Jean-Michel Basquiat: Drawing

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING Work from the Schorr Family Collection FRED HOFFMAN

AC QUAV E LL A

THIS PUBLICATION ACCOMPANIES THE EXHIBITION

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING Work from the Schorr Family Collection

FOREWORD

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WILLIAM WILLIAM R.R. ACQUAVELLA ACQUAVELLA

FRED HOFFMAN, CURATOR

ON VIEW MAY 1– JUNE 13, 2014

DEDICATION

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HERBERT HERBERT AND AND LENORE LENORE SCHORR SCHORR

ACQUAVELLA GALLERIES 18 East 79th Street New York, NY 10075 www.acquavellagalleries.com Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing © 2014 Fred Hoffman © 2014 Acquavella Galleries, New York All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from Acquavella Galleries, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING FRED FRED HOFFMAN HOFFMAN

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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Library of Congress Control Number 2014933664 ISBN: 978-0-8478-4447-0

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

DISTRIBUTED BY

IMAGE CREDITS

RIZZOLI INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, INC. 300 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 www.rizzoliusa.com DESIGN

HvADESIGN, New York PRINT

Phoenix Lithographing, Philadelphia, PA All works of art by Jean-Michel Basquiat are © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, New York 2014 COVER IMAGE Jean-Michel Basquiat

Detail of Untitled (Scales of Justice), 1982 The Schorr Family Collection

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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FOREWORD

W

e have had the pleasure of knowing Herb and Lenore Schorr for over thirty years, and we are delighted to present the first exhibition dedicated to their important collection of drawings by

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Herb and Lenore began collecting Basquiat’s work in 1981, even before his first exhibition in New York. Not only were they among the first to collect Basquiat’s work, but they were also unique in recognizing the importance of drawing in Basquiat’s oeuvre. They assembled a major collection of works on paper by the artist, which we are pleased to present in this show. In addition to the over twenty drawings included in this exhibition, we are also showing two important paintings from the Schorr collection that are closely linked to Basquiat’s drawing practice.

For making this exhibition possible, we are indebted to our curator, Fred Hoffman, who has been instrumental in bringing this exhibition to life from its initial planning stages through the production of the catalogue. Since working with Basquiat in the early 1980s, Fred has been an important contributor to the field of Basquiat scholarship, and has organized several exhibitions of the artist's work, including the major 2005-06 retrospective which traveled from New York to Los Angeles and Houston. We are pleased to publish his essay in this catalogue, which represents a significant and original contribution to the literature on the artist.

We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat for their support of this project, including Lisane Basquiat, Nora Fitzpatrick, and Jeanine Basquiat Heriveaux. At the gallery, I would also like to thank Eleanor Acquavella Dejoux and Emily Crowley, who worked closely with the Schorrs and Fred Hoffman on the planning of the exhibition, as well as Alexander Acquavella, Nicholas Acquavella, Kathleen Flynn, Mary Pell Lea, Garth Szwed, Eric Theriault, and Devon Vogt.

WILLIAM R. ACQUAVELLA

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DEDICATION

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his exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a brilliant and charismatic “radiant child.” He absorbed the paradigms of 20th-century painting and synthesized them with

his own experience to forge a new visual vocabulary ideally suited to express the themes of our times.

He continues to be an important influence on a new generation. We miss him.

We have been discussing this project with Fred for a number of years, and we thank Acquavella Galleries for bringing it to fruition. Fred shares our admiration and respect for Jean, and our friendship blossomed with our move from New York to Los Angeles in 1989. It was not long after Jean's death, and he was still misunderstood. Every painting he made was uniquely complex, and there were few of us who appreciated his challenging work. We could never have done this show without Fred's ability to convey in words the depth and genius of Jean's art.

Acquavella Galleries played an important role in helping to educate and expose us to the great art of the 20th century. Their shows and private viewings introduced us to wonderful art, some of which we were lucky enough to acquire. The standards and quality of the art shown in their exhibitions were always the highest, and we developed a wonderful relationship with their young director, Duncan MacGuigan, who shared our passion for post-war American art. Here we intimately experienced the work of giants such as Picasso and Rauschenberg, and we now look forward to having this show contribute to the dialogue of art in the 21st century. For this, we especially want to thank Eleanor Acquavella, who recognized the importance of offering this perspective on Jean's art.

In addition, we want to thank our three sons for putting up with their parents' unconventional, or so it seemed at the time, pursuit. We hope the sundry inconveniences, ranging from very late dinners and occasional abandonments on the ball field to a late-night visit from Jean and his friends resulting in a tardy arrival for freshman orientation the next day, now seem well worth it. We hope we have instilled in them our passion for art and our appreciation of artists and the creative process.

HERBERT & LENORE SCHORR, 2014

Jean-Michel Basquiat in his Crosby Street studio, 1983 Photograph by Beth Phillips

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Untitled (Map) , 1983

Pencil on paper 14 3/4 x 15 1/4 inches (37.5 x 38.7 cm) The Schorr Family Collection Jean-Michel Basquiat drew this map with directions to the Schorrs' house in Westchester, NY, in 1983

“BELIEVE IT OR NOT, DRAW.” — JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

I CAN ACTUALLY

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

I THE EMERGENCE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT really To Fully get Understand

THE Depth Beauty of an Artist Genius

One Must Have Some Knowledge of the

Medium one must understand THE MEDIUM 1

M

uch has transpired around the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat since his tragic death in August 1988 at the age of 27. Today this artist has often been mythologized. The reality is that he was an individual who

went into his studio each day with the single-minded goal of producing unique and meaningful works of art. The buzz and hype that surround the extraordinary auction sales of Basquiat’s art, his image on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, his association with Andy Warhol, and his now legendary antics, make it difficult to remember that this young artist had a career and a studio practice like any other artist, both past and present. Early in his career, Basquiat was identified with street and hip hop culture, yet he spent countless hours in the studio strategizing over artistic moves, ceaselessly preparing for back-to-backto-back exhibitions, as well as working with dealers, collectors, and even the occasional museum curator.

As a very new, only 20-year-old artist, Basquiat was in many respects unseasoned—new to the ropes, sensitive, and fragile. Now, thirty years later, we mostly gravitate to the news highlights of auction results, the depiction of the artist in both biographical and documentary films, and more recently, the attempt by both movie and music personalities to link their careers to Basquiat’s life and artistic contribution. Blinded by the light of our current fascination, even craze for the star-studded life, we have possibly lost touch with the reality of a humbler moment when Basquiat’s world centered around the full range of genuine and raw experiences which consume the life of every emerging young talent.

