Jean-Michel Basquiat

Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Mary Boone Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Los Angeles
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 9 May 1990, Lot 510
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Mary Boone Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985
Tel Aviv, Museum, The Frederick R. Weisman Foundation Collection, 1985
New York, Sperone Westwater; Columbus, Museum of Art, Emblems and Contours, 1995

Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Houston, The Menil Collection; Iowa, Des Moines Art Center; Alabama, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1992-4, p. 246, illustrated in installation
Richard Marshall & Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 1996, Vol. I, p. 132, no. 5, illustrated in colour
Richard D. Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean Michel Basquiat, Paris 2000, Vol. II, p. 216, no. 5, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the red is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a very light vertical rub mark towards the top right corner, and wear to the top right corner. No restoration is visible under ultraviolet light.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Jean-Michel Basquiat's path of ascent was astronomical: in the period of only a year, the young artist had gone from graffitiing New York's subway and scavenging food, to Annina Nosei's Gallery and upmarket dinners at the famous Mr Chow's. This was 1981; by 1984, the year in which the present work was executed, Basquiat had reached full artistic maturity and was well and truly accepted into the fold by the artworld's elite conoscienti. Evincing the structural and chromatic confidence that accompanied this period, Jean Michel Basquiat's Parts, delivers an arresting yet masterfully restrained painterly palimpsest. Articulated across a monumental chaotic expanse of red, accented in oil stick with the extant primaries of blue and yellow, Parts confers a remarkable schema of exposures and erasures. Depicting an upright cartoon-chicken carcass counter balanced by exposed underlying drawings on paper, this painting at once gestures a nod to the artist's childhood ambitions of becoming a cartoonist, the urgency of his graffiti roots, whilst invoking a dialogue with the canon of American abstraction.

The appearance of cooked, cartoon-like chickens and textural references to 'pollo' or 'chicken-wings' is not uncommon across the paintings and drawings by Jean-Michel Basquat. Ingenuously painted as though animated, even dancing, Basquiat invokes a light-hearted and child-like sense of humour in his visual concession to fast food and popular culture. Juxtaposed against the revealed sections of underlying drawings, intricate in detail and saturated with Basquiat's signature capital letter handwriting, their seemingly nonsensical and illegible meaning strongly evokes a visual translation of the 'cut-up' technique popularised by William S. Burroughs, author of the cult 1959 novel Naked Lunch, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Indeed, aligned to the non-linearity of this literary concept, in Basquiat's canon an entire spectrum of visual codes and references are recast and cut-up to give form to an entirely new pluralistic language in paint. Also echoing the spontaneity of Jazz and radical sonar layering of the nascent Hip Hop movement, Basquiat's method of seeming chaotic visual assimilation and juxtaposition mirrors and integrates a host of multifarious yet radically interrelated visual, literary and sonic idioms. As redolent across the monumental expanse of Parts, beneath the strident application of red paint, the comingling and chaotic jumble of text, image and abstract gesture are embroiled in uniquely intellectual, yet visually exuberant and intensely immediate, complex semiotic schema.

Basquiat had an unimpeachable grasp of art history and a defined understanding of American abstraction. Within the layers of erased, painted over and liberally confident mark making, Basquiat recasts an innovative symphony of modernism's pictorial vernacular. Imbued with the frantic exertion and the poured, dripping aesthetic of Jackson Pollock; the exuberant colourism and dramatic painterly gesture of Franz Kline; combined with the integration of text and blackboard-like surfaces of Beuys and Twombly, Basquiat's field of allusions is impressive and manifold. Indeed both Twombly and Kline were cited by Basquiat as "favourites" in 1983 during the famous interview with Henry Geldzahler, 'Art From Subways to Soho' (the artist in: Henry Gelzahler, 'Art from Subways to Soho' in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1999, p. 48). Basquiat weaves the inherent energy and machismo painterly attitude of Kline with ethereal Twombly-like ciphers of text and line: as redolent within the layered and expressive command of Parts, paradigms of American art are combined and synthesised with spectacular faculty. The artist's brute force of application and layering of paint over pasted individual drawings confers a remarkably paroxysmal yet deliberate harmony via a structural and exuberant formalism. As Marc Mayer notes, "few American artists deserve as much attention for their manipulation of colour...With direct and theatrically ham-fisted brushwork, he used unmixed colour structurally, like a seasoned abstractionist, but in the service of a figurative and narrative agenda...Colour holds his pictures together, and through it they command a room" (Marc Meyer, 'Basquiat in History' in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Brooklyn Museum, Basquiat, 2005, p. 46).

 

Distinctly rebellious and nomadic in identity, Basquiat's work is fundamentally rooted within a fascinating multilingual pluralism. Born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a Haitian father and a New York Puerto Rican mother, the artist grew up speaking English, Spanish and French. In simultaneously possessing a tripartite Haitian, Hispanic and African-American heritage, Basquiat sophisticatedly channelled a multitude of languages, both spoken and visual, to forge a vanguard dialogue at the forefront of postmodern and postcolonial expression. Striking out against the stayed and dry minimalism that saturated New York's Soho galleries, Basquiat emerged with a totally fresh and utterly different dialogue that was immediately accessible yet extraordinarily intelligent. Totally unprecedented, his work announced a form of neo-expressionism radically reflective of the contemporary moment, racial identity and the underground movement in downtown New York, whilst simultaneously forging a direct and encompassing challenge to the pantheon of art historical precedent.

 

Executed in 1984, this imposing painting bears witness to the very year Basquiat reached full artistic maturity at the age of just twenty-four. Diagrammatic and linear without compromising spontaneity or vivacity, this is the work of a man grown more analytical and discerning through the lessons of experience. Evidencing a distillation of colour and heightened compositional conviction, the present work is one of the most striking and economically confident from the artist's oeuvre. In the previous year alone Basquiat had shown his work in 17 group exhibitions, had 4 major solo exhibitions in America, Europe and Japan, and was the youngest artist ever to be included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial. The creative confidence that this success instilled resulted in a newfound clarity of purpose and execution.  Reflected here in the bold and balanced composition, this painting significantly veers away from the frenetic cacophony of his earlier work towards a more discerning symbolic formula of concise line and colour. Rather than depriving the composition of meaning, this act of reduction positively enriches the poetic capacity of Basquiat's aesthetic, imbuing his work with greater focus as well as enhancing intended narrative ambiguity.

Parts is a consummate example of Basquiat's ambiguous and challenging visual code. At once subjective and universal, this painting epitomizes the incredible invention of Basquiat's trans-cultural and multi-lingual visual synthesis. Masterfully distilled into a reduced schema of exuberant colour and line, combined with paroxysms of intricate detail radiating from the overpainted drawings, this imposing painting stands alongside the most mesmerising of the artist's immense output: the boldness and breathtaking immediacy of Parts ranks among Basquiat's most memorable images. Combining high and low art influences through an urban, raw immediacy of execution, the expressive power and energy of Parts remains as potent today as when it first exploded onto the New York art scene in 1984.