'I like the ones where I don’t paint as much as others, where it’s just a direct idea.' (J.M. Basquiat as interviewed by H. Geldzahler,Interview Magazine, January 1983, Online) 1984 marks a pinnacle year in the enigmatic oeuvre of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Life and art were necessarily intertwined for Basquiat, whose ascent to fame was defined by both his personality and canvases. Forever immortalized the child genius of the art market in the 1980s with his untimely death at age twenty-seven, Basquiat, now more than ever, is embedded in the upper echelons within the canon of art history.

Leading up to 1984, Basquiat had solo exhibitions in New York and Tokyo; was included in the Whitney Biennial and began collaborating with Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol. These leading life events, coupled with the independence of renting his own studio space from Warhol at 57 Great Jones Street in the summer of 1983, translated to rich artistic output, career validation and international recognition.

1984 marked a change in New York galleries from Annina Nosei to Mary Boone. It marked Basquiat’s first museum solo-exhibition at the Fruitmarket gallery in Edinburgh which traveled to London and Rotterdam. It marked his participation in MoMA’s exhibition, An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. Most of all, it marked a highly articulate, comprehensive and significant era of Basquiat’s work. All of these factors in 1984, culminated to the now infamous New York Times Magazine cover story, 'New Art, New Money' the following year.

Three Pontificators is a quintessential work, revealing a thematically rich use of symbolism, motifs and colour. Text as a signifying motif of the artist began before the canvases and the gallery walls. Basquiat’s early artistic endeavors began as a teenage graffiti artist working under the pseudonym SAMO© alongside Al Diaz. Covering the exterior walls of SoHo and East Village buildings with wit, poeticism and an air of mystery, SAMO© became recognized and notorious in its own right. Like all of Basquiat’s signature motifs, text as an emblematic tool continued through to his last canvases. Extending the theme of isolation and the self, the visual symbols are further characteristic features of Basquiat’s oeuvre, working symbiotically alongside text-based motifs. Dominating the left half of the canvas are symbols derived from The Symbol Sourcebook by Henry Dreyfuss, which was yet another rich resource for much of Basquiat’s iconography. As an example, the stark white square– the international symbol for a closed enclosure – is painted over a rich ultramarine blue, formally balancing the more figurative right side of the canvas, ideologically reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s neoplasticism, finding balance and cohesion within a composition in a square canvas. The formal characteristics of the canvas itself and the motifs inside are, therefore, self-reflexive notions of space. Recalling Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X of 1953, Three Pontificators displays similar themes of isolation and anxiety, as well as evoking the religious subject matter of the former.

In the present lot, Basquiat has achieved his desired economical use of text, opting for highly syntactic use of polysemy. The sole text in the work is the word “EYE”, written in white oilstick within an almond shape in the space that displaces where figurative eyes should be. While the literal translation is evident, the singularity of the word, rather than the plural reveals the polysemic symbolism of “I”. Basquiat’s continual fixation with isolating parts of the human body is derived from the medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy, which became a crucial and consistent visual sourcebook throughout Basquiat’s career. This specific “EYE” motif is, for the most part, unique to 1984, as Basquiat used it repeatedly and almost to obsession within this year. In other work, the same symbol is often isolated and non-descript; however, in Three Pontificators, the motif in its singularity and placement, readily translates into the Biblical idiom: “An Eye for an Eye”.

The title and figures of the present lot further testify to religious paradigms, specifically alluding to a dispute in 1378 that resulted in there eventually being three men who all claimed to be Pope. The papal conflict was not resolved until 1417. Until then, all three Popes claimed to be the only legitimate leaders of the Catholic Church with their followers. This event seems to have visually been translated into Three Pontifcators, where the central Pope in a long white gown is flanked by two skulls in ruby red and hunter green. The bogus Popes are topped with stylized triangles, representing bishop’s miters. With their faces flawed and morbidly demonized as well as a gestural X crossing out the two triangles, it can be assumed that these two figures represent the bogus pontifs; the rightful individual however is attributed with the divine symbol of the “EYE”.

Though Basquiat is likened to artists such as Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Dubufet and Cy Twombly as influences, he concedes that, 'I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.' (J.M. Basquiat as quoted in C. McGuigan, 'New Art, New Money'New York Times, 10 February 1985, Online). It is this organic freedom, unsuppressed creativity and irrefutable genius that make Basquiat continually revered.