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Artist or Maker: Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

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Provenance: Stephane Janssen Collection, Paradise Valley
Galerie Bernard Cats, Brussels
Acquired formt he above by the present owner, 1990

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Exhibited: Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings , 1982.

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM A BELGIAN COLLECTION

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Conceived in the seminal year of Basquiat's career, Untitled (Black Figure) , 1982 brims with the artist's unique brand of gestural bravura that simultaneously evokes the street as well as the grand Post-War lineage of American art. Transitioning from the streets into the realm of fine art, this densely worked painting smartly welds the graffiti-scrawled edifices of Basquiat's previous incarnation as SAMO with the venerated painterliness of Abstract Expressionism. It is an epic and powerful demonstration of Basquiat's precocious talents, combining seething socio-political observations with personal experiences in a visceral swirl of his characteristic mixed-media application. Created when the artist was just twenty-two years old, Untitled speaks to his bold and ferocious entry into the canon.

Taking his cue from the urban jungle that formed him as an artist, Basquiat imbued works such as Untitled with numerous references to the street. Juxtaposing non-sequitur symbols and multi-hued swaths, he evoked the graffiti-scrawled edifices of the streets while alluding -- on a metaphorical level -- to the competing pressures of modern life. The left half of Untitled especially resonates with the graffiti-covered, over-plastered and painted-over dilapidations of the inner city, while its overall whitewash materializes the African American everyman's attempt to survive an overwhelmingly white world. Seen to monumental evidence on the right half of the present work, but depicted as a spectral vision akin to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man", this "spook"-like figure captures the entrenched marginalization of the divided and racist social fabric of New York in the early eighties. Indeed, Basquiat was extremely vulnerable to the bigotry he faced on a daily basis and exorcised such contemporary social injustices through his work -- often distilled through the human form. Standing as much for an anonymous black man as an alter ego, this motif became a totem for the projection of his anxieties and rage.

Equally, the human form that is depicted in his oeuvre constituted a peg for Basquiat's hopes and dreams. Surrounded by the vibrant energy of orange and yellow paint, the figure in Untitled forms the focus of the present work, singled out by his glowing "aura." Basquiat often conferred respect and admiration to his repertoire of black figures, often drawing from his own personal pantheon of heroes that included Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Hank Aaron, Mohammed Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson, as well as, on occasion, himself. Indeed, 1982 was a pivotal year for the artist: with his first solo exhibition at Anina Nosei in New York, followed by solo exhibitions at Gagosian in Los Angeles and Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, he suddenly possessed the stardom that he had always sought. He was the anointed king of the art world and loomed larger than life in a manner akin to the present work.

However, his meteoric rise as the first black artist to make it big was fraught with tension that is evident in the present work. Patronized as the Van Gogh of the streets and simultaneously as a novelty act, he was never credited with the sophisticated understanding that he had of the annals of art. Indeed, his very portrayal of the figure in Untitled centralizes this issue; sparely articulated and "seen through" as in an X-ray, it suggests the artist's own fate as a superficially understood mascot of the art establishment. Even his deliberately crude and faux-naïve rendering of the figure, caustically reappropriating Modernism's borrowing of African art, evokes the image of a noble savage which is how he was widely regarded at the time. Without doubt, Basquiat's reign over the art world was one of unease and this strain is evoked in the divided composition of the present work. The black figure on the right stands visibly apart from the overwhelmingly white left, and there is barely even a hint of integration.

A quarter century after its creation, Basquiat's genius is clearly evident in Untitled -- the work demonstrates his unique transformation of figuration and his daring re-conception of the lineage of twentieth-century art-- towards a charged and distinctly black identity. Particularly evident in his "primitive" depiction of the figure is the essential reinvestment of African art with the identity it had lost to Modernism's pursuit of formalist reduction, especially in the hands of Pablo Picasso. Furthermore, the scratched-and-scrawled vocabulary that is interspersed among the mélange of imagery, writing and painterly gestures of Untitled consciously extends the work of both Jean Dubuffet and Cy Twombly-- albeit distilled and captured through his experience of graffiti. Finally, and perhaps most evidently, in Untitled are the layering, collaging and visceral handling that are unique and persuasive rearticulations of Abstract Expressionism by way of Willem de Kooning.

Capturing Basquiat's star through means of staggering wall power and heart-stopping beauty, Untitled captures the emotional richness and technical sophistication that Basquiat brought to his best. Synthesizing autobiography, social outcry and the immediate apprehension of gestural painterliness, it powerfully evokes a densely layered content.

24651141: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Per Capita , 1981. c 2007 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat ADGAP, Paris Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

24651509: Cy Twombly, Leda and Swan , 1961. c Cy Twombly, Rome.

24651455: Installation, Larry Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, 1982. Present lot illustrated.

24651493: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 1988. Photograph by Jerome Schlomoff.

24650441: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grand Street Studio, New York, 1987. Photo by Tseng Kwong Chi. c 1987 Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc., New York.

24650434: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grand Street Studio, New York, 1987. Photo by Tseng Kwong Chi. c 1987 Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc., New York.

24650427: From Downtown 81 , directed by Edo Bertoglio, written by Glenn O'Brien, produced by Maripol. c 1981 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York.

24650342: From Downtown 81 , directed by Edo Bertoglio, written by Glenn O'Brien, produced by Maripol. c 1981 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York.