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Lot Essay
The present work, Untitled is a testament to the ferocious splendor and raw, uncensored authenticity that has become synonymous with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Marked by an exceptional combination of sophisticated draftsmanship and painterly verve, Untitled is a pulsating vision of the human face—a prevalent motif in the artist’s early work. Executed at the dawn of his meteoric ascent to international acclaim, Untitled epitomizes Basquiat’s genius with its highly charged surface. By developing impastoed layers of acrylic, wax crayon and spray paint, Basquiat created an incredible, densely worked surface that epitomizes the electrifying vibrancy of his early masterworks.
Immediate and consuming, Untitled recalls the explosive charge of Basquiat’s earlier street art and recasts this rebellious spirit into a staggeringly intense picture. Through the vehement force of his mark-making, which is centralized within the freely rendered face and searing gaze of the shadowy visage, SAMO—Basquiat’s graffiti alter-ego of the late 1970s—is apparent through the rapidly executed scrawls. As SAMO, Basquiat traipsed the streets of New York, emblazoning his moniker and chosen icons, such as the three-pointed crown and acquisitive © upon the untouched walls of the city. Enigmatic to the core, SAMO was known for his blend of conceptual and visual emblems, merging a diverse linguistic arsenal of words with symbols and icons that, although esoteric, were unforgettable. Reflecting upon the uniquely painterly spirit of Basquiat’s cryptic tags, scholar Marc Mayer notes, “Deliberate and practiced, far more slick than raw, the tags also had a cheerful spontaneity in their favor that felt related, somehow, to a primordial decorative impulse. It was the city, more than any other source, which provided fodder for Basquiat’s art brut sensibility” (M. Mayer, Basquiat in History, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2005, p. 46).
In Untitled, Basquiat sacrificed none of the immediacy and candid reflex of SAMO, but rather, he channeled his arsenal of sprayed and painted marks into a formal order. Describing this continuation, critic Achille Bonito Oliva reflects, “Now, he brought to his canvases the abstract-figurative intensity of this experience, its declarative and narrative nature, explicit and didactic vigor, and its confused and spontaneous accumulation of visual elements” (A. B. Oliva, quoted in “The Perennial Shadow of Art in Basquiat’s Brief Life,” Jean-Michel Basquiat, exh. cat., Museo d’Arte Moderna, Lugano, 2005, p. 40). By conjuring the specter of SAMO, the notorious hero of the New York City streets, Untitled offers a potent fusion of viscerally charged figuration and unbridled painterly assault, all unified by the unwavering confidence of Basquiat’s registers.
A product of its time and place, Untitled reflects Basquiat’s environs in Lower Manhattan with its unbridled authenticity. The unfiltered figuration invokes impressions of the intricate layers of a graffiti mural, and gives measure of the urban landscape that shaped it. The present lot speaks the language of a city in glorious disarray, harkening back to a time of crumbling cinderblock walls and the elaborately vandalized Brooklyn-bound D train. Describing New York of the early 1980s, Glenn O’Brien reflects, “New York was cheap, poor, run-down and dangerous. In its own fabulous way of course” (G. O’Brien quoted in “SAMO©’s New York,” Basquiat: Boom for Real, exh. cat., Barbican Centre, London, 2017, p. 101).
Forged within the hot-bed of the gritty downtown scene, Basquiat’s visual lexicon was at the forefront of a revolution against the reigning artistic dogmas of generations past. Volatile and branded with the insuppressible energy unique to the creative vortex that was downtown Manhattan in the late '70s and early '80s, O’Brien conjures the atmosphere perfectly, stating, “if you were turning eighteen in New York City in 1978, ‘The New Frontier’ had gone down in flames, but the city was still frontier. New York City was the Wild, Wild East. Shootouts. Bandits. Savages. Badlands, The greatest city in the world was broke and all broke down and it was exciting” (G. O’Brien, quoted in “Basquiat and the New York Scene, 1978-82,” Basquiat, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2010, p. 38). The searing intensity of Untitled is a relic of the city in which Basquiat came of age and the artist himself spoke of a desire to paint the feeling of the Lower East Side.
Embodying the forceful creative output that would come to define Basquiat’s mature career, Untitled is an indisputable masterwork from a supremely critical year in Basquiat’s artistic development. Soon after its completion, his work would be featured in some of the most venerated institutions, such as Gagosian in Los Angeles, and Documenta 7 in Kassel. Unfiltered and seemingly torn from the streets of New York City, Untitled exemplifies this period of his life with expressive marks reiterating the artist’s impassioned declaration of artistic intent. “His paintings are a canvas jungle that harnesses the traditions of modern art to portray the ecstatic violence of the New York Street. His graft of street culture onto high art is a classic example of how modernism continues to rejuvenate itself” (J. Deitch, ed., Jean Michel Basquiat, The Notebooks, Princeton, 2015, p. 13).
