The Guilt of Gold Teeth - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Archival giclée
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Description
A 1982 Neo-Expressionist work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, featuring a central figure surrounded by dense text, symbols, and a high-contrast colour palette.
The Guilt of Gold Teeth, executed in 1982, captures the raw energy and visual vocabulary characteristic of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The composition features a central figure wearing a top hat, rendered with the artist's signature gestural style. The figure is surrounded by a dense arrangement of text, symbols, and dollar signs, which populate the orange and blue background. Basquiat employs a combination of acrylic paint and oilstick, creating a surface that feels immediate and unrefined.
The text elements, including phrases such as 'PESO NETO' and 'ASPURIA', function as both graphic components and conceptual markers. These words often relate to commerce, colonial history, or personal memory, reflecting the artist's interest in the intersection of high art and street culture. The figure itself, with its skeletal appearance and prominent teeth, suggests themes of identity and mortality. The use of a white circle around the head draws the eye to the figure, isolating it from the chaotic environment of scribbles and markings that define the rest of the canvas.
Basquiat's approach to the canvas is additive, layering information until the surface is saturated with meaning. The colour palette is dominated by high-contrast tones, with the vibrant orange providing a warm backdrop for the cooler blue sections and the stark black of the central figure. This work demonstrates the artist's ability to synthesise disparate cultural references into a cohesive, albeit frenetic, visual statement. The inclusion of numbers and crossed-out words invites the viewer to decode the information, though the artist often leaves the final interpretation open. This piece remains a primary example of the Neo-Expressionist movement, reflecting the urban environment of 1980s New York City.
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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
The Guilt of Gold Teeth - 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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