Untitled (1982) - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Archival giclée
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Description
A powerful triptych by Jean-Michel Basquiat, featuring his signature blend of raw, expressive mark-making, social commentary, and layered textual elements.
This work by Jean-Michel Basquiat is a triptych, composed of three vertical panels that function as a unified visual narrative. The composition employs a raw, immediate aesthetic, characteristic of the artist's transition from the street-based graffiti of SAMO to the gallery environment of the early 1980s. Basquiat combines disparate elements, including anatomical sketches, architectural outlines, and textual fragments, to create a dense, layered surface.
The left panel features a schematic figure labelled 'VENUS' alongside the date '1933' and the phrase 'SOAP BOX'. The central panel presents a simplified building structure, while the right panel incorporates industrial and economic references such as 'THE SUGAR INDUSTRY', 'PETROL', and 'ASBESTOS'. These textual inclusions act as both visual anchors and social commentary, reflecting the artist's interest in history, power structures, and the commodification of labour.
Basquiat uses a combination of acrylic paint, oilstick, and spray paint to build the surface. The application is energetic, with visible brushwork and areas of deliberate obscuration, where large blocks of dark blue paint cover portions of the underlying imagery. This technique creates a sense of tension between what is revealed and what is hidden. The palette is composed of primary colours, set against stark black and white backgrounds, which gives the work a graphic, high-contrast quality. The lines are varied, ranging from precise, diagrammatic marks to loose, expressive gestures. This piece captures the urgency of Basquiat's practice, where the canvas becomes a site for the collision of personal observation, cultural critique, and historical reference.
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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
Untitled (1982) - 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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