Immediate and consuming, Untitled recalls the explosive charge of Basquiat’s earlier street art and recasts this rebellious spirit into a staggeringly intense picture. Through the vehement force of his mark-making, which is centralized within the freely rendered face and searing gaze of the shadowy visage, SAMO—Basquiat’s graffiti alter-ego of the late 1970s—is apparent through the rapidly executed scrawls. As SAMO, Basquiat traipsed the streets of New York, emblazoning his moniker and chosen icons, such as the three-pointed crown and acquisitive © upon the untouched walls of the city. Enigmatic to the core, SAMO was known for his blend of conceptual and visual emblems, merging a diverse linguistic arsenal of words with symbols and icons that, although esoteric, were unforgettable. Reflecting upon the uniquely painterly spirit of Basquiat’s cryptic tags, scholar Marc Mayer notes, “Deliberate and practiced, far more slick than raw, the tags also had a cheerful spontaneity in their favor that felt related, somehow, to a primordial decorative impulse. It was the city, more than any other source, which provided fodder for Basquiat’s art brut sensibility” (M. Mayer, Basquiat in History, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2005, p. 46).
In Untitled, Basquiat sacrificed none of the immediacy and candid reflex of SAMO, but rather, he channeled his arsenal of sprayed and painted marks into a formal order. Describing this continuation, critic Achille Bonito Oliva reflects, “Now, he brought to his canvases the abstract-figurative intensity of this experience, its declarative and narrative nature, explicit and didactic vigor, and its confused and spontaneous accumulation of visual elements” (A. B. Oliva, quoted in “The Perennial Shadow of Art in Basquiat’s Brief Life,” Jean-Michel Basquiat, exh. cat., Museo d’Arte Moderna, Lugano, 2005, p. 40). By conjuring the specter of SAMO, the notorious hero of the New York City streets, Untitled offers a potent fusion of viscerally charged figuration and unbridled painterly assault, all unified by the unwavering confidence of Basquiat’s registers.
A product of its time and place, Untitled reflects Basquiat’s environs in Lower Manhattan with its unbridled authenticity. The unfiltered figuration invokes impressions of the intricate layers of a graffiti mural, and gives measure of the urban landscape that shaped it. The present lot speaks the language of a city in glorious disarray, harkening back to a time of crumbling cinderblock walls and the elaborately vandalized Brooklyn-bound D train. Describing New York of the early 1980s, Glenn O’Brien reflects, “New York was cheap, poor, run-down and dangerous. In its own fabulous way of course” (G. O’Brien quoted in “SAMO©’s New York,” Basquiat: Boom for Real, exh. cat., Barbican Centre, London, 2017, p. 101).
Forged within the hot-bed of the gritty downtown scene, Basquiat’s visual lexicon was at the forefront of a revolution against the reigning artistic dogmas of generations past. Volatile and branded with the insuppressible energy unique to the creative vortex that was downtown Manhattan in the late '70s and early '80s, O’Brien conjures the atmosphere perfectly, stating, “if you were turning eighteen in New York City in 1978, ‘The New Frontier’ had gone down in flames, but the city was still frontier. New York City was the Wild, Wild East. Shootouts. Bandits. Savages. Badlands, The greatest city in the world was broke and all broke down and it was exciting” (G. O’Brien, quoted in “Basquiat and the New York Scene, 1978-82,” Basquiat, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2010, p. 38). The searing intensity of Untitled is a relic of the city in which Basquiat came of age and the artist himself spoke of a desire to paint the feeling of the Lower East Side.
Embodying the forceful creative output that would come to define Basquiat’s mature career, Untitled is an indisputable masterwork from a supremely critical year in Basquiat’s artistic development. Soon after its completion, his work would be featured in some of the most venerated institutions, such as Gagosian in Los Angeles, and Documenta 7 in Kassel. Unfiltered and seemingly torn from the streets of New York City, Untitled exemplifies this period of his life with expressive marks reiterating the artist’s impassioned declaration of artistic intent. “His paintings are a canvas jungle that harnesses the traditions of modern art to portray the ecstatic violence of the New York Street. His graft of street culture onto high art is a classic example of how modernism continues to rejuvenate itself” (J. Deitch, ed., Jean Michel Basquiat, The Notebooks, Princeton, 2015, p. 13).