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Lot Essay
Painted in early 1985 Untitled is a large and important three-panel painting integrally related to the precise moment when Basquiat's brief but spectacular career seemed to reach its absolute pinnacle. Merging abstract splashes of paint with the schematically rendered figurative personae of Basquiat's unique and highly personal pantheon of mythic heroes and villains, the painting is a striking example of his powerful and idiosyncratic art. In triptych format and over three wooden panels Untitled outlines a jungle landscape complete with an assortment of dangerous and threatening predatory creatures. Merging a child-like illustrative style with gritty urban street art and a deeply personal sense of nightmarish expressionist vision, the painting describes a colourful and bizarre world of magic and myth. Ambiguous in its imagery the painting reflects, like so many of Basquiat's works, the artist's uncertainty and fear in navigating the lonely road of fame, success and celebrity that, in the moneyed frenzy of the 1980s New York art scene, he both sought and, at the same time, was trying to escape from.
Indeed, because so much about Basquiat's art is so closely interrelated with the dramatic story of his short, glorious, but also troubled life and the crude, brash and vulgar times in which he lived, the main importance of this painting is also rooted in the artist's legend. For anyone who either witnessed or who has followed the dramatic rise and fall of what Times magazine art critic Robert Hughes described as the "little black Rimbaud" of the 1980s art world, Untitled will forever be associated with the iconic image of Basquiat that appeared in February 1985 on the cover of the New York Times magazine.
Marking the very apex of the artist's astonishing rise to fame, Basquiat's appearance on the cover of this prestigious and widely respected magazine was a major coup for both the artist and his then dealer Mary Boone. As well as symbolising Basquiat's pre-eminence amongst the artists of his generation, it also crystallized his iconic status. Here was the first black artist to break through into the mainstream showing himself as a true star. Basquiat was well aware of the precedent that this opportunity set and had consciously dressed accordingly for the photograph. Seated nonchalantly in his Great Jones Street studio during a pause in the creation of this Untitled triptych, Basquiat insisted, to the horror of Mary Boone, on sporting a paint-splattered Armani suit and no shoes. Not only was a this a deliberate staging of his own self-image as art-world wunderkind - a kind of creative and racial counterbalance to the corporate whizz-kids of Wall St - but it was also a deliberate snub to the white establishment and all the would be parasites of the art world.
Fearful of being manipulated by the many forces and moneyed powers that surrounded him after three years of unprecedented financial success and critical acclaim - Basquiat was using the cover of the New York Times as a means of projecting himself as a savvy navigator of the contemporary art scene. Barefoot, dressed in chic corporate clothing and holding the tools of his craft, Basquiat has constructed a hip image of himself as the first of a new breed of market-aware artists. In reality, however, as his slightly suspicious and fearful eyes in this photograph betray, Basquiat felt as much a victim as a master of his situation. "I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot" he complains to Cathleen McGuigan in the article inside the magazine entitled "New Art New Money: the Marketing of an American artist". Basquiat was well aware that many of the supposedly benevolent forces around him were both manipulative and parasitic. It was an all-too apparent feature of his life which McGuigan's article quickly hones in on implying that both his art and his success was as much a sign of the times as it was reflective of his undeniable talent. Basquiat's " color-drenched canvases", McGuigan writes, "are peopled with primitive figures wearing menacing masklike faces, painted against fields jammed with arrows, grids, crowns, skyscrapers, rockets and words...The extent of Basquiat's success would no doubt be impossible for an artist of lesser gifts. Not only does he possess a bold sense of color and contemporaries, he maintains a fine balance between seemingly contradictory forces: control and spontaneity, menace and wit, urban imagery and primitivism. Still, the nature and rapidity of his climb is unimaginable in another era." (Cathleen McGuigan, New York Times Magazine, 10th February 85: 'New Art, New Money, the Marketing of an American Artist').
A major work of 1985 Untitled is executed on the relatively new wooden fence-like supports that Basquiat had begun to use the previous year. Against a silver background Basquiat depicts three clearly distinct figures. On the right hand panel a dark, ominously grinning black figure with long rows of white teeth and, as so often in Basquiat's work, a transparent chest displaying his inner anatomy, is here reduced to the simplest path for the transition of food through the body: an oesophagus, intestines and anus. Basquiat's interest in anatomy is well-known and anatomical studies of body parts copied from Gray's Anatomy make their appearance in many of his paintings. The visual breakdown of the human being into a compendium of its separate bodily organs is a common pictorial device in his art that reflects and conveys a profound sense of distance bordering on alienation towards other people. The reduction here, of this dark figure - one who makes his appearance in several paintings of this period - to a mere mechanism for eating and digesting is a particular powerful expression of this. The central panel is dominated by a fragile brown-faced and ghost-like figure wearing a wide brimmed hat and poncho riding a donkey. Above him spans the body of a Douanier Rousseau or early David Hockney-like leopard or jaguar whose body extends into a partially rendered and ferocious-looking head in the otherwise more-or-less empty left hand panel. This powerful and fearsome creature dominates the painting conveying the sense of an exotic jungle filled with predatory danger. Luxuriating in a sumptuous blend of colour and sweeping gestural brushwork, Basquiat here eloquently mixes both abstraction and figuration, raw unconscious expressionism and sharply observed detail to create a vision of a wild and exciting jungle. Slapped, splashed, daubed and drawn on its billboard-like fence support, the jumble of imagery combines to convey a deep and persuasive sense of life as a joyous and exciting world tinged with violence and ever-present danger.