Untitled (Biography),1983

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

THE EMERGENCE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

...

As a 16-year-old, infrequent high school student, Jean-Michel Basquiat ran away from home for two weeks, hanging out in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Here the future artist had his first true immersion in the ebb and flow of the bustling urban milieu. Basquiat moved out of his father’s house for good before his 18th birthday. Glenn O’Brien describes Basquiat’s situation at this time:

I think maybe he was a little vague about his residence, if he had one, because he had lived in Manhattan for a while by sleeping around. He always relied on the kindness of strangers. And frankly I think he was a little on the down low about his girlfriends or female roommates because he was always looking, always looking to the future for options. He lived day-to-day, night-to-night. On and off and back on again. 1 Living from place to place, Basquiat quickly became embedded in the street/club culture of downtown New York. In fact, the yet to be recognized artist was such a regular among a crowd of filmmakers, musicians, and artists frequenting the Mudd Club, Club 57, and C BGB that he was selected by O’Brien to play the lead role in the film New York Beat. Loosely based on the downtown art scene, the film—written

by O’Brien, directed by Edo Bertoglio, produced by Maripol, and financed by Fiorucci and Rizzoli—was initially abandoned; the project was resurrected by O’Brien and Maripol ten years after Basquiat’s death and released as Downtown 81.

The first recognition of Basquiat’s art came in 1980 with his inclusion in the Times Square Show, a group exhibition held in a vacant building at 41st Street and 7th Avenue in the Times Square area of New York City. Enthusiastically received by the art world, the Times Square Show legitimized the downtown/ East Village club scene. For the exhibition, Basquiat, at that time recognized as the “omnipresent graffiti sloganeer SA MO ,” 2 created a large installation on a single wall of the exhibition space. The young artist was one of the few artists to be critically reviewed.

Following this exhibition, Basquiat was included in New York, New Wave, an exhibition organized by Diego Cortez for P. S. 1 , Institute for Art and Urban Resources, in Long Island City. As Franklin Sirmans notes in his biography for the catalogue of the 1993 Basquiat retrospective at the Whitney Museum:

Basquiat has high visibility in the show, with a wall on which he installs more than twenty drawings and paintings.

These works attract the attention of dealers Emilio Mazzoli, Bruno Bischofberger, and Annina Nosei. The day after the opening of the show, Basquiat returns home to Brooklyn around six in the morning and proclaims, “Papa I’ve made it.” 3

SAMO writings on the set of Downtown 81, 1980 – 81 Photographs by Edo Bertoglio

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

THE EMERGENCE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

...

For the most part, the relationship between Jean-Michel Basquiat and the early collectors of his work was challenging at best. The issue was partly one of the artist’s capacity for trust in others, partly the complexities of Basquiat’s specific lifestyle, and certainly the inherently tenuous nature of being a young black man in a predominately all-white art world. Of course, there were exceptions and we will shortly focus on Basquiat’s meaningful relationship with his early patrons Herbert and Lenore Schorr. Other exceptions were the few art world cognoscenti, such as Diego Cortez and Henry Geldzahler, who were early to recognize the unique nature of Basquiat’s work. For the most part, it was three dealers, Annina Nosei, Larry Gagosian, and Bruno Bischofberger, who, from the outset of Basquiat’s recognition, regularly visited the artist’s studio, either taking works from the artist on consignment or buying works directly which they either sold to clients or kept in their gallery inventory. It was not that Basquiat was completely comfortable with these dealers, but their interest in his work was undeniable. Not only had they identified Basquiat as a major new talent, but each of them also expressed—both to the artist and to the still small public interested in the art of the new—that he represented that rare artist in complete command of the means to deliver a radically new pictorial language and content.

Furthering their relationship, each of these dealers arranged for a space where Basquiat was able to work.

Prior to setting up his own studio on Crosby Street in SoHo, Basquiat painted for approximately eight months in the basement of the Annina Nosei Gallery, thus facilitating Nosei’s almost daily involvement with the artist and his work. After Gagosian’s first Los Angeles exhibition of Basquiat’s work in April 1982, the artist returned to Los Angeles later that same year and both lived and worked for approximately six months in the ground floor gallery/living space of Gagosian’s new Venice home on Market Street.

(Basquiat subsequently leased his own studio down the street where he regularly worked until late May 1984). Basquiat also painted when he visited Bischofberger in St. Moritz in 1982 and 1983. In all three instances, Basquiat’s physical proximity to his dealers was the basis for their business as well as their personal relationships.

These three dealers distributed the bulk of the work produced by Basquiat from late 1981 through 1985.4 Their relationships with Basquiat did not result in many collectors becoming directly or regularly involved with the artist. While this can partly be explained by the social and cultural gap that existed between the very young artist and this newly emerging circle of collectors, it can be equally explained by the fact that Basquiat’s lifestyle did not really accommodate studio visits or reliable social interaction. For one, Basquiat did not keep to a “normal” routine or schedule. He often worked throughout the night, then sleeping into the next afternoon. He could easily work for 24 hours straight without interruption. Moreover, following the young artist’s first exhibition with Annina Nosei in March 1982, he travelled a great deal over the next two years, presenting his work in Los Angeles (two times), Zurich (three times), Edinburgh, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Rome, and Dallas. While Basquiat’s dealers would necessarily maintain continued contact with the artist, this would have been difficult for any but the most highly motivated collector.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Bruno Bischofberger at the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, 1982 Photograph by Beth Phillips

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Jean-Michel Basquiat with Annina Nosei, 1982 Photograph by Naoki Okamoto

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

THE EMERGENCE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

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Further, Basquiat did not regularly engage a great many collectors because there were very few who attempted to maintain contact with the artist after their acquisition of an initial painting. Not only did the Schorrs continue to acquire a significant number of paintings, first from Nosei and then from Mary Boone, as well as directly from Basquiat, but the Schorrs are also the only collectors of the artist who have never sold his work.

Lastly, there were only a handful of early Basquiat collectors who showed even the slightest interest in his works on paper. At the time of the artist’s death, he owned close to forty percent of all the works on paper he had produced. Many of these were included in Basquiat’s first posthumous 1990 exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawings presented at the Robert Miller Gallery. As evidenced by the works included in that show, many of which can today be viewed as seminal works in the entire oeuvre, collectors simply failed to recognize Basquiat’s accomplishment when he was working on paper. Here again, the Schorrs were the exception, having acquired during as well as after the artist’s lifetime key examples of his work on paper.

