Jean-Michel Basquiat

Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
Georg and Eva Geyer, Salzburg
Phillips de Pury & Company, London, February 28, 2008, lot 178
Private Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Paris, Musée-Galerie de la Seita, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Peinture, Dessin, Écriture, December 1993 - February 1994, cat. no. 65, p. 156, illustrated

Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 1996, 2nd ed., vol. II, cat. no. 6, p. 156, illustrated in color
Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris, 2000, 3rd ed., vol. II, cat. no. 6, p. 264, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of wear and handling to the edges and lateral sides. All surface inconsistencies to the collages areas are inherent to the work and to the artist's working method. Under ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
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.
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As a self-taught artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat cultivated his own style rooted in graffiti street art.  His work became known for its raw look and striking energy, based on inspiration from the rugged streets of New York and his own multicultural background and surroundings.  Born to Puerto Rican and Haitian parents and brought up in Brooklyn, Basquiat habitually drew on his ethnic heritage as much as his cultural legacy as an American citizen in his works. Basquiat’s canon is a unique product of cut-up fragmentation and multi-lingual pictorial synthesis often reflecting his triangular cultural inheritance. His work is seen as ambiguous and contradictory, replete with cultural significance and autobiographical meaning. 

As embodied in the painting Orange, the artist frequently manipulated color – unmixed layers painted one over the other, harkening his pointed understanding of American Abstraction.  Basquiat recasts an innovative harmony of modernist techniques imbued with the frantic pouring and dripping aesthetic of Jackson Pollock, the exuberant colors and dramatic painterly gesture of De Kooning and Franz Kline, combined with the integration of text and blackboard-like surfaces of Beuys and Twombly.  The artist’s brute force of application and layering paint and line through brush, spray can, and oil stick weaves pictorial energy as well as text into his works. In this sense, he remains simultaneously Abstractionist while consistently figurative and narrative.

Basquiat painted a whole host of orange paintings – with the color in the title as well as the pictorial backdrop (including Sotheby’s successful sale of Orange Sports Figure in February 2012). The present work remains significant as it was completed in the year Basquiat tragically died.  The warm color scheme combined with the words “NOT WAX DRY HOLE” followed by the copyright symbol follows the artist’s traditional techniques of paint application and ambiguous fragmentation.  The copyright encircled ‘c’ perhaps serves to punctuate the artist’s style and uniqueness.

In the center of the picture, the collage of images ranges from a cartoon dog, snake and antlers to a list of body parts, various phrases and shapes.  Additionally, one strip of paper lists certain Old Master works: Giorgione’s The Tempest and Titian’s Bacchanal.  Basquiat references both famous Renaissance paintings from the early 16^thcentury, including their general cataloguing information (medium, size, etc), however in both cases he manipulates the dates of these works (for Giorgione, he writes c. 1905 instead of 1508 and for Titian, he dates c. 1518 instead of 1524).  This art historical gesture perhaps relates to the copyright symbol incorporated in a few places on the canvas and the trajectory of artistic discourse. The commissioned and allegorical Old Masters are listed below an image of dueling figures, one attacking the other with what appears to be fire.  Perhaps this is representative of future artistic movements and artists (including himself) surpassing the long forgotten Old Masters.

Basquiat masterfully synthesizes the gestural abstraction of the Postwar action painters and the mythological imagery of the Old Masters of the Renaissance in Orange from 1988. In an almost premonitory way at the end of his life, Basquiat adopts these recognizable styles and iconography of the artistic pantheon to create Orange – a treatise on his own art historical influences and a reflection on his artistic career.