Jean-Michel Basquiat

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

As an eight year old boy, Jean-Michel Basquiat was hit by a car whilst playing ball in the street with his friends. He broke an arm, suffered various internal injuries and had to have his spleen removed. Hospitalised and bed ridden for a month, to help her son better understand the recovery process his body was undergoing, his Puerto Rican mother, Matilde Andrades, gave him a copy of Gray's 'Anatomy' - a book treasured by medical students for its exquisitely detailed drawings. The book made a lasting impression on the young boy, who was himself a keen draughtsman, and it instilled in him a fascination with analysis, anatomy and death that was to remain with him throughout his mature career.

Although self-taught, Basquiat had a keen visual awareness that enabled him to draw upon many diverse influences simultaneously. Ranging from urban graffiti and Renaissance drawings to African Tribal art and contemporary advertising slogans, countless styles and forms find spontaneous juxtaposition in his work through an intuitive compositional process of creation and destruction.

Rich in colour, reference and imagery, Untitled unites Basquiat's three main themes - the body, death and racism - within a single anatomical figure. The style is loose and expressive with thick scar-like bands of crimson leaving bloodlike drips down the canvas in a manner which points to the Abstract Expressionism of De Kooning and the Action painting of Jackson Pollock. Unlike the precise scientific language of Gray's surgical illustrations, Basquiat's stark arterial line that charts its jagged course around the figure owes more to primitive Art Brut drawings than it does to the illustrations in 'Anatomy'.  The figure's exposed teeth and hollow eyes enhance these African tribal-mask associations further, whilst also alluding to the institutional racism Basquiat perceived within modern American society.