Today, some thirty years later, it is easy to lose sight of the actual situation which transpired between Basquiat and his collectors. While today several individuals have assembled significant collections of the artist’s work, it is noteworthy that with the exception of Eli and Edythe Broad and the Schorrs, none of today’s major Basquiat collectors actually knew or collected the artist’s work during his lifetime.

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NOTES 1

Glenn O’Brien, “The handwriting on the (bedroom) wall,” Jean-Michel Basquiat, Works from the Collection of Alexis Adler, Christie’s, New York, March 1-28, 2014.

2

Jeffrey Deitch, “Report from Times Square,” Art in America, 68 (September, 1980): page 61.

3

Franklin Sirmans, “Chronology,” in Richard Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993: page 238.

4

Three additional galleries exhibited and sold the work of the Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1983–85. The Fun Gallery exhibited the artist in 1982 and 1983. The Mary Boone/Michael Werner Gallery, in association with Bruno Bischofberger, exhibited Basquiat’s work in 1983 and 1985. Akira Ikeda, working through Bruno Bischofberger also exhibited the artist in 1983 and 1985. With the exception of the exhibitions at the Fun Gallery, Bischofberger was directly involved in the distribution of the artist’s works at these other galleries.

Untitled (History of Jazz) , 1983

Ink on paper 10 3/ 8 x 8 1/ 2 inches (26.5 x 21.5 cm) Private Collection

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II HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

H

erbert and Lenore Schorr began collecting in the early 1970s, first acquiring prints by Pablo Picasso, followed by paintings by the masters of Abstract Expressionism, including the work of Willem de

Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newman, and Philip Guston. Interestingly, some of their early Abstract Expressionist acquisitions were through Acquavella Galleries. In order to critically tackle the work of these now historical masters and make informed decisions about their work, they recognized that they needed a thorough grounding in the history of modern and postwar art. It was with this background that they first approached the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. As Lenore put it,

I knew Jean looked at Picasso a lot; and I see a lot of him in Jean’s early work, including the first two paintings we bought. He really absorbed the whole 20th century.1 As she went on to say, “after collecting the work of de Kooning and Rauschenberg, it was obvious.” It was with this certainty and confidence that they turned an initial encounter with Basquiat’s work into a virtual obsession which has consumed them ever since.

From the time of their first viewing of Basquiat’s work at the Annina Nosei Gallery in late 1981, when they acquired Acque Pericolose, the Schorrs began regular, repeated personal contact with the artist. Clearly impressed by their choice of Acque Pericolose—the artist’s first major narrative painting dealing with life and death—Basquiat came to recognize the Schorrs as people he could turn to for advice and understanding.

Herb and Lenore were low-key and not pushy. As Lenore explained:

We were trusted friends by now. We had enormous respect for him and his abilities. He was always very perceptive and honest with us. We regularly made visits to his studio to chat and watch him work. We threw stones at his window at Crosby Street (there was no door bell). Great Jones was easier.

Not only did the Schorrs have a mutually respected and personal dialogue with the young Basquiat, but they also backed it up by regularly returning to both the Annina Nosei Gallery and the artist’s studio, each time acquiring an additional painting or one or more works on paper. More importantly, it was not merely the frequency of their acquisitions that separated the Schorrs from other collectors, but also their selection of some of Basquiat’s most important works. As Lenore has often noted, they saw a great many works both at

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Acque Pericolose (Poison Oasis) , 1981

Acrylic, oil paintstick, and spray paint on canvas 66 x 96 inches (167.5 x 244 cm)

Piscine Versus the Best Hotels, 1982 Acrylic, oil paintstick, and Xerox collage on canvas

The Schorr Family Collection; on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

Polyptych: 62 1/4 x 82 3/4 inches overall (158 x 210 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Nosei’s gallery and in the studio; and the works they chose were carefully considered. Basquiat was not only appreciative of their support, but also keenly aware of the specific works that the Schorrs selected. Given the lack of critical support from significant portions of the New York art world, including the main critics of The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time Magazine, as well as many of the highest ranking staff members (and trustees!) of the city’s most prestigious cultural institutions, the Schorr’s selection of certain key works served as a crucial means by which Basquiat was able to gauge his accomplishments in the studio.2 The Schorr’s relationship with Basquiat stemmed, as Lenore says, from “ a very warm friendship, built on mutual respect.” Jean-Michel trusted Herb and Lenore. He learned that he could count on not only their friendship but also their advice. This was especially the case around Basquiat’s exhibition at the Fun Gallery on the Lower East Side in 1982. While the Schorrs acquired both Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits and Piscine Versus the Best Hotels from this now historic exhibition (which many consider as the artist’s single most important show during his lifetime), it is Lenore’s recollection that no other works were sold during the opening. As she went on to recall, “Jean was crushed and discouraged.” Their support for Basquiat at that critical moment built an important bond of trust and friendship which the young artist counted on as he maneuvered through many tumultuous events and circumstances in the following years.

Two additional examples demonstrate the depth of the relationship between collector and artist. After having completed approximately thirty silkscreen-generated paintings in his Venice, California studio in the first half of 1984, Basquiat returned to New York, continuing his exploration of the medium of silkscreen as a means of generating pictorial imagery. In quick order he completed eleven pictures, subsequently known as the Blue Ribbon Paintings. Excited by what he had achieved in these works, Basquiat invited the Schorrs to have a look. Overwhelmed by what they saw, they were quick to recognize the importance of keeping this group of works together. While the young artist had become increasingly less trusting of both his dealers and a growing number of seemingly less forthright collectors, he was completely comfortable with an arrangement by which Herb and Lenore acquired the entire group of works. Several months later, Basquiat became even more disillusioned with the New York art world, when, after his March 1985 exhibition at the Mary Boone/Michael Werner Gallery, he decided to sever his affiliation with the gallery. At that time, the artist turned to Herb Schorr, who, of course, had never functioned as an art dealer, and asked if he would serve as his New York art representative.

NOTES 1

All of Lenore Schorr’s comments come from conversations and email correspondence with the author November 2013–January 2014.

2

Jean-Michel Basquiat was included in the 1984 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as in the 1984 exhibition An International Exhibition of Recent Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, curated by Kynaston McShine. To date, the Whitney Museum is the only New York museum owning a painting by the artist.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at the Whitney Biennial, 1985.

Photograph by Paula Court

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

OPPOSITE

ABOVE

Untitled (from the series of eleven

Untitled, 1982

Blue Ribbon Paintings ), 1984

Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas 65 1/2 x 77 3/8 inches (166.5 x 196.5 cm)

Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas 66 x 60 inches (167.5 x 152.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

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III WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

I

n contrast to his contemporaries, Jean-Michel Basquiat distinguished himself by the number of works on paper he executed, as well as for the level of artistic achievement he realized in the medium. In the nine

years of his art production, Basquiat created both an astounding number of works on paper, and an astounding number of masterworks rivaling his paintings.

