Lot 455
  • 455

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Estimate
700,000 - 900,000 USD
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Description

  • Jean-Michel Basquiat
  • Untitled
  • signed on the reverse
  • acrylic and oilstick on paper mounted on fiberglass
  • 46 1/2 by 45 1/4 in. 118 by 115 cm.
  • Executed in 1981 this work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the authentication committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Provenance

Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris
Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
Private Collection, New York

Exhibited

Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings and Drawings 1980 - 1988, February - March 1998, no. 7, illustrated

Literature

Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2nd Edition, Vol. I, Paris, 1996, p. 37, illustrated in color
Enrico Navarra et. al., Jean-Michel Basquiat, 3rd Edition, Vol. 2, Paris, 2000, p. 90, no. 7, illustrated in color

Condition

This work is in very good overall condition. The edges of the sheet are unevenly cut, inherent to the artist's working method and as shown in the catalogue illustration. There is a horizontal crease across the sheet located approximately 9 inches from the bottom which is presumably also inherent to the medium. All apparent evidence of handling and wear, surface accretions, creases and marks are presumably inherent to the medium and/or working method of the artist. There are scattered small tears around the edges of the sheet, the most noticeable of which is a repaired 4 inch tear at the top, approximately 5 ½ inches from the right edge. This work has not been examined out of frame. Framed under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

In the early 1980s Jean-Michel Basquiat was heralded as one of the most important artistic discoveries of the Twentieth Century. Stratospherically catapulted into the art journals and the society pages, 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 and the gritty urban environment of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. 

By the mid-1980's, Basquiat was working in layers: covering, adding, and superimposing elements on the canvas, creating a tapestry of eclectic imagery which jostles for prominence amid the monochromatic fields of paint, threatening to totally subsume the canvas. Richard Marshall notes, "Basquiat was attempting to achieve a rough and casual appearance in defiance to the pristine, expensive canvases and stretchers that many of his colleagues were using at the time." ("Jean-Michel Basquiat: Speaking in Tongues" in Exh. Cat., Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2005, p. 56). His stylistically mature works were loaded with a dense network of ideas, dazzling both as an artistic execution and as a vehicle for the many tributaries of thought that inform Basquiat's process. A prolific draftsman, his studio was littered with sketches and notebooks, full of the early iterations of the scribbled iconography that would later find its way onto his canvases.

Untitled, 1980-81, is one of the artist's most compositionally sound expressions of inner turmoil. An important example of Basquiat's self-portraiture, includes the two basic elements the define his oeuvre: a central figure within a plane of invented symbolism. Here, a scrawled chair, an open boxed labeled with a cryptic "s," and a baseball, drawn in a childish hand, float like barely-remembered motifs from a dream. Seemingly trying to exorcise demons within, Basquiat's gestures are endlessly frantic; his oil stick marks and swathes of paint show the implosion of form into pure energy. The figure is built up with bravura of dense, muscular strokes of muddy green paint 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 a violent, tortured posed: the figure's head is bowed and shielded, as if in anguish, with a signature skeleton hand. Basquiat here has harnessed his energy and channeled it into this heartbreaking pose.