Indeed, because so much about Basquiat's art is so closely interrelated with the dramatic story of his short, glorious, but also troubled life and the crude, brash and vulgar times in which he lived, the main importance of this painting is also rooted in the artist's legend. For anyone who either witnessed or who has followed the dramatic rise and fall of what Times magazine art critic Robert Hughes described as the "little black Rimbaud" of the 1980s art world, Untitled will forever be associated with the iconic image of Basquiat that appeared in February 1985 on the cover of the New York Times magazine.
Marking the very apex of the artist's astonishing rise to fame, Basquiat's appearance on the cover of this prestigious and widely respected magazine was a major coup for both the artist and his then dealer Mary Boone. As well as symbolising Basquiat's pre-eminence amongst the artists of his generation, it also crystallized his iconic status. Here was the first black artist to break through into the mainstream showing himself as a true star. Basquiat was well aware of the precedent that this opportunity set and had consciously dressed accordingly for the photograph. Seated nonchalantly in his Great Jones Street studio during a pause in the creation of this Untitled triptych, Basquiat insisted, to the horror of Mary Boone, on sporting a paint-splattered Armani suit and no shoes. Not only was a this a deliberate staging of his own self-image as art-world wunderkind - a kind of creative and racial counterbalance to the corporate whizz-kids of Wall St - but it was also a deliberate snub to the white establishment and all the would be parasites of the art world.
Fearful of being manipulated by the many forces and moneyed powers that surrounded him after three years of unprecedented financial success and critical acclaim - Basquiat was using the cover of the New York Times as a means of projecting himself as a savvy navigator of the contemporary art scene. Barefoot, dressed in chic corporate clothing and holding the tools of his craft, Basquiat has constructed a hip image of himself as the first of a new breed of market-aware artists. In reality, however, as his slightly suspicious and fearful eyes in this photograph betray, Basquiat felt as much a victim as a master of his situation. "I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot" he complains to Cathleen McGuigan in the article inside the magazine entitled "New Art New Money: the Marketing of an American artist". Basquiat was well aware that many of the supposedly benevolent forces around him were both manipulative and parasitic. It was an all-too apparent feature of his life which McGuigan's article quickly hones in on implying that both his art and his success was as much a sign of the times as it was reflective of his undeniable talent. Basquiat's " color-drenched canvases", McGuigan writes, "are peopled with primitive figures wearing menacing masklike faces, painted against fields jammed with arrows, grids, crowns, skyscrapers, rockets and words...The extent of Basquiat's success would no doubt be impossible for an artist of lesser gifts. Not only does he possess a bold sense of color and contemporaries, he maintains a fine balance between seemingly contradictory forces: control and spontaneity, menace and wit, urban imagery and primitivism. Still, the nature and rapidity of his climb is unimaginable in another era." (Cathleen McGuigan, New York Times Magazine, 10th February 85: 'New Art, New Money, the Marketing of an American Artist').
A major work of 1985 Untitled is executed on the relatively new wooden fence-like supports that Basquiat had begun to use the previous year. Against a silver background Basquiat depicts three clearly distinct figures. On the right hand panel a dark, ominously grinning black figure with long rows of white teeth and, as so often in Basquiat's work, a transparent chest displaying his inner anatomy, is here reduced to the simplest path for the transition of food through the body: an oesophagus, intestines and anus. Basquiat's interest in anatomy is well-known and anatomical studies of body parts copied from Gray's Anatomy make their appearance in many of his paintings. The visual breakdown of the human being into a compendium of its separate bodily organs is a common pictorial device in his art that reflects and conveys a profound sense of distance bordering on alienation towards other people. The reduction here, of this dark figure - one who makes his appearance in several paintings of this period - to a mere mechanism for eating and digesting is a particular powerful expression of this. The central panel is dominated by a fragile brown-faced and ghost-like figure wearing a wide brimmed hat and poncho riding a donkey. Above him spans the body of a Douanier Rousseau or early David Hockney-like leopard or jaguar whose body extends into a partially rendered and ferocious-looking head in the otherwise more-or-less empty left hand panel. This powerful and fearsome creature dominates the painting conveying the sense of an exotic jungle filled with predatory danger. Luxuriating in a sumptuous blend of colour and sweeping gestural brushwork, Basquiat here eloquently mixes both abstraction and figuration, raw unconscious expressionism and sharply observed detail to create a vision of a wild and exciting jungle. Slapped, splashed, daubed and drawn on its billboard-like fence support, the jumble of imagery combines to convey a deep and persuasive sense of life as a joyous and exciting world tinged with violence and ever-present danger.