As conveyed by the artist’s mother, Matilde, Basquiat drew from a very early age. While other kids occupied their time with physical activity, Jean-Michel would be found over a notebook creating image after image.

It was here where he initiated his engagement with the process of drawing and learned important lessons which would inform his future practice as an artist. He discovered that he could shut out the myriad stimuli constantly bombarding him from the outside world; and at the same time, he could enable impressions, thoughts, memories, associations, fantasies, and observations formulating in his mind to simply pass through him, making their way onto a sheet of paper. From a very early age, Basquiat discovered that drawing was a process of “channeling” in which he essentially functioned as a medium. In so doing, he also learned about a freedom from editing. That is, as impressions, observations and thoughts passed through him, he recognized that he did not need to prioritize or judge them. Approached from this perspective, the execution of a drawing was never undertaken with the idea of it being a “study”—made with the intent of learning something which would then be applied to the execution of a more complete work of art. Yes, there would be times when Basquiat clearly landed on something in a drawing which he would elaborate on in either another drawing or a painting. But even in those cases when the artist undertook a drawing with the intent of further developing a theme or subject, the resulting imagery still evidence Basquiat’s natural tendency of treating each drawing as a process of channeling.

For most contemporary painters, the process of drawing is a means of working out pictorial solutions to be integrated into a painting. Whether it be clarification of how something or someone should look, or how a composition may best be realized, painters have turned to the medium of drawing as their tool in working out solutions. With the exception of Picasso, few acclaimed painters of the 20th century invested the same time or energy to works on paper that is evidenced in their painting. The search for pictorial solutions would have been fought out in front of the canvas. Yes, 20th-century painters drew and made masterful works in this medium, but drawing was always a secondary concern. For Basquiat, in contrast, there is often less of a distinction, in terms of intent, between working on paper and on canvas.

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WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

In many ways, Basquiat felt most at ease when working on paper. In order to both explain and clarify this, it is important to consider certain facts about the artist’s career, as well as characterize certain aspects of his personality and psychological make-up. In contrast to the production of a painting on canvas or a mixed media assemblage, both of which a priori required Basquiat to have a studio space, he could work on paper virtually anywhere, at any time. And in many ways this is precisely what occurred. Probably one of my most indelible impressions of Basquiat is that when he was awake he always seemed to be at work. Whether in a restaurant, car, or hotel room, he often had an oilstick or pencil in his hand, and a sheet of paper either beneath or out in front of him. Drawing could be focused on no matter where he found himself. From 1981 until the time of his death in August 1988, Basquiat had 44 personal exhibitions.1 He attended between 30-35 of these shows, which were presented in varying cities throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, as well as one exhibition in West Africa. At the very minimum, Basquiat made no less than four or five trips per year for the purpose of exhibiting his art. That he made an almost equal number of trips per year for his own pleasure leads to the conclusion that he was regularly on the move. In his inquisitiveness Basquiat was also quite restless. And he was young! The point is that for someone as driven as he was, working on paper enabled him to create while equally fulfilling his need to explore. As a young traveling artist, it was common practice for Basquiat to undertake works on paper while on the road. Holed up in a hotel room, Basquiat spent a good deal of time with his drawing materials.

The numbers speak for themself. While at this time there is no precise documentation of the number of works on paper executed between 1979 and 1988, it is my estimation that Basquiat produced approximately 850-1000 works on paper. (This, of course, is in addition to the approximately 1000 paintings and assemblage object-paintings.) While there has been speculation that the artist created thousands of works on paper, I think this is highly unlikely. To date, the primary document of the artist’s works on paper is the volume, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works on Paper, published by Galerie Enrico Navarra in Paris in 1999. This work identifies around 300 works. Considering the number of works that have either come to the market via auction, or have been presented to the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat for authentication, and which are not listed in the Navarra publication, it is my feeling (shared by Enrico Navarra) that a smaller number of works on paper should be attributed to the artist. While significantly less than previously assumed, it still remains an incredibly high number of works produced. Of the known works on paper by Basquiat, close to forty percent were produced in just two years, 1982 and 1983. It is also noteworthy that many of the artist’s most accomplished works in his final two years were produced on large sheets of paper which were then laid down onto canvas. These works, however, were conceived, executed, and exhibited as paintings. Even if the artist had produced an equal number of works on paper between 1981 and 1988, it would represent the production of approximately 100 works on paper per year. Also, noting the complexity of the imagery and texts in as many as one quarter of all works produced on paper leads to the conclusion that the medium of drawing played a very significant part in the artist’s creative life.

Jean-Michel Basquiat photographed at the Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo, on November 9, 1985 Photographs by Yoshitaka Uchida

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WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

With the exception of The Daros Suite of 32 drawings Basquiat produced in 1982-83, none of the works

there are a very small number of works made on larger sheets of paper.) I can think of at least two occasions

on paper produced by Basquiat were titled by the artist.2 While many of Basquiat’s drawings have been

during which Basquiat produced as many as twenty very complicated works on paper over the course of 24

published with titles, most of these were given after they left the artist’s possession, and reflect the owner’s

hours! When Basquiat focused on a group of drawings, time would literally slip away. To watch the artist at

(whether it was a collector or a dealer) desire to give their work additional context and meaning. That

work when he was drawing, one often had the feeling that even though you were occupying the same space,

virtually all of Basquiat’s works on paper were untitled neither diminishes their importance nor allows us

he had removed himself from your realm of being. Having found the means of separating himself from his

to consider them as less meaningful than those paintings which were titled by the artist. I think that the lack

surrounding environment, contact would not be resumed until the work was completed.

of titling of drawings has more to do with the pace of their production. Simply, once the artist completed a

...

work on paper he immediately was onto yet another. The lack of titles can also be explained by the fact that the artist retained so many of his works on paper; and typically Basquiat would neither title nor sign a work until it left his possession. As such, many were neither titled nor signed.

