Jean-Michel Basquiat - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Monday, June 28, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich

  • Exhibited


    Santander, Fundacion Marcelino Botin, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Ahuyentando fantasmas, 10 July–14 September 2008

  • Catalogue Essay


    Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work was informed by a wide spectrum of art historical and cultural sources: graffiti art, African Primitivism, scientific source books, and the works of Jean Dubuffet and Cy Twombly. The present lot, entitled Ghost, neatly encapsulates the artist’s inner train of thoughts, as well as his extraordinary gift of expression. The raw pictorial format, effective use of blank space and seemingly random network of motifs and words bring an overwhelming sense of intimacy and immediacy to the viewer. As a poet, actor, musician, graffitist and artist, Basquiat was an enigmatic force whose life and work continues to intrigue.
    “On a par with experiencing and reassuring oneself of one’s own everyday existence, the act of drawing was immensely important to Basquiat – in its own right, and not solely for its artistic outcome.” (Dieter Buchhart, ‘A Revolutionary Caught Between Everyday Life, Knowledge, and Myth’, Basquiat, Fondation Beyeler, p. 11).

  • 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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14

Ghost

1986
Colour crayon and graphite on paper.
106.4 × 74.9 cm (41 3/4 × 29 1/2 in).

Signed and dated ‘Basquiat 1986’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£120,000 - 180,000 

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

29 June 2010
London