Provenance
Larry Gagosian Gallery, New York; Private collection
Exhibited
Vienna, Kunsthaus, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1999
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, Kunsthaus, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vienna, 1999, p. 87 (illustrated); E. Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 2000, p. 214 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
The present lot, Cash Crop, a large scale and expressive canvas, was painted during the summer of 1984 during his first visit to the island of Maui in Hawaii, at a time when Basquiat was at the height of his fame and powers. Attracted by the island’s natural beauty and warm climate, Basquiat rented a secluded ranch in the tropical rain forest at Hana, and he would return there every summer until his untimely death in 1988. Hawaii became Basquiat’s paradise, an escape from the racism of the New York art world and from his heavy heroin addiction. On Maui, no one knew of his fame and wealth; he wandered the streets of the island barefoot and slept in one of the local’s fruit stands, an experience which must have taken him back to his teenage days when he was homeless and slept in cardboard boxes in Manhattan’s slums.

In typical Basquiat style, Cash Crop is vigorously painted, executed with dynamic, powerful brushstrokes of intense raw colour. Its reddish brown foreground is indicative of Hawaii’s rich soil, its blue background of the clear skies and its golden yellow of the brilliant sun. Central to the composition are a sugar cane plant, the raw ingredient in the condiment which Basquiat has represented by writing the word SUGAR on a black box. Cash Crop poignantly examines an important theme that recurs throughout Basquiat’s oeuvre – the legacy of the colonial enterprise and his relationship to that legacy. From the late 15th century and Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas, sugar cane, abundant in Hawaii, was a cash crop for the white European colonizers, who used African slaves throughout the Caribbean to cultivate the crop. Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose father was from Haiti, one the world’s largest producers of sugar during the Colonial era, empathized with the plight of the African slaves and commemorated their sacrifice in the present work. His endeavour and approach is reminiscent of the Mexican communist painter Diego Rivera whose famous murals of labourers Basquiat must have been aware of.

In addition to Rivera, the late 19th-century French master Paul Gauguin also influenced Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work, an influence clearly seen in Cash Crop. Like Basquiat, Gaugin escaped his native France for a distant tropical island, Tahiti, in order to purge himself of his artificial and conventional life. Like Basquiat in Hawaii, Gauguin lived as a local in Tahiti, where he sided with the natives in clashes with the French colonial government. Like Basquiat in Cash Crop, Gauguin painted the strikingly beautiful landscape of his adopted island using expansive areas of bold, saturated colour, a revolutionary painting style which would spur the Fauvist and Expressionist movements that, in turn, clearly influenced Basquiat. History will record both Gauguin and Basquiat as artists far ahead of their respective times both stylistically and thematically. Their extravagant lifestyles may have been somewhat mythified, but their brilliant and influential oeuvres are only too apparent, as are their sadly premature deaths – a lonesome man, Gauguin died of syphilis in jail.

As with all tragic tales, the ending is heart wrenching and unfortunately Jean-Michel Basquiat’s is no different. For those few years Hawaii was his safe haven, but it would also prove to be the beginning of his demise. It is said that in the summer of 1988, at the end of what would be his last stay on the island, Basquiat, while in the parking lot of Hana’s local store with a friend and his girlfriend, Kelle Inman, was confronted by a white man who repeatedly called him a “nigger”. An extremely upset Basquiat immediately broke down exclaiming “Not here. Not here …” His paradise had just been shattered. Upon his return to New York, a depressed Basquiat, who had shown signs of controlling his drug addiction, went on one last binge, mixing cocaine and heroin. On the 12th of August 1988, Kelle Inman would enter his studio to find her boyfriend lifeless.
Artist Biography
Jean-Michel Basquiat
American • 1960 - 1988
One of the most famous American artists of all time, Jean-Michel Basquiat first gained notoriety as a subversive graffiti-artist and street poet in the late 1970s. Operating under the pseudonym SAMO, he emblazoned the abandoned walls of the city with his unique blend of enigmatic symbols, icons and aphorisms. A voracious autodidact, by 1980, at 22-years of age, Basquiat began to direct his extraordinary talent towards painting and drawing. His powerful works brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s New York underground scene and catapulted Basquiat on a dizzying meteoric ascent to international stardom that would only be put to a halt by his untimely death in 1988.
Basquiat's iconoclastic oeuvre revolves around the human figure. Exploiting the creative potential of free association and past experience, he created deeply personal, often autobiographical, images by drawing liberally from such disparate fields as urban street culture, music, poetry, Christian iconography, African-American and Aztec cultural histories and a broad range of art historical sources.
View More Works

18

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Cash Crop

1984
Oil and acrylic on canvas.
182.9 x 243.8 cm. (72 x 96 in).
Signed, titled and dated 'Jean-Michel Basquiat Cash Crop 1984' on the reverse. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Estimate
£600,000 - 900,000 ‡

Sold for £713,250

Contemporary Art Evening

12 Feb 2010
London

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Gregor Hildebrandt
Faith
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Leandro Erlich
Rain
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2 disappearing points to 1
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Dritteraprilzweitausendundsieben
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Untitled (Green Butterfly)
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Puzzle (Two Views)
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No Title (Throne)
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Jannis Kounellis
Untitled
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Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
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10
Elmgreen & Dragset
Powerless Structures, Fig. 255
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11
Margherita Manzelli
Diencephale
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12
Cindy Sherman
Untitled (#196)
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13
Andy Warhol
Knives
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled
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15
Martin Kippenberger
Antikriegsmuseum – Befehl im Museum für unnötige Kriegsforschung
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16
Dan Colen
Untitled
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17
George Condo
Father and Son
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18
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Cash Crop
Estimate £600,000 - 900,000 ‡
Sold for £713,250
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19
Banksy
Vandalised oil # 001
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20
Piero Manzoni
Achrome
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21
Ai Weiwei
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn
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22
Gavin Turk
Oi!
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23
Grayson Perry
Transvestite Brides of Christ
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Philippe Pasqua
Marie
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25
Wim Delvoye
Untitled (Pierre)
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26
Jonathan Meese
PSSST, diese geile BIENENKÖNIGINNIN schenkt sich den Melonenfischi zum Geburtstag, DU LECKERMÄULCHEN "Rendamez"
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27
Anselm Reyle
Untitled (für Otto Freundlich)
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28
Peter Halley
Soul control
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29
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (707-1)
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30
Donald Judd
Untitled (87-29 Studer)
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31
Kenneth Noland
Mysteries, Amidst
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Epicentre 1
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33
Gary Hume
Garden Painting #2
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34
Hermann Nitsch
Golden Love
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35
Albert Oehlen and Jonathan Meese
The Greeting
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36
Franz West
Untitled (Bench)
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37
Sergej Jensen
Untitled
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38
Terence Koh
Gone, Yet Still (Untitled 2)
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39
Wolfgang Tillmans
(Untitled) Las Vegas
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40
Monica Bonvicini
Caged tool #2 (stone saw)
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Thomas Ruff
Nudes dg06
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42
Tobias Rehberger
Reus
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43
Tracey Emin
I promise to love you
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Contemporary Art Evening

12 Feb 2010 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Jean-Michel Basquiat

18

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Cash Crop

Contemporary Art Evening

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12 Feb 2010
London