Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Acquired by the present owner from the artist by descent

New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Collaborations, September 1985
Brookyln, Brooklyn Museum; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art ; Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Basquiat, March 2005 - February 2006, p. 126, illustrated in color

John O'Connor and Benjamin Liu, Unseen Warhol, New York, 1996, p. 183, illustrated (detail shown in photograph of the artists with Francesco Clemente)
Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 1996, 1st ed., vol. II, fig. 36, p. 138, illustrated (installation at the 1985 Tony Shafrazi Gallery exhibition) 
Tony Shafrazi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1999, p. 332, illustrated (installation at the 1985 Tony Shafrazi Gallery exhibition)

This work is in excellent condtion. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is not framed.
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When world renowned, Zurich-based gallerist Bruno Bischofberger suggested a collaboration between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, he couldn't have known to what degree the partnership would mutually enhance both artists' careers. Bischofberger's idea for a collaboration (which would later also include Francesco Clemente and Keith Haring) was based in both memories of grade school assignments, in which each student was responsible for a part of the class mural, and in the Surrealist tradition of the "exquisite corpse," a composition by artists who drew spontaneous images without showing them to each other until a sort of constituent hybrid was born.

Though the teenage Basquiat had pursued Warhol and had already been to the Factory several times by 1980, Warhol initially remained aloof, at first perceiving Basquiat as a naïf of yet to be determined talent. But soon enough, Warhol's respect for Basquiat solidified, and their friendship burgeoned. Untitled, a collaboration from 1984, is a prime example of their symbiotic authority. Each used the materials for which they were best known – silkscreen ink for Warhol, paintstick for Basquiat. Both artists, though so strikingly different, were outsiders to a degree – Warhol a wounded celebrity who preferred to affect the pose of an enigmatic voyeur and Basquiat a young African-American wünderkind with growing reputation but no formal art training. Both looked to popular culture for imagery – Warhol to advertising, newspapers and Hollywood stars; Basquiat to jazz musicians and professional athletes. Though the raw mental material was similar, their artistic styles couldn't have been more different. The tension between shared content and polarized style made for a dynamic rapport, both on and off the canvas. Keith Haring was quick to note the profound harmony between Basquiat and Warhol: "A successful collaboration is always the result of a successful relationship... I'm not sure if [it] was a deliberate, planned strategy or if it simply `happened' ... [t]he collaborations were seemingly effortless. It was a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words. The sense of humor, the snide remarks, the profound realizations, the simple chitchat all happened with paint and brushes." (Keith Haring, "Painting the Third Man'', a 1988 text reprinted in Exh. Cat., Milwaukee Art Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade, 2009, p. 205)

The combination of Warhol's mechanically reproducible, flat images obviously appropriated from mass media and Basquiat's hand-painted physicality and purposeful primitivism served both artists well, warming and cooling, respectively. As Trevor Fairbrother wrote in 1996, "Warhol's most recognizable contributions to the collaborations are flat graphic motifs from advertisements and newspaper headlines. He often painted them big enough to be oppressive, but his loose, consciously imperfect technique gave them a worn-out, almost bogus aura... In contrast, Basquiat's contributions are frenetic and forceful; often they seem to glower at the viewer. While he mimicked the rawness of pictures by children and naives, Basquiat made his marks with eloquence and assurance, and endowed them with a fierce presence." (Trevor Fairbrother, "Double Feature,"Art in America, September 1996, p.  81).

The large dimensions of Untitled – 116 x 165 ¼ inches – not only provided the ample canvas space necessary for both artists to work, but the great size exemplifies their larger-than-life personas. As was typical in the Collaborations, Warhol was the first to lay down his images – here, baseball mitts, tennis rackets, sneakers, numbers, and the Zenith electronics logo. Then, once the graphics were blocked, Basquiat filled in other parts of the canvas with his signature swathes of color, childlike scrawl, and totemic heads bearing toothsome grins and spiky hair. The power of Untitled is derived from a synthesis so complete that the result almost appears to be painted by a third party. The chaos of the composition expresses both the manic excitement of youth and the cumulative experience of age. "½" looms large on the canvas, iterated three times in different sizes. Reading the fraction as merely a literal expression of the Warhol/Basquiat splitting of the canvas would be incorrect though, for the painting is nothing if not shared, nothing if not one. A rare union of artists from different generations, Untitled evinces a creative tension in the best sense, a fully activated composition that is close in kinship with Basquiat's desire for the viewer to delve through layers of symbolism and meaning.

Though teaming up with the legendary Warhol was certainly a coup for the twenty-three year old Basquiat, the reciprocity of the collaboration should not be underestimated. Basquiat's powerful imagery, poetic symbolism, and youthful frenzy reinvigorated Warhol, whose career had been relatively quiescent for the previous decade. Both in terms of artistic spirit and commercial career, the collaboration could not have come at a better time for either: "Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy's fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel's new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again." (Ronny Cutrone quoted in Victor Bockris, Warhol: The Biography, Cambridge, 2003, p. 461-2). They were two of the twentieth century's premier self-mythologizers. Warhol was an, if not the, emblem of the 1960s. Basquiat synthesized hardscrabble grittiness and glamorous bravura, the two token qualities of the 1980s. Again, Keith Haring was especially attuned to the politics of the collaboration, explaining that "Jean brought back a much-needed touch of mischief that had been disappearing from the Factory agenda. But, he also brought an atmosphere of obsessive production that left its mark long after the collaborations had stopped." (Milwaukee, p. 205)