Irony of the Negro Policeman - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Archival giclée
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Description
A powerful 1981 Neo-Expressionist work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, exploring themes of institutional power and identity through raw, gestural mark-making.
Jean-Michel Basquiat created Irony of the Negro Policeman in 1981, a period when his work began to gain significant attention in the New York art scene. The painting features a central figure rendered in a raw, gestural style that reflects the artist's background in graffiti culture. The figure is depicted wearing a hat that resembles a police officer's cap, while the face is reduced to a mask-like structure with hollow eyes and a skeletal mouth.
Basquiat employs a combination of acrylic paint and oilstick, creating a surface that feels immediate and unrefined. The background remains largely white, allowing the dark, blocky form of the policeman to dominate the composition. Text is integrated directly into the image, with the title written clearly on the right side. The phrase serves as a direct commentary on the social position of Black individuals within institutional power structures.
Visual elements such as the badge-like yellow square on the chest and the scribbled lines surrounding the figure suggest a sense of tension. The artist uses a limited palette of blue, red, yellow, and black to maintain focus on the subject's posture and expression. By stripping away realistic detail, Basquiat forces the viewer to confront the symbolic nature of the uniform and the inherent conflict suggested by the title. This work remains a primary example of how the artist used his visual language to critique systemic issues, drawing upon personal experience and historical observation to construct his narratives.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
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- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Irony of the Negro Policeman - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Artist Biography
Jean Michel Basquiat
He had no formal art training. He dropped out of school at seventeen and slept on park benches and friends' floors. He sold hand-painted postcards and t-shirts. He gate-crashed a restaurant where the critic Henry Geldzahler was eating with Andy Warhol and handed them a postcard. Warhol bought one. The art world opened.
By twenty-one he was showing in galleries. By twenty-two he was the youngest artist ever invited to Documenta in Kassel. The paintings are dense, layered, furious: text fragments, anatomical drawings, crown symbols, crossed-out words, references to Black history, jazz, boxing, anatomy textbooks, and street signage. They look unplanned but they are not. The crossed-out words are deliberate. He wanted you to read them, then register the erasure.
He and Warhol collaborated on a series of paintings in 1984 and 1985. The relationship was complicated by the art market's tendency to treat Basquiat as Warhol's protege rather than his peer, and by the fact that Warhol, older and more established, got better reviews for the joint work. Basquiat pulled away.
He died of a heroin overdose in 1988, at twenty-seven. His paintings now sell for over 100 million dollars. He would have found that both satisfying and absurd.
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