Jean-Michel Basquiat

Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
Private Collection, Austria (acquired from the above)
Christie's, South Kensington, 5 December 2005, Lot 73
Private Collection (acquired from the above sale)
Christie's, London, 1 July 2008, Lot 339
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Paris, Musée-Galerie de la Seita, Jean-Michel Basquiat, December 1993 - February 1994
Art Gallery of Ontario; Bilbao, The Guggenheim Museum, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time, February - November 2015, p. 81, illustrated in color
New York, Nahmad Contemporary, Words are All We Have, May - June 2016

Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 1996, 1st Ed., Vol. II, p. 112, illustrated in color
Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 1996, 2nd Ed., Vol. II, no. 8, p. 156, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1999, p. 290, illustrated in color
Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 2000, 3rd Ed., Vol. II, no. 3, p. 264, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges, including some media accretions along the upper and right turning edges that appear to be from the time of execution. The colors are bright, fresh and clean. Faint stretcher bar impressions are visible along each edge and there is a ½-inch vertical outward protrusion from the stretcher bar in the upper right corner. Under raking light, a soft outward protrusion is visible in the upper left corner. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Split open
like a lip,
a pea

coloured back
ground –
cream stock

to one side
tongue turnt
to dark – TRICK

BLACK SOAP.
The mouth washed out—
Unlock

the Magic© —
dipped in milk.
Coconut. White

in hands, black
devoured last—
Teeth cleaned

like fish. Licked.

Kevin Young, "Oreo," To Repel Ghosts, five sides in B minor, Cambridge 2001, p. 278 

 

The life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat have taken on a renewed importance in recent years as America revisits its relationship with race and identity. His work holds an unquestionably canonical position in American art, and he stands as one of the few black artists to successfully navigate and stake his claim in the predominantly white art world during this time. Madonna, his one-time lover in the early 1980s, said of him: “He didn’t know how good he was…He used to say he was jealous of me because music is more accessible and it reached more people. He loathed the idea that art was appreciated by an elite group” (Madonna in Jérôme de Noirmont, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat: Témoignage, Paris 1998, p. 23). Basquiat brazenly criticized the status and power of white America and struggled with his position as a lone wolf amongst the wealth and elitism of New York; this personal and professional struggle is evident in his work.

Basquiat’s short yet prolific career as a working artist began in the mid-1970s with his street art pseudonym SAMO, short for 'same old shit,' capturing the punk aesthetic of young New York at the time. In 1980 he participated in his first exhibition, and by 1982 he was featured in a solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, then based out of Los Angeles. With his ascent to international acclaim came a sudden rock star lifestyle and subsequent drug addiction. Untitled (Oreo), painted in the year of his tragic, untimely death is an almost serene reflection on the artist's rapid rise and fall, representing in one image the internal struggle of one of the 1980s most prolific and infamous artists.

'Oreo' being a term for a person who has betrayed or forgotten their blackness, black on the outside, white on the inside, this work directly and unambiguously addresses the subject of race, more specifically Basquiat’s experience of his own race in an art world dominated by white Americans and European. Untitled (Oreo) is strikingly straightforward, nearly monochrome and lacking his characteristic ‘primitive’ figures and imagery. Where he often “[crosses] out words, writing them again, correcting, emphasizing, obliterating, inexplicably changing the subject, and pulling it all together with a grimacing mask” (Marc Mayer, “Basquiat in History,” Basquiat, Brooklyn Museum 2005), here he is conscious and deliberate: the reproduced Oreo logo is the unmistakable center of the composition, accompanied by little else and entirely undistracted. Untitled (Oreo) is a reflection upon Basquiat’s position straddling two communities: that of his Brooklyn, Haitian, Puerto Rican background, and that of the bourgeois, artist-filled streets of SoHo and the Lower East Side. Kevin Young’s 1988 poem by the same name, from a book of poems and spoken word texts entirely dedicated to Basquiat, touches upon this racial dichotomy with specific reference to this work’s color and composition. Caught between these milieux, Basquiat struggled to feel fully a part of either community, a sentiment which informed much of his own racial subjectivity and transformed his art into a social dialogue continually relevant to the contemporary viewer.