Jean-Michel Basquiat - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York

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  • Provenance


    Acquired directly from the artist; The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas

  • Literature


    R. D. Marshall & J.L. Prat, ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat, vol. II, Paris, 1996, p. 118, No. 3 (illustrated); D. Marshall & J.L. Prat, ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat, vol. III, Paris, 2000, p. 197, No. 3 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    As for the crown, if you look at the Whitney catalogue, Robert Ferris Thompson made the comment that Jean-Michel thought he was royalty. He described it as royalty and the streets. In my opinion, the crown meant that he thought he was from royalty. Not because he solely thought of himself as being a king, but it was a symbol of his family being royal.
    Gerard Basquiat in J. Deitch, ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981: The Studio of the Street, Milan and New York, 2007, p. 90
    Basquiat’s paintings of 1982-85 reveal a confluence of his many interests and energies, and their actual contents—the words—describe the subjects of importance to Basquiat. He continually selected and injected into his works words which held charged references and meanings—particularly to his deep-rooted concerns about race, human rights, the creation of power and wealth, and the control and valuation of natural, elements, animals, and produce—all this in addition to references to his ethnic heritage [and] popular culture.
    R. Marshall, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York 1992, pp. 18-21
    Known for his gestural, painterly brush strokes and swathes of bright hues, Jean-Michel Basquiat drew on various inspirations to create his profound and personal art. Juxtaposing naïve scribbled lines and haphazard lettering onto canvas, wood, and other surfaces, his work is both deliberate and playful. The present lot is part painting, part sculpture: richly thematic with biographical symbolism, it engages found material, collage, and the classic painted gesture.
    Basquiat’s transcendence as an artist was largely rooted in his ability to amalgamate different themes with precision. Like many artists, his work was fed by crippling depression from a violent childhood. Born into an abusive broken home in Brooklyn to immigrant parents, Basquiat ran away at the age of 15 and thereafter grew up an urban nomad. Befriending other struggling young artists such as Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, Basquiat became a preeminent figure in the flourishing graffiti movement of the East Village during the 1970s and ‘80s. His witty and poetic graffiti was easily distinguished from the rest with its trademark copyright logo and “Samo” sayings, and Basquiat himself was hard to ignore, with his bare feet and wild hair. At once angry and creatively brilliant, his art became a mouthpiece for his bursting, frenetic and undying energy.
    The present lot, like so many of his graphic and gestural pictures, is a raw rendition of Basquiat’s pain. This iconic work embodies Basquiat’s depth of character and wisdom that drove a continual inner exploration and profound insight. A displaced individual, the artist channeled his early existentialist anxieties into exciting and evocative art such as Rubber, 1984.
    Visually divided into three distinct sections by a triad of blue squares, the panel bears the illusion of a vertical triptych. Within each section floats a faceless and figureless head bearing cartoon-like resemblance to the artist, who has placed himself in many of his works. Each head floats alone in its space, punctuated by oversized yellow crowns that hint at power and authority; the marked absence of form and function invoke a sense of lost identity. Orbit-like and eyeless, affixing reptilian tongues mid-air, the demonic faces appear hungry, confined and suspended in space and time.
    Rage and frustration are ongoing themes in Basquiat’s oeuvre, and in the present lot Basquiat divulges in direct references to racial issues of a Black outsider trapped within the confines of White society. The work reflects a feeling of dysphoria, tangential of an African Diaspora reflective of Basquiat’s upbringing in a foreign land. Forced to adapt to American society in the heyday of pop-culture, the artist also seeks to pay homage to his ancestral roots. Referencing African tribal culture and Haitian symbolism, the cutout eyes and mouth visually function like masks, while similarly nefarious and skeletal crocodile heads signify voodoo forms. The symbols command themselves as mysterious ancient ciphers resurfacing in a modern context.
    Graffiti and punk rock were both strong influences for Basquiat and his inner rebellion, and the present lot mimics their look and mood. This aggression extends beyond the subject matter and composition to the saturated colors within the piece. Tension between streaks of electric yellow and blocks of brilliant blue contrasts against neutral tones of gray, creams, and browns, a duality that carries over to the combination of quick-drying acrylic and slow-setting oil paint that fight the particularity of Xeroxed transparencies and displaced verbiage. Superficially nonsensical words such as Rubber© contain an underlying message known only to the artist—seemingly senseless, the works are filled with rich metaphors, many derived from a purely subconscious level.

  • 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.

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116

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Rubber

1984

Acrylic, oil and Xerox collage on wooden door.
82 x 33 5/8 in. (208 x 85.4 cm).

Initialed and dated “JMB ‘84” on the reverse.

Estimate
$1,500,000 - 2,500,000 

Sold for $1,762,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York