For Jean-Michel Basquiat, drawing began with conscious as well as unconscious observation and the simultaneous consumption of source material. He approached this process with eyes and mind wide open,

While an evaluation of the artist’s works on paper reveals a tremendous range of subject matter as well as

constantly absorbing, rarely judging. His sources were an amalgamation of his own, personally-lived experi-

techniques and procedures utilized in their production, what is especially noteworthy is the intensity of

ences combined with his continually inquisitive engagement with a plethora of subjects ranging from world

focus conveyed in many of these works. This is what distinguishes Basquiat’s approach to working on paper.

history; mythology; scientific fact; sport as well as music personalities and history; anthropology; human

In fact, a number of the artist’s works on paper demonstrate a greater intensity of focus than his paintings.

anatomy and physiology; and varying aspects of non-Western cultures. A good portion of what Basquiat

In this regard there would seem to be a clear explanation: the artist had a significantly different physical

consumed was the result of his immersion as a young black male in urban society and culture. Basquiat had

relationship with his materials when working on paper. While the art of painting was a private activity, in

the unique ability to mix and match, combining references and topics, often transforming or altering them

which Basquiat was more or less removed from the outside world and directly engaged with the work before

from their original meaning, context, and usage.

him, it nonetheless occurred in a space large enough for other, sometimes distracting social functions to take place. In contrast to working on a canvas hung on a wall, when Basquiat was working on a sheet of paper, he

Basquiat’s ability to integrate image and text resulted in a seamless interplay between these two traditionally

was positioned either on the floor, seated in a chair, or reclining on a bed or couch. In either case, the paper

distinct means of responding to what one has observed. For Basquiat, writing a text would take on the same

upon which he was working would have been beneath his head. His head would have been focused down,

function as drawing an image. As conveyed in the drawings of the artist, there are no gaps between image

away from the environment around him. In the case of those works executed directly on the floor, Basquiat’s

and text. There are no demarcation lines articulating where one ends and the other begins, and there is no

position would have resulted in him having turned away from the outside world, immersed in the work

prioritization of one being any more or less important than the other. This is only made more evident by the

beneath him.

density of “information” presented. In Basquiat’s drawings there is rarely any breathing room. Rather, you are sucked in and carried along an often intricate and complex journey through a maze of references which

In addition, because words as well as texts played such an integral part of Basquiat’s visual language, the

oftentimes make little rational sense but nonetheless feel like they have a reason to exist.

process used by the artist in the creation of works on paper would have been consistent with normal writing activity. When writing (by hand) the positioning of the body naturally creates a degree of separation of the

While Basquiat’s integration of seemingly disparate references and sources finds precedent in the work of

writer from external circumstances. Because Basquiat’s drawings seamlessly integrate imagery and text

certain Surrealists as well as in the work of Robert Rauschenberg, there are key distinctions and differences.

(whether it be a word, sentence, or several lines of text), it became natural for him to apply the basic process

The choices of the Surrealists were highly unusual, distinctive, and more often than not full of pre-existing

of writing when making most of his works on paper.

aesthetic content. Their objects and images were carefully selected. For the Surrealists, editing was an important part of their process. Rauschenberg’s presentation of source material was more egalitarian. For

Basquiat could easily execute a seemingly complex work on paper, full of texts and images, in a matter of an

him, images as well as objects were considered and subsequently used as if they were more or less of equal

hour. Given that most of Basquiat’s works on paper were relatively modest in size, Basquiat would often

importance. In this regard, Rauschenberg’s practice was an important precedent of which the young Basquiat

complete an individual work without any interruption. (For the most part, Basquiat’s works on paper mea-

was clearly aware. In addition, Rauschenberg’s sources were more specific to his own experience—to the life

sure 22 x 30 inches or 32 x 40 inches; a select number of works executed in 1982 measure 60 x 40 inches, and

he lived, and the social, cultural and political events with which he was personally familiar.

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LEF T

Robert Rauschenberg

Currency (Mona Lisa) , 1958 Solvent transfer on paper with pencil, gouache and watercolor 22 3/4 x 28 3/4 inches (57.8 x 73 cm)

Collection Janie C. Lee BOT TOM

Robert Rauschenberg

Canyon, 1959 Oil, pencil, paper, metal, photograph, fabric, wood, canvas, buttons, mirror, taxidermied eagle, cardboard, pillow, paint tube and other materials 81 3/4 x 70 x 24 inches

(207.6 x 177.8 x 61 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of the family of Ileana Sonnabend OPPOSITE

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Untitled (Rauschenberg)

1986–87 Colored pencil on folded brown paper 9 1/ 2 x 15 1/ 3 inches (24.4 x 39 cm) Private Collection

Basquiat’s sources are even more expansive, reflecting a larger range of observation as well as inquisitiveness.

Basquiat’s references are more unexpected, more full of surprises, often more playful and carefree. There is the sense that what Basquiat presents results from a mind less dependent upon hierarchical and declarative judgment. For Basquiat, drawing was much less a process of placing an observation, an experience on a pedestal. In presenting all that he portrayed as being of equal value, Basquiat presented himself as that nonjudgmental observer who approached his subjects with a certain detachment, without an agenda, a need to separate out, to choose or select.3 Nonetheless, Rauschenberg’s transformation of popular source material into aestheticized content became an important precedent for Basquiat. In Rauschenberg’s work, Basquiat found the license to move from the representation of an image, the placement of a text, and gestural stroke of paint or drawn line. Whether it was in a section of a classic Combine painting such as Canyon, 1959, or a solvent transfer on paper with gouache, pencil, and watercolor, such as Currency, 1958, Basquiat would have found validation for his own developing practice of integrating representational image, text, and non-referential pictorial gesture. Not only was Rauschenberg’s integration of figuration and abstraction important for Basquiat, but also in the older master’s work the young artist discovered a fluidity of aesthetic moves which became an essential aspect of his full pictorial expression. It is noteworthy that some of the most complex and at the same time fluid examples of Basquiat’s integration of figure, text, and passages of paint were realized in the series of silkscreen-generated images which he executed in his Venice, California studio in the first half of 1984. Not coincidentally, while Basquiat was working on these paintings, I drove him to the Gemini GEL studio in West Hollywood, where he spent time with Rauschenberg, who was working there at that time.

...

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The Schorr family collection includes examples from most of the different types of works on paper produced

by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The two notable exceptions are the single word or simple phrase drawings from 1981 and a drawing mirroring the content and/or form of the artist’s late paintings. The collection includes a key work from the early, somewhat schematic presentation of iconic images, words and symbols; an example of the artist’s integration of disparate images presented through the combination of graphite, oilstick and paper collage; important works depicting the artist’s head imagery; drawings, often larger in scale, integrating imagery and text into an edge-to-edge pictorial field; and drawings which read almost as a listing of information, messages, and references. Several works on paper in the collection have a direct relationship, both in terms of iconography and formal structuring, to the artist’s paintings on canvas.

While each work in the collection needs to be considered as a fully realized pictorial statement, a careful study of certain drawings reveals the reappearance of specific images from drawings in later works of art.

