in 1982 at the age of just 22 years old
Jean-Michel Basquiat would produce this painting. A powerful and dazzling image, that mixes
text, colour, symbolism, and mark making in a raw and uncensored explosion. In a single painting, he would
use his instinctive powers of visual language to say everything he wanted to say: About
America, about art and about being black in both worlds. Basquiar's meteoric rise in the early 80s
sent shockwaves through downtown Manhattan. In the New York art scene at the time he
stood out not only as a black man in the white-washed world of art, but also as an artist
who brought attention to its ethnic imbalance. And he would become one of the few black painters
to break through into international consciousness. "I don't see - I know black people are never really
portrayed realistically and - not maybe not - I mean not even portrayed in
modern art - enough" Basquiat would show the faces, and name the names of countless
millions of people that had been disregarded by art history. He would shake the art world, with paintings
that depict the black experience. Paintings that would be placed in museums - that were
designed for a whole different audience. 1982 was Basquiat's year. He was a rising star at
the height of his powers and this would be his most mythical and sought after painting. A painting that
after its initial sale was not seen in public for over 30 years. In fact only a tiny photo
of it survived - as proof it ever existed. Then in 2017, it came up for auction. When Jean-Michel Basquiat was in New York
in 1978, it was a low-rent, high crime bankrupt city.
Downtown Manhattan was a grubby Mecca for
the artist, the musician, and the filmmaker. Everyone was creative and "everyone" was going to make it big. People assumed that Basquiat was an uneducated,
uncultured graffiti artist from the ghettos, with an almost supernatural talent. It was
partly a deliberate myth he constructed himself and partly, people's expectations of what a
scruffy, dreadlocked, black artist could be. But he wasn't the "noble savage" the press liked to
portray him as. On the contrary he was an intensely ambitious middle-class young man, who knew his
art history - particularly when it related to the presence and absence of blackness in western art. Basquiat was born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, in a solidly middle class household in
Brooklyn. Privately educated, he was a gifted child, who could read and write by the age
of four, and would speak three languages fluently. He was very close to his mother, who encouraged his
artistic side. She took him to see "Guernica" as a child, at the Museum of Modern Art - and enrolled him
as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The young Basquiat would spend every second
drawing. Unfortunately his mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital when he was 13
and he would leave home for good at 17. At first he lived rough on the streets
of Manhattan and in fleabag hotels. Graduating to friends and lovers sofas and beds.
Then in 1978 he would team up with an old school friend, Al Diaz and they would form
the street art duo "SAMO". Basquiat's career started with text Under the pseudonym SAMO, Basquiat and Diaz began
spray painting on buildings in the Lower East side. But while graffiti was about "tagging", marking
out territory, SAMO wrote more than just a name. If this was graffiti at all, it was something quite
different. They were poets and provocateurs, writing cryptic messages on walls next to art galleries.
TV: "Mr. Samo and his associates..." But for Basquiat, it was just a means to an end. He wanted to
become rich and famous, and SAMO was a way to get noticed by the press and the public. In 1980 at the height
of their fame, he called it quits and went solo. He never considered SAMO to be "graffiti". To him, they
were statements and poems - yet even when he was hugely successful, Basquiat would be described
as "a graffiti artist" or an "ex-graffiti artist". A term that he thought, tied his work
with the uneducated and unsophisticated. A term he found simplistic and racist. He moved into the east village with Alexis Adler. Because he had no money for canvases, he would
paint on the floors, walls, doors, and furniture. Then he would make postcards, which he sold for a dollar
on the streets. It was while selling postcards in Soho, that Basquiat spotted Andy Warhol at a
restaurant. He was a big fan of Warhol's and was thrilled when he sold him a postcard titled
"Stupid Games / Bad Ideas". It features the naughts and crosses he will incorporate into "untitled". Warhol
was intrigued by this paint-splattered street kid, and a couple of years later, would initiate a
collaboration - and hook onto Basquiat's rising star. There was a marketable glamour to being a down-and-out
prodigy, but it was an act for Basquiat. His reference points were fine artists, like Cy Twombly
and Jean Dubuffet. Writers like Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, and William Boroughs - and
musicians like David Bowie and Miles Davis. Basquiat, would look at how early rappers at
the time use "samples" and he would apply that to his artwork. In the same way musicians borrowed
from James Brown, he borrowed from Rauschenberg, Picasso, African art - and referenced his own
Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage. He would paint several canvases at once - have dozens
of reference books around him - have music on full blast and the TV on at the same time.
His reference points were many, and eclectic: Anatomy, Poetry. Jazz, Trash TV, Typography and
Art History. They enabled him to create visual collages, which were profoundly
original and at the same time rooted in a rich linguistic history. He would
fuse words and texts together instinctively. Like a musician. But it was colour that held his works
together. Basquiat was a master colourist and would use oil stick with spray paint, crayons and
acrylics, undiluted primary colours layered in rapid succession - and he would build his figures up by
reinforcing and over drawing every line and form. The words here have been scratched out and
painted over, in a conscious borrowing of an old masters technique known as "Pentimento". This
was a signature motif of Basquiat, who would say: "I cross out words, so you will see them more. The
fact they are obscured makes you want to read them" He would use his work to highlight black
heroes, and the "Double A" we see in Untitled, may represent "Aaron", a reference to Hank Aaron,
the celebrated African-American baseball player, a childhood idol of Basquiat, and the first of his
heroes to be crowned or "sainted" in his paintings. Crowns in western art, come loaded with historical
baggage, and Basquiat would use the symbol of the crown, to challenge notions of "Race" and "Power". He would crown black heroes. For him the three-pointed crown he used mostly
represented athletes, musicians, and writers. The crown raises the disenfranchised
to Royal - even Saintly status. Another symbol he used is the "copyright sign".
