquiat described his affinity for this type of painting by remarking, 'I like the ones where I don't paint as much as others, where it's just a direct idea' (J.-M. Basquiat, quoted in H. Geldzahler. 'Art: From Subways to Soho: Jean-Michel Basquiat', Jean-Michel Basquiat: Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, exh. cat., Museum Würth, Vienna, 1999, p. 21).
The raw vigour captured in Year of the Boar is imparted through Basquiat's frenetic creative process. Pheobe Hoban tells how the artist would drive around with his girlfriend or bouncer, collecting ephemera. 'The artist had once done his art in the street; now he found his art supplies there - cardboard, foam rubber, and discarded lumber' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 2008, p. 34).
This strategy was a theme the artist relied on, and represents the embodiment of the persona the artist was crafting as the street artist vagabond, and the early 1980s urban street culture around him. 'The first things I made were windows I found on the street,' the artist recalled, 'I used the window shape for a frame, and the painting was on the glass part' (P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 2008, p. 34). Conveying a snap shot of contemporary urban life, the raw essence of this urban chronicler remains distilled in the use of language brazenly branded across its panels.