Jean-Michel Basquiat began his career as a graffiti artist under the pseudonym SAMO, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His graffiti background is apparent in the raw, graphic and fresh lines of this Untitled, 1983. For Basquiat, drawing was an equal medium to painting. Uniquely able to articulate the energy of the artist in the immediacy of putting pen to paper, drawing had an equal potential for powerful expression. He first applied this immediacy of thought and action to writing graffiti, which requires a quick hand. In the present work, the graphic style of street art is fused with experiments in semiotics, and reflects the artist’s inner thoughts and feelings. Employing imagery culled from his social and cultural milieu of the 1980s downtown New York scene, he has created a composition full of power symbols– the full meanings of which are not immediately comprehensible.

For Basquiat, symbols represented the world at its most basic level. As an ensemble, they generate an intellectual equation made even more mysterious by their pointed lack of clear explanation or translation. Although they may be equations, they are not meant to be solved or deciphered through any linear formula. In creating and destroying, in scribbling and crossing out, Basquiat deters a definitive decoding of his work, leaving it open to infinite permutations and interpretative possibilities. In this way, he created “a calculated incoherence, calibrating the mystery of what such apparently meaning-laden pictures might ultimately mean.” (M. Meyer, “Basquiat in History”, Basquiat, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2005, p. 51) Untitled from 1983 is a poignant example of this enigmatic artist and the powerful, yet elusive, oeuvre with which he has indelibly influenced the trajectory of contemporary western art far into the twenty-first century.