He used it as an ironic attack on the mechanisms of the art market, and as a sign of reclaiming authorship. The coarse, spiked lines we see in his works, read as barbed wire.
A common sight in the rundown New York of the 80s. It has also been interpreted as metro lines, but
it is the skull we mostly associate with Basquiat. In 1968 at the age of seven, Basquiat was badly
hit by a car, while playing in the street, and had to have his spleen removed. As he recovered, his
mother bought him the textbook "Gray's Anatomy", which he memorised. Anatomy would become a
central theme in the artist's practice. That obsession, is at its most unforgettable in his depiction of
human skulls. These are the skulls of generations of slaves, the voodoo skulls of Haiti and the primitive
African masks, so long appropriated in Western art. Basquiat's career would coincide with the
arrival of the Neo-Expressionist movement, a return to painting, and the re-emergence of the human figure. And this raw and powerful image would announce the arrival of the virtually unknown young artist,
as one of the movement's leading figures. After finishing "Untitled" in January 1982,
New York gallerist Annina Nosei gave him a studio underneath her gallery, so he
could work on his first solo show with her. A rumour started, that a "wild, black runaway" was churning
out masterpieces while being kept in the basement. "That's just... um... this has a nasty edge to it. you
know? I mean i was never "locked" anywhere... I mean... ah Christ. No no it's just.... If i was white, they would say "artists in
residence", rather than sell that other stuff..." It has been said that Basquiat's driving force,
was a desire to be accepted, after rejection by his father. Fame gave him that - and a lot of money
- but he would never be totally accepted. He sold his first painting to Debbie
Harry of Blondie, for two hundred dollars, and within a year, he was selling
paintings for twenty thousand dollars, faster than he could paint them. His solo show
at Annina Nosei gallery was a huge success. He found himself painting in Europe and California.
Living with Madonna and befriending Warhol. He may have been living a lavish
lifestyle - but he still faced racism. Every day. He would leave successful opening
parties, and find it impossible to get a cab. In stores, he was always followed by a security guard.
He would be refused entry into expensive restaurants, and once he was held up for two
hours at the airport, and questioned as to how a black man with dreadlocks
could afford to fly in first class. For Basquiat, "making it" didn't mean getting a show, a dealer,
or even making a fortune. He wanted recognition from major critics, curators, and art historians. "The
establishment". But there was prejudice against him: For his youth, for his graffiti connection, for
being untrained, and for his subject matter. He met Warhol again in 1982 this time for a lunch
arranged by his art dealer. Basquiat had always admired Warhol, and perhaps he saw this as an
opportunity to reach the art world establishment? Basquiar went home after the lunch, and within two
hours, a painting was delivered to Warhol, still wet, of him and Basquiat. This painting started
the deep friendship between the two artists, and their collaboration began. It is a myth though
that Basquiat's career really took off when he hooked up with warhol. He was already famous
or Warhol wouldn't have been interested in him. Their relationship, both professionally and
personally, was symbiotic. They needed each other. Warhol's career had stagnated and he needed new
life breathed into it, and Basquiat needed access to the art world elite. Their second exhibition of
joint paintings in 1985 was slaughtered by critics, and torn apart by the media. One critic called
Basquiat "Warhol's mascot", which hit him really hard. The friendship never really recovered and
Basquiat severed ties with Warhol. Despite the the press attacks, there was a genuine
love and respect between the two artists. Warhol was one of the few people he would listen to,
when it came to advice on curbing his drug use. Warhol, it was said, loved Basquiat like a son.
Just over a year after their friendship ended, Warhol died suddenly, during a routine operation. Basquiat
was devastated, he became increasingly isolated and his heroin addiction and depression grew out of control. A year later, he too would be dead. "Is there any anger in you? Any anger in your work?
"yeah of course there is..." "Talk about that, tell me what the anger is..." "What are you angry about?" Unable to deal with the demands that fame
brought him, in 1988 at the age of just 27 Jean-Michel Basquiat, the most successful black
artist in history - died from a heroin overdose. His meteoric rise - and often controversial career -
had lasted for just seven years. Basquiat, was an artist who was as dedicated to his craft,
and just as aware of his legacy as Michelangelo or Picasso. Like all of the artists i've looked at in this
Great Art Explained series, Jean-Michel Basquiat was driven, ambitious,
and worked extremely hard. When Madonna lived with him, she said she would
wake up at 4.00 am and would find him still painting. He had a desperate need to create, and in his
short career he would produce over 2 000 works of art. But he would never compromise to
reach his goal - never dilute the message. His raw and brutal works, draw on the
problems faced by African Americans in the US. They are as relevant now, as they were 40 years ago. Yet despite his importance, there are almost
no works by him in public collections. Not a single one in the UK, and very few internationally. "Untitled" had been in the same private collection
since it was bought in 1984 for $19,000. When it came up for auction in 2017, it
reached the highest price ever paid for a work, not just by a black artist, but by any
American artist, including Andy Warhol. 110 million dollars. His art is inextricably linked to his life. His charisma
and drive, his race, his talent, and his untimely ending His works, live on as a testament to his talent for placing
the immediacy of the everyday into his art. Jean-Michel Basquiat's career was brief and spectacular. But continues to cast a long shadow over the art world.
