Exemplifying Jean-Michel Basquiat’s obsession with anatomical imagery on a monumental scale, Back of the Neck is one of several editioned silkscreens that the artist created in his lifetime. At the centre of the composition, a hand-painted gold crown hovers over a deconstructed torso. To the left, the titular words ‘back of the neck’ are inscribed in chalk-white over the surface’s dominating black ground, devised in Basquiat’s signature all-cap writing. The inclusion of this expression evidently refers to human anatomy; but also, as the foremost Leonardo da Vinci scholar Carlo Pedretti notes, to ‘the seat of the soul’.ⁱ Testament to its importance within Basquiat’s oeuvre, another example of Back of the Neck is held in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and another was included in the recent landmark exhibition Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story, which took place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2019. 

 

It was in 1968, at the age of seven years old, that Basquiat first came in contact with the medical world. The young Basquiat was playing softball on his street in Brooklyn when he was hit by a car, resulting in a broken arm and various internal injuries. During his recuperation time in the hospital, his mother gave him a copy of the medical text Gray’s Anatomy, which he pored over and memorised. Filled with detailed anatomical drawings and diagrams, the book had a profound influence on the burgeoning artist who, throughout his oeuvre and particularly in his drawings and prints, has compulsively detailed fragments of the human body. His fascination with the anatomical realm was crystallised most compellingly in his first experimentation with printmaking, embodied by his two series Anatomy, 1982 and Untitled (from Leonardo), 1983. However, it is only in the present work, Back of the Neck, that Basquiat combined disparate limbs to create a complete image – one that would move beyond the isolated illustrations of medical textbooks. 

 

A masterpiece hailing from Basquiat’s printmaking practice, Back of the Neck not only incorporates the artist’s sourcebook of signs – the writing, the anatomical sketches, the copyright symbol, the three-pointed crown – but furthermore boasts a fraught and taut energy that recalls the overarching sense of violence that invaded the air of New York City and the United States in the early to mid-1980s. Conceived the same year that the twenty-five-year-old black graffiti artist Michael Stewart was arrested and beaten to death while in New York police custody, Back of the Neck addresses the politics of violence surrounding the black body: the contortions, assaults and defacement it too often undergoes. Basquiat was obsessed ‘with the black male body’s history as property, pulverized meat and popular entertainment’, wrote Greg Tate. As a black artist, he was moreover acutely aware of ‘performing the splitting, doubling, and stitching-up procedures which lie behind a production of identity’.ⁱⁱ In Back of the Neck, the body is portrayed as inherently vulnerable -- its skeletal, brittle spine flanked by two dismembered arms; one almost entirely clad in flesh, the other flayed to muscle and sinew. The subject of the work appears to have been torn asunder, his body parts scattered across the paper. And yet, the figure remains crowned, like a fallen king or a martyr.

 

A Critical Moment

 

Executed in 1982, Back of the Neck furthermore cemented a moment of increased critical and commercial fame for Basquiat. In March 1982, the artist was bestowed his first one-artist exhibition in the United States at the Annina Nosei Gallery, which spurred unanimous and near-unprecedented acclaim. A month later, the artist travelled to Los Angeles for another solo show, this time held at Larry Gagosian Gallery, and arranged in conjunction with Annina Nosei. Following these two seminal solo presentations, Basquiat mustered a succession of accomplishments that, among others, spanned his exclusive European representation by Bruno Bischofberger, and his inclusion, at age twenty-one, in the international exhibition Documenta 7 in Kassel, West Germany, where he was the youngest of 176 artists invited to participate. In 1983, Gagosian introduced Basquiat to Fred Hoffman, an art dealer and admirer of Basquiat's work. Basquiat, with Hoffman's help, produced five editions of prints published by New City Editions in Venice, California, which comprised three untitled sets along with Back of the Neck and the 8-foot-tall Tuxedo. ‘I was taken aback by the unique vision and conviction of this young man of just 21’, mused Fred Hoffman as he reflected on their first encounter to discuss editioned silkscreens.ⁱⁱⁱ 

 

