J ean-Michel Basquiat’s Zenith from 1982, a pivotal year for the artist, embodies the artist’s intensely explored and instinctive ability as a draughtsman. For Basquiat, drawing was the most immediate form of expression and the quickest artistic method in which he could translate his inner thoughts. ‘Zenith’ is defined as “the time at which something is most powerful or successful” and also “the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer.” Famously ironic and pointed in his work, it is no coincidence that the present drawing is titled Zenith as Basquiat confidently reflects on his skyrocketing career and his place among the most groundbreaking artists of the 20th century. From the streets of downtown New York City to his drawing pad, the young artist was known for his unique blend of conceptual and visual that merged a diverse linguistic arsenal of words with enigmatic symbols and icons that have remained as a snapshot into the artist’s fascinatingly brilliant mind.
Throughout his short life, Basquiat drew almost constantly, creating a vast number of works on paper that informed themes explored in many of his larger paintings and can be traced throughout his works across mediums. The power of language played a fundamental role in Basquiat’s compositions whether they be in word form or symbols such as Henry Dreyfuss’s Symbols Sourcebook, especially the “hobo signs” used by traveling vagabonds to denote areas as safe or treacherous along the road. Basquiat stands apart for his ability to successfully blend language and image into an innovative visual lexicon, uniquely his own, which reinvigorated and elevated the status of drawing.
“Basquiat’s work, like that of most of his peers, was based on appropriation…the images he appropriated whether they were from the Bible or a chemistry textbook…became part of his original vocabulary."
Typical of Basquiat’s works on paper, Zenith is anchored by diagram-like mark making depicting a three-dimensional celestial sphere accompanied by shorthand text that is rich in scientific iconography. This build up of talismanic imagery flows throughout Basquiat’s brief yet powerful oeuvre. Basquiat’s graphic forms invoke a sort of proto-handwriting: a primitive kind of expression that strives towards resolution and legibility but is suspended in a perpetual territory of formal symbolism, akin to our contemporary reading of pre-historic mark-making. Phoebe Hoban captures this notion saying that, “Basquiat’s work, like that of most of his peers, was based on appropriation…the images he appropriated whether they were from the Bible or a chemistry textbook…became part of his original vocabulary. Basquiat combined and recombined these idiosyncratic symbols throughout his career: the recursive references to anatomy, black culture, television and history are his personal hieroglyphics” (Phoebe Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, New York 1998, p. 332).
The indomitable force of Basquiat’s creative insurgency sent shockwaves through downtown Manhattan in the early 1980s. The very year Zenith was executed, Annina Nosei presented the artist’s first solo exhibition at her New York gallery; the same year, Larry Gagosian showed his work in Los Angeles and Bruno Bischofberger shared his work with the Zurich art scene. The 1980s were Basquiat’s ‘zenith’ and he knew it. Zenith captures the artist’s place as a dominant force in the 1980s art world and provides an extraordinary window into the all-too-brief-life and mind of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