Untitled (All Stars), 1983, is a wonderful example. Prior to this work leaving the artist’s possession, he made a Xerox photocopy of both the entire work as well as several photocopies of portions of the original drawing.

The entire drawing reappears in Xerox photocopy in the painting Pink Amos or Andy dating from the same year. Portions of the original drawing appear in no less than three other paintings, including Toxic, 1984; Galileo Galilei, 1983; and Red Joy, 1984. Another example of the same practice is the image of Charlie Parker in Untitled (Charlie Parker), 1983, which reappears three times in photocopy collage in the painting Joy, 1984. A third example of this practice, the word “DUMARIS ” along with accompanying circular symbol first appearing in Untitled (King Alphonso XIII), 1983, also appears in the same 1984 painting Joy. Yet another example, one of the two shoes in Untitled (Francesco Clemente), 1983, appears in both the paintings Joy and Galileo Galilei. All of these examples evidence Basquiat’s practice of selecting image/text from certain works on paper, making multiple photocopies and accumulating them for possible future usage. In SoHo in 1982-83, one often ran across Basquiat’s assistant going back and forth from the Xerox store where the artist made regular use of their photocopy machine. One final example of a drawing becoming the basis for a painting is Untitled (Bust), 1984. Basquiat must have been particularly drawn to this haunting depiction of a crowned black figure as he not only retained the drawing in his personal collection, but a year after its creation he also turned it into the eleven previously mentioned Blue Ribbon Paintings.

A fascinating example of a work on paper and a painting sharing the same image and/or text can be found in Basquiat’s use of the word “DUMARIS ” in Untitled (King Alphonso XIII), 1983. Basquiat’s usage of this word in the drawing ties it to the painting, Notary, also in the Schorr family collection. The meaning of Basquiat’s reference to “DUMARIS ” in the work on paper is best understood by considering the iconography of the painting.4 The word is derived from a Greek inscription that appears in connection with the reproduction of an African rock painting in Burchard Brentjes’s well-known reference on this subject.5 Brentjes’s discussion Lead Plate with Hole, 1984

Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas 86 x 68 inches (218.5 x 172.7 cm) Collection of Jerome Dahan

of the nomadic Blemyan tribe in the Eastern Sahara includes an image of Saint George accompanied by the Greek inscription. As Brentjes notes, the Blemyans scratched disparate images on rocks to record their presence at a specific location for the benefit of the fellow tribesmen who would follow them.

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ABOVE

OPPOSITE

Untitled (Bust), 1984

Untitled (from the series of eleven

Acrylic, paper, and tape collage on paper 30 1/ 8 x 22 5/ 8 inches (76.2 x 57.1 cm)

Blue Ribbon Paintings ), 1984

Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas 66 x 60 inches (167.5 x 152.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

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OPPOSITE

ABOVE

Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) , 1983

Detail of Untitled (King Alphonso XIII)

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

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Notary, 1983 Acrylic, oil paintstick, and paper collage on canvas mounted on wood supports Triptych: 71 x 158 inches (180.5 x 401.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection;

on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

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In essence, these images incised on rock functioned as these tribesmen’s seal, declaring their presence both physically and spiritually. In Notary, Basquiat combines this reference with several other images and texts, which taken all together were Basquiat’s affirmation of himself as an oracle—as one who provides insight into a greater truth. The drawing Untitled (King Alphonso XIII), with no less than three usages of the word “DUMARIS ,” links the work both historically (the drawing was probably executed at the same time as the artist was working on the painting) and in terms of its iconography to the painting. It may be seen as the artist’s affirmation of his own nomadic journey, and as his declaration that his own marks and gestures played a determining role in linking one person to another and guiding the passage of others. Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) then, can be viewed as self-referential, providing insight into how the artist perceived himself at a critical juncture in his life and career.

The interchange and mixing of text and imagery evidenced in Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) as well as Untitled (Walt Disney), 1983, ties these works to two other groups of drawings produced at the same time.

While slightly less dense in their presentation of image/text content, these two drawings, especially in the way that image and text fill out the pictorial field almost edge-to-edge without a central focus, recall two series of works on paper which Basquiat executed in 1982-83, and which became the basis for his two highly acclaimed silkscreen works on canvas. Tuxedo, 1982-83, and Untitled, 1983, each produced in a small edition of ten, began with the artist’s execution of a cohesive group of works on paper, which after their completion, were photographically reversed and transformed by means of silkscreen into one large composite image. The original drawings for both Tuxedo and Untitled were executed in Venice, California in the last months of 1982 and early 1983.6 Each of the original drawings used to produce first Tuxedo and then Untitled was conceived to be part of an overall composite image made entirely from a group of works on paper. Both Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) and Untitled (Walt Disney), executed later in 1983 upon Basquiat’s return to New York, share formal similarities to the drawings which Basquiat turned into Tuxedo and Untitled.

...

The central theme or subject of one third of the works on paper in the Schorr family collection is the human head and/or the representation of the human figure. These include Untitled (Police Hospital), 1983; Untitled (All Stars), 1983; Untitled (Bluto Nero), 1982; Untitled (Scales of Justice), 1982; Untitled (Charlie Parker), 1983; Untitled, 1982; and Untitled, 1982. As Basquiat’s career reached maturity at the early age of 21 in 1982, the Tuxedo

1982–83 Silkscreen on canvas, Edition of 10 102 3/ 8 x 59 7/ 8 inches (260 x 152 cm) Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Switzerland

artist more and more turned towards an investigation of the physiognomy as well as psychological make-up of those he knew and encountered. Basquiat’s focus on the head brings to mind an important painting from the Schorr family collection, which I have chosen to not merely discuss but also to include in the exhibition.

Withholding a comprehensive discussion of individual head images for later in this text, the painting makes evident how the depiction of the head became an important aspect of Basquiat’s move towards the presentation of an expanded narrative content.

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Untitled, 1981, is one of the earliest paintings in the artist’s oeuvre presenting a vast and richly diversified assembly of figurative characters. Capturing a slice of life, Basquiat portrays nine personages, an equal array of full-length figures and heads. The combination of heads and figures are presented as if interacting in front of, even on top of, a large, loosely defined skelly board.7 It is the depiction of a skelly board which contextualizes Basquiat’s characters to the urban experience. Reference to this specific environment is also suggested in the work’s loose, grid-like structure. Recalling the cityscape paintings immediately preceding the execution of this work, Untitled now incorporates figures into the artist’s depiction of the urban milieu.