  Within this scintillating context, Back of the Neck distinguishes itself as perhaps one of the artist’s most iconic creations. It boasts a complete, excruciating image that, in extremely simple terms, synthesises suffering. With its vivid contorsions and distinct corporeal elements, the composition namely recalls the artist’s Gold Griot, executed a year later, which shows a figure whose bodily components are rendered visible in Basquiat’s signature x-ray vision, similarly twisted and bent in unusual positions. In Back of the Neck, Basquiat’s exacting vision is made evident by the control of subject matter, space, and the relation between both. The image exemplifies what the art historian Olivier Berggruen has described as powerful and assertive vulnerability: ‘an aesthetic of the body as damaged, scarred, fragmented, incomplete, or torn apart, once the organic whole has disappeared. Paradoxically, it is the very act of creating these representations that conjures a positive corporeal valence between the artist and his sense of self or identity’.^iv                                       

 

Back of the Neck in Context

 

Take a virtual tour of Basquiat’s 'Defacement': The Untold Story, where another example of Back of the Neck was prominently displayed.

 

 

Sold To Benefit the Bedari Foundation

 

The Bedari Foundation works with partners to catalyze research, education and cutting-edge solutions to global challenges in mental health, environmental conservation and energy transition. We’re devoted to fostering a world where we minimize harm and maximize nurture for humans and the environment, and strive to empower people to have healthy, harmonious relationships with themselves, others and the planet.

But right now, things are moving in the wrong direction.  The world is out of balance, and both people and the planet are suffering.  More stress and mental health problems, more disconnection and conflict, more planetary damage driven by unfettered consumption. We’re operating in a deficit of care – for ourselves and the earth. But this is where our work begins.

We’re partnering with individuals and organizations who are coming up with big ideas to combat these challenges, including developing solutions that break cycles of personal and ecological harm. Our approach across mental health and wellness, environmental conservation and the energy transition is anchored in the tentpoles of respect, interdependency, balance and resiliency:

•    We need to foster better whole health by elevating mental, emotional and spiritual wellness and care onto the same plane as physical health
 
•    We need to reduce human threats to and develop a much more purposeful and strategic coexistence with habitats and species to preserve and protect biodiversity
 
•    We must better balance our energy needs with preservation of the environment by pragmatically moving towards low carbon energy solutions and continuing to pursue sector innovation and invention

 

By coupling first-class research, skilled partners and game-changing ideas, we’re ready to take big swings at these issues and make real change happen.
 
Karingani:  The Bedari Foundation is one of the founders of Karingani, a partnership between conservationists, investors, philanthropists, government and local communities to rehabilitate and preserve one of Africa’s last remaining wilderness areas.  Karingani is dedicated to restoring and revitalizing the biodiversity of 150,000 hectares in Mozambique which holds strategic conservation importance reflected in both its location and the range of habitats it protects. Karingani’s footprint, which encompasses rivers, wetlands, woodlands and open savannah, sits at the crossroads of crucial trans-frontier conservation land, sharing a boundary with the world-famous Kruger National Park. This integrated area of conservation management facilitates wildlife movement between South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe giving Karingani and its partner communities a vital role to play in ensuring the ecological viability of the entire region. Karingani’s strategy for success is three-fold – pursuing comprehensive environmental restoration, conservation-informed ecotourism, and skills development, jobs creation and economic growth for our local communities.  Our unique model is fueled by multi-sector partnership at scale and working with government, NGOs, academia and private investors to unite our efforts around regional environmental and community vitality and restore one of the most important wildlife habitats in Africa.
 
UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute:  Established in 2019 with a $20 million gift from The Bedari Foundation, The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute is a new interdisciplinary organization dedicated to the research, education, and practice of kindness, with the goal of empowering citizens and leaders to invest in building more humane societies. The mission of The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute is unique in that our goal is two-fold – we’re committed not only to engage in best-in-class research on kindness, but to strategically turn that learning into real-world practices through education and dynamic local, national and global partnerships. Said more simply, we don’t just want people to learn about kindness, we want people to DO kindness. The interdisciplinary research of the Institute will be accessed through deep engagement across UCLA and with strategic outside partners committed to advancing the understanding and practice of kindness globally.

 

ⁱ Carlo Pedretti, ‘Conversation with Annina Nosei’, 2003, quoted in Fred Hoffman, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2017, reproduced online.
ⁱⁱ Greg Tate, ‘Nobody Loves a Genius Child’, Village Voice, 14 November 1989, reproduced online.
ⁱⁱⁱ Fred Hoffman, quoted in ‘Basquiat’s L.A’, Los Angeles Times, 13 March 2005, online.
^iv Olivier Berggruen,  ‘Some Notes on Jean-Michel Basquiat's Silk-Screen Prints’, The Writing of Art, London, 2011, p. 127.