Untitled (Max Roach)

Basquiat frequently championed his favourite cultural heroes through a kind of literal and visual and homage to them within his work. Untitled (Max Roach) participates within a group of works where Basquiat demonstrated his affinity with the innovative Jazz community of his day. Here, Basquiat refers to the celebrated drummer and Jazz musician, Max Roach who, considered alongside the most important drummers in history, was also a pioneer of 'Bebop', a style of Jazz which revolutionised the genre in the 1950s.
Basquiat strongly identified with the stylistic and improvisational character of Bebop. Its emphasis on a non linear structure, composed of syncopated rhythms and asymmetrical phrasing, provides a kind of musical parallel to Basquiat's own brand of visual lyricism. In Untitled (Max Roach) the black background is punctured by a staccato rhythm of signs and spaces which jump out from the support. It appears to encapsulate the light and dark of the hi-hat cymbal marking time against the resonance of the bass drum accent, thus echoing the musical signature of the 'bop drummers', a stylistic group of which Max Roach formed a part. Furthermore, the recognition of familiar signs articulated time and again in Basquiat's work such as Venus, the crown and the halo display familiar notes which recall Bebop's own creative tendency to sample previous works and repeat melodic refrains amidst improvisation.