Basquiat’s portrayal of figures interacting within a rich, dynamically functioning arena, is in good part made credible by the way in which he built up his pictorial surface. In this regard, Untitled is one of the first and finest examples of the artist’s cohesive integration of drawing and paper collage. In this work, Basquiat began by laying down a number of original drawings over which he applied broad passages of color in acrylic paint. The inclusion of paper collage, Basquiat’s newfound means of integrating drawing into the medium of painting, resulted in the dynamic interaction of the drawn figure and luminous passages of color. This pictorial solution enabled Basquiat to create a dense, multi-dimensional surface, more convincingly capturing the complexity as well as the frenzy of the bustling streets of Manhattan.

Figural representation, and eventually portraiture, would increasingly occupy a larger place in Basquiat’s pictorial output. The 1981 painting, Untitled, is the artist’s first multi-figural representation of the young black male. In the painting, Basquiat’s figures still do not convey the feeling of authority, soon to become the distinguishing feature of his figurative imagery. While Profit I, 1982, or Self-Portrait, 1982, announce the full arrival of the theme of the liberated African-American male, these first iconic figures were critical to the evolution of Basquiat’s subject matter. In this regard, the gestures captured in two figures, as well the inclusion of a crown hovering over one head, evidence the emergence of Basquiat’s iconic portrayal of the young black figure—strutting and manifesting his strength and independence. Making this implicit, Basquiat has accompanied the smallest figure depicted in the work with a nimbus positioned directly over its head. This symbol alludes to neither king nor divinity. Rather, the combination of nimbus and the figure’s heroic posture became Basquiat’s means

OPPOSITE, TOP

of proclaiming a newfound liberation for the young black male. In the months following the execution

Acrylic, marker, paper collage, oil paintstick, and crayon on canvas

of Untitled, the iconography of this small figure would take on increasing prominence, defining many of Basquiat’s key works. While almost miniature in scale, this figure nonetheless declares the artist’s intent in transforming observations taken from his daily-lived experience into a portrayal of man’s striving for both self-expression and ultimately self-realization.

Untitled, 1981

48 1/ 2 x 62 inches (123 x 157.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection OPPOSITE, BOT TOM, LEF T

Detail of Untitled

...

OPPOSITE, BOT TOM, RIGHT

Children playing the street game “Skelly,” Beekman Avenue, Bronx, New York, 1995

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Profit I, 1982 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 86 3/ 5 x 157 1/ 2 inches

(220 x 400 cm) Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Switzerland

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

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Two works on paper from the Schorr family collection merit consideration as a prognostication of where Jean-Michel Basquiat was headed in his late paintings. Untitled (Estrella), 1985, distinguishes itself by its dense, compact integration of texts and imagery, filling up the entirety of the pictorial field. This is one of the most complex works on paper in the artist’s oeuvre, and demonstrates the point that a work on paper often required more time, patience, and focus than a work on canvas. As the work makes clear, the distinction between a painting and work on paper cannot solely be judged or evaluated in terms of the medium used for its execution. The seamless and dense text/image integration in Basquiat’s drawing is possibly a precursor of the pictorial strategies underlying key later works such as Untitled, 1987, and Eroica, 1987. Both the earlier drawing and these later works on canvas convey a feeling of not letting up—of not allowing the viewer to escape their power and grasp. Neither allow for passive engagement. Both are demanding, reflecting an urgency, an anxiety often missing in the artist’s works from the mid-1980s. Interestingly, both of these later paintings, as well as several others, were executed on paper laid down to canvas. Each was comprised of drawn and painted imagery as well as drawings and Xerox photocopies which were collaged onto the picture support. Each of these late paintings is distinguished for its pictorial richness. The drawing, executed in graphite and colored pencil, is necessarily flatter and more one-dimensional. Nonetheless, Basquiat must have recognized in this particular work on paper, which significantly stands apart from most of the works on paper executed in 1984-86, the possibility of expanding upon its image/text presentation and developing an entirely new type of painting which would become one of the key features of his late work.

Lastly, a comparable density in pictorial presentation is evident in Untitled (Union of Burma Bank), 1984.

The work is presented, in good part as a series of “lists.” This is suggested by the artist’s stacking or vertical placement of seemingly unrelated words or the occasional short phrase. While Basquiat’s “lists” can be read as moving or progressing from either bottom to top or top to bottom, the work subtly suggests and/or invites the viewer to “move” from the lower to the top portion of the work. Not only does a vertical structuring suggest a passageway, but upward movement is also supported by the roughly drawn images of ladders appearing two times in the work. This device, first making its appearance in several of the works on paper used to create the monumental silkscreen on canvas Tuxedo, finds its fullest, most complete expression in the artist’s defining late work, Pegasus, 1987. In the drawing from the Schorr family collection, Basquiat has quickly, almost inadvertently laid out the schema defining his last works. The drawing primarily focuses on the information presented, rather that using that information as the means of alluding to a larger world view.

In this regard, ascendance is only vaguely implied, and the work does not thematically allude to the subject of transcendence. This work is much more an accounting of places and materials, both man-made and found.

While it possibly suggests a kind of movement, it is grounded in the here and now. If not a direct link to the iconographic achievement of the last works, it nonetheless evidences the artist’s search for a kind of pictorial Untitled (Estrella) , 1985

Oil paintstick, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 5/ 8 inches (74.9 x 105.7 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

structuring which would soon support a well-conceived and solidified world view.

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WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

Untitled, 1987

Acrylic, oil paintstick, crayon and paper collage on paper mounted on canvas

Eroica, 1987

90 x 107 inches (228.5 x 272 cm) Private Collection

90 x 107 inches (228.5 x 271.5 cm) Private Collection

Acrylic, oil paintstick, and Xerox collage on paper mounted on canvas

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WORKS ON PAPER: AN OVERVIEW

ABOVE, LEF T

Untitled (Plaid) , 1982

Oil paintstick and ballpoint pen on paper 19 5/ 8 x 15 1/ 2 inches (49.8 x 39.4 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Mrs. William A. Marsteller, The Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, Inc., and the Drawing Committee, 91.15 OPPOSITE

ABOVE, RIGHT

Untitled (Union of Burma Bank) , 1985

Untitled (Olive Oil) , 1983

Oil paintstick on paper

Oil paintstick and ballpoint pen on paper

30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

19 1/4 x 15 1/ 3 inches (48.9 x 38.9 cm) Private Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

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NOTES 1 2

This includes the two exhibitions of the collaborative works the artist produced with Andy Warhol.

In my correspondence with the Daros Collection, they have confirmed that each of the 32 works on paper by Basquiat is signed, titled, and in some instances dated on the verso. I would like to thank Walter Soppelsa and Marianne Aebersold of the Daros Collection for their help, including the removal of several of the works from their frames and photography of the back of each work. That the artist titled each of these works, in contrast to all of his other works on paper, reflects Basquiat’s intent in presenting these works as an exhibition with Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich accompanied by a complete exhibition catalogue.

3

In this regard, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s interest in Beat Poetry, and more specifically the work of William Burroughs needs to be acknowledged. There are several accounts of Basquiat carrying The Naked Lunch as he made his way around Manhattan. In the work of Burroughs the artist would have found an important precedent for a detached, non-judgmental use of source material.

4

I wrote extensively on this work in my text for the retrospective exhibition, Basquiat, presented at The Brooklyn Museum; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Houston Museum of Fine Arts (2005-06).

Some of my comments in this essay are taken from that earlier text.

5 6

See Burchard Brentjes, African Rock Art, Littlehampton Book Services, Ltd, 1969.

I produced both of these works with the artist at my print studio, New City Editions. New City Editions produced six silkscreen editions with Basquiat between November 1982 and April 1983, including Tuxedo, Untitled, Back of the Neck, Untitled: From Leonardo, Academic Study of the Male Figure, and Leg of a Dog.

7

Skelly, also called Skully, is a children’s game played on the streets of New York City and other urban areas.

Sketched on the street or sidewalk, usually in chalk, a skelly board allows a game for between two to six players.

Pegasus, 1987

Acrylic, graphite, and colored pencil on paper mounted on canvas 88 x 90 inches (223.5 x 228.6 cm) Private Collection

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IV UNTITLED (GRID), 1981 Untitled (Grid), 1981, the earliest work on paper in the Schorr family collection, introduces a number of symbolic images which Jean-Michel Basquiat will return to throughout his career. Presented in a structured, grid-like form, this early work must have signaled to the still only 19-year-old artist the rich possibility for the integration of text and imagery.

Stemming from his personal experience on the streets of Manhattan, Basquiat, the astute observer, depicts five automobiles interspersed with nine crowns, two sketchily drawn half-length figures, a baseball, the word “A R A SM US ” and its mirrored presentation, as well as a repeated circular form which is divided into sections by crossing lines. Untitled (Grid), is one of the artist’s first works in which the depiction of a crown, which will quickly evolve into the artist’s signature—his brand—takes on such a prominent role. Combined with images reflecting his observations from the street, Basquiat saw the possibility of transforming these social and cultural references by their juxtaposition with his newly discovered icon of the crown.

One of the crowns depicted in the work has additional significance. Occupying the lower left quadrant of the work, the artist portrayed a white crown against a black background. This small distinction from the other depicted crowns will become important, as within one year Basquiat will undertake a wide range of works in which he reversed his imagery and presented white images against a black background. This early drawing represents the artist’s first implementation of the concept of reversed imagery. It signaled to Basquiat a new range of pictorial possibilities, as he followed the execution of this work on paper with his reversed 18-part silkscreen print Anatomy, the cover of his early rap record Beat Bop, and the two monumental silkscreen prints on canvas, Tuxedo and Untitled. In all of these, Basquiat exploited the pictorial as well as social-cultural implications of transforming white into black and black into white.

Untitled (Grid) is also historically important in its layout of imagery. Basquiat’s presentation of his images, especially the repeated depiction of an automobile, in a formal, grid-like composition was his early means of depicting a landscape. From this small, seemingly simple work, Basquiat, almost overnight, began a more in-depth exploration and representation of the urban milieu in a group of works loosely identifiable as cityscapes. This group of works includes Basquiat’s Untitled, 1981, also acquired by the Schorrs. The structuring of the early work on paper, Untitled (Grid), is more compartmentalized, less fluid, and essentially indicative of a language and vocabulary in the process of development. Nonetheless, Basquiat’s early work on paper may be seen as the catalyst for the subsequent cityscapes. In turn, the cityscapes were the springboard,

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Detail of Untitled (Grid) , 1981 Oil paintstick on paper 24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

UNTITLED (GRID), 1981

Album cover of Beat Bop, produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat and released by Tartown Record Co., 1983

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UNTITLED (GRID), 1981

Untitled, 1983 Anatomy (in 18 parts) , 1982

Screenprint, Edition of 18

Screenprint on canvas, Edition of 10 57 5/ 8 x 75 9/16 inches (146.4 x 192 cm)

Each: 29 3/4 x 22 inches (76.5 x 55.9 cm) Private Collection

The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Max and Dorothy Fenmore

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UNTITLED (GRID), 1981

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the jumping off point, for an even more evolved urban iconography incorporating both figure and landscape.

With the realization of the previously discussed painting, Untitled, 1981—completed only a few months after this earlier, more structured work on paper—Basquiat had arrived, with an arsenal of pictorial as well as iconographic means for the full expression of his vision.

Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 80 x 80 inches (203 x 203 cm) The Schorr Family Collection; on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

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V HEADS

J

ean-Michel Basquiat unleashed an outpouring of unique and haunting images of heads in the first months of 1982. Most of these works were relatively small in scale, executed on sheets of paper 30 x 22

inches in size. With a few exceptions, each work presents a fully frontal head seeming to float against the white background of the paper. While the works share the common physiognomy of overly large, almost bulging eyes as well as an enlarged, wide-open, teeth-bearing mouth, each image is distinct, presenting a completely different and individualized personage. Further distinguishing this group of head images from most of the artist’s previous works on paper, Basquiat introduced strong primal colors to depict skin and flesh, complementing the linear outlining of each person portrayed.

For some, Basquiat’s heads read more as masks, not portraying the features associated with living human beings. This conclusion stems from the reductive, somewhat generalized way in which facial features have been rendered. In addition, some of these works evidence Basquiat’s interest in Pablo Picasso. To the degree that the artist adapted aspects of Cubist pictorial practice, these works would not solely be concerned with human representation.

We might shift our attention for a moment from the artist’s emotive and colorful heads and consider the entirely black and white head study, Untitled, 1982, in the Schorr family collection. This work is one of Basquiat’s most intense forays into the abstracting, reductive language of Picasso. This entirely line drawn work also suggests the artist’s assimilation of non-Western, and specifically Sub-Saharan African sculpture, into his evolving pictorial vocabulary. The work’s specific focus on both Picasso and African sculpture separates it from the other images of heads produced at this same time. Notably, Basquiat’s black and white drawing presents a multiplicity of views of a single head. While the artist presents both eyes and mouth frontally, the cranial portion of the head is viewed from the side. Basquiat shows a similar fascination with the presentation of multiple views in another drawing, Untitled (Police Hospital), 1983, also from the Schorr family collection. Presenting, as the text