Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Mugrabi Collection, New York
Hamiltons Gallery, London 

Tokyo, Akira Ikeda Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings,   November - December 1983, cat. no. 3
Paris, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings, April - June 1996
Coral Gables, Quintana Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1980 - 1988, December 1996 - February 1997, p. 11, illustrated in color
Vienna, Kunsthaus, Jean Michel Basquiat: Paintings and Works on Paper, February - March 1999, p. 59, illustrated in color
Kunzelsau, Museum Würth, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings and Works on Paper, September 2001 - January 2002, p. 51, illustrated in color

Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 1996, 1st ed., vol. 1, p. 63, illustrated in color and vol. 2, fig. 27, p. 132, illustrated in color (Akira Ikeda 1983 installation view)
Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 1996, 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 87, illustrated in color and vol. 2, fig. 27, p. 206, illustrated in color (Akira Ikeda 1983 installation view) and no. 12, p. 249, illustrated in color (Galerie Enrico Navarra 1996 installation view)
Toni Shafrazi et al., Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1999, p. 98, illustrated in color
Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 2000, 3rd ed., vol. 1, p. 83, illustrated in color and vol. 2, p. 100, cat. no. 4, illustrated in color, p. 289, illustrated twice in color (Akira Ikeda 1983 and Galerie Enrico Navarra 1996 installation views)

Warrior is a dazzling work painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982, the year in which he reached his full artistic maturity and creative powers.  Loaded with a dense network of ideas, dazzling in both its execution as a painting and as a vehicle for the many tributaries of thought that inform Basquiat’s process, Warrior stands out as one of the most energetic of the artist’s early works; a bravura piece of painting that leaves the viewer spellbound.

Overwhelming the entire picture plane, the raw, violent figure stands poised for battle. With his sword raised ready to strike in one hand and a second weapon held in his other, the horned warrior stares with red penetrating eyes out towards the viewer.  The fierce gladiator is crudely delineated: stick-like arms, flattened mask-like face, a flurry of green atop his head.  The figure’s right-hand side is fleshed out while his left-hand side is left as a skeleton.  The half-dead half-alive Warrior seems to be a conflation of the totemic icons of heros and demons to which Basquiat so often returned.  The glistening metallic sword held in the more human-like hand (right) of the figure seems the sword of a saintly knight; the sinister, ill-defined weapon held in the demonic hand (left) seems to spout hellfire and brings to mind images of the grim reaper.  Basquiat renders the Warrior as both a haunting figure from a dream and the hero-protector, allowing the figure to lurk in both worlds, acting as both the feared enemy and the fearless crusader.    The artist often painted himself and the present work shares many of the attributes one finds in works openly designated as self-portraits. Basquiat could be depicting himself in conflict with himself, one side of his complex character at odds with another.

The wildly fashioned background with blocks of raw yellows and blues are laid down with intense brushwork, and lattices of lines, scars, and the crown/halo feed the tableau, adding to its movement and sense of urgency.  There is no perspectival logic to the composition. Oil stick marks and swaths of paint show the implosion of form into pure energy; the figure is built up with dense, muscular strokes of white, blue and dense black oil stick. It is as if the manner of its application mirrors the content of this painting. The artist has etched the oil stick into the ground, transferring his energy into depicting the aggressive stance and personality of the Warrior. There is no calm moment within the painting – it is pure, raw, nervous energy.  With his arms extended, saber drawn, poised and ready to attack, Basquiat’s combatant seems ready to pounce at any second.

A prolific draftsman, Basquiat’s studio was littered with his sketches and notebooks.  Seemingly trying to exorcise the demons within, Basquiat made countless explosively expressive drawings of warrior-figures.  These drawings, particularly the exquisitely gestural notebook sketch from circa 1981, were used and reused as constant reference points.  The raw spontaneity captured in these drawings was a visual resource for Basquiat’s works on canvas.  Basquiat’s freshly urban and totally unique brand of intellectualized ‘primitivism’ was informed by a full spectrum of art historical and cultural sources: Leonardo da Vinci, graffiti art (both modern and ancient), Cy Twombly, Dubuffet, Picasso, the religious and cultural influences from his Haitian/Puerto Rican family and the gritty urban environment of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.  Basquiat was a self-taught artist who used his vast visual and cultural knowledge to create a fresh and entirely unique iconography.

The present work is a truly outstanding example of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s terse aesthetic, throbbing with a network of impulses that informs his extraordinary means and forms of expression. Warrior neatly encapsulates his primary concern with the human figure as well as revealing a direct engagement with his autobiographical struggle to fulfill both desire and need. It also shows Basquiat’s interest in, and how he weaves together, art-historical precedents. A confluence of interests abounds in the work, powerfully exemplifying the complex nature of his technical, conceptual and polemical energies. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and art typify the extremes of the 1980’s in New York. Stratospherically catapulted into the art journals and the society pages, he was heralded as one of the most important artistic discoveries of the late Twentieth Century. Like a breath of fresh air, Basquiat’s art broke rank with, usurped and, ultimately, became the canon, and was subsequently devoured by critics, dealer and collectors alike. His legacy continues to this very day: the potent exuberance of Warrior as challenging today as it was in 1982.