“He brought together street art and European old masters. He combined painting and writing. He combined icons from Christianity and Santería and voodoo… And on top of all that mixing and matching he added his own genius, which transformed the work into something completely fresh and original. The paintings don't just sit on my walls, they move like crazy” – Jay Z |
Though Basquiat began appropriating hieroglyphs from Henry Dreyfuss’s Symbol Sourcebook in 1982, in wasn’t until 1986 that these codes appeared as prominent motifs in the artist’s visual lexicon. Symbols and their corresponding definitions from the book’s “hobo signs” section feature in Victor 25448, such as A BEATING AWAITS YOU HERE, FATAL INJURY, and NOTHING TO BE GAINED HERE. A counterpoint to the IDEAL tags that float above, these very unideal messages pay homage to a language of street art spoken by a disenfranchised and underprivileged population. The IDEAL tags are evocative of the logo of the toy manufacturing company popular in the 1980s, and reappears several times in Basquiat’s work from this period. One to revel in semantic ambiguity and wordplay, the artist was no doubt attracted to this tag’s myriad references: to actual commodities, to the concept of an IDEA (amplified by the nearby brain and trailing L), to the phrase “I deal” (in drugs, consumerism—or art). |
![]() Excerpt from Henry Dreyfuss's Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols, published in 1972. |
|||
![]() |
![]() |
|||
[left] Jean-Michel Basquiat, Light Blue Movers, 1987. Private Collection, Martigny, Artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York [right] Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Ideal Ideal), 1987. Private Collection, Artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York |
||||
![]() |
||||
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Levitation, 1987. Salm Palace, Prague, Artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York | ||||
Basquiat’s black subjects are always self-referential, and the figure in Victor 25448 represents a beaten-down Basquiat in the last year of his life. Emulating a KO’d boxer bandaged with an X over a blank eye socket, Basquiat is portrayed defeated—perhaps physically from chronic drug use or emotionally from negative reception of his art and the death of Warhol. |
||||
[i] Jean-Michel Basquiat, quoted in Henry Geldzahler, “Art: From the Subways to Soho, Jean-Michel Basquiat,” Interview Magazine, January 1983. [ii] Fred Hoffman, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 2017, p. 221-224. |
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol: an unlikely pairing between the king of Pop art and the ’80s cool kid. Transcending differences in age, race, and background, these two artists forged a deep friendship and artistic kinship in the 1980s.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985. Photographed by Michael Halsband © 2020 All Rights Reserved
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at Mr. Chow restuarant, New York, 1985. Photo credit: Ben Buchanan / Bridgeman Images
Over the next two and half years, Warhol and Basquiat developed an incredibly close relationship. Basquiat’s impetuousness invigorated Warhol, then 54 years old, who began to immerse himself in the Soho community of young artists and importantly returned to painting by hand upon Basquiat’s suggestion when they began collaborating in 1984.
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol: an unlikely pairing between the king of Pop art and the ’80s cool kid. Transcending differences in age, race, and background, these two artists forged a deep friendship and artistic kinship in the 1980s.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985. Photographed by Michael Halsband © 2020 All Rights Reserved
Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich and New York (acquired from the above)
Christie’s, New York, May 13, 2008, lot 36
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
New York, Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, April 29 – June 11, 1988
Malmö, Rooseum, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, April 8 - May 28, 1989, no. 11, p. 50 (illustrated)
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Houston, The Menil Collection; Des Moines Art Center; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Jean-Michel Basquiat, October 23, 1992 – January 9, 1994, pp. 26, 266 (illustrated, p. 225)
London, Serpentine Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, March 6 – April 21, 1996, n.p.
Paris, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Peintures, April 3 – June 12, 1996
Brooklyn Museum of Art; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Basquiat, March 11, 2005 – February 12, 2006, pp. 148 - 149 (illustrated)
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 46 (illustrated)
Jean-Louis Prat and Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vol. 1, Paris, 1996, pp. 346-347
Jean-Louis Prat and Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vol. 2, Paris, 1996, no. 4, p. 152
Tony Shafrazi, Jeffrey Deitch and Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1999, pp. 274-275 (illustrated)
Jean-Louis Prat and Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 3rd Ed., Vol. 1, Paris, 2000, pp. 334-335 (illustrated, pp. 334-335)
Jean-Louis Prat and Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 3rd Ed., Vol. 2, Paris, 2000, no. 4, p. 259 (illustrated, p. 258; Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, 1988 installation view illustrated, p. 287)
Alison Pearlman, Unpackaging Art of the 1980s, Chicago, 2003, fig. 13, pp. 77 (illustrated)
Eric Fretz, Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography, Westport, 2010, p. 161
Fred Hoffman, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 2017, pp. 108, 220, 221, 224, 226, 231, 250 (illustrated, pp. 222-223)
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.
Property of an Important Private Collector, with a Portion of Proceeds to Benefit Art for Justice
acrylic, oilstick, wax and crayon on paper laid on canvas
72 x 131 in. (182.9 x 332.7 cm)
Executed in 1987.
Estimate
$8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $9,250,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278
New York Auction 2 July 2020