Within the fleeting span of ten years, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s tempestuous life brought a new and exciting visual vocabulary to the face of contemporary art. The vast mourning of his tragic death at age 27 only highlighted the breadth of influence he had already produced; revolutionizing a generation of artists and establishing him as an unprecedented symbol of youth, vigor, and artistic innovation. The present lot, Untitled (3 Text Pieces), 1982, conjures a time in which Basquiat was still on the brink of international recognition and art-stardom. Indeed, while he had barely begun to unleash on his canvases he had already developed a profound appreciation for the writing of William Burroughs and the beat generation.
Untitled (3 Text Pieces), matches stark words of poetry on three otherwise blank pieces of notebook paper. Throughout the late 1970s, Basquiat’s personal legacy as a poet had been honed on the New York streets with his close friend and early collaborator Al Diaz. Together as SAMO, an acronym for “same old shit”, Basquiat and Diaz spread their poetic and sparse messages of anti-establishment and social critique across the city of New York, embodying the movement of hip-hop and colliding with transformative symbols and text-based art. Though Basquiat was often scant and deliberately succinct in his interviews, his surviving text gives us insight into a profoundly brilliant and unconventional mind, where visual representation was as important as the words used to explain it. Though Basquiat broke his partnership with Diaz in 1980 in order to further pursue a career in painting, the present lot is a testament to Basquiat’s continuous investigation of language; enhancing some of his most acclaimed canvases with the inherent power of text. Exploring semiotic contexts as much as reveling in their aesthetic and formal appeal, the allure of the present lot exemplifies astute comparisons between Basquiat and Cy Twombly. Revealing a quick-wittedness and intimate aura of presence the Untitled (3 Text Pieces), 1982 distills a humble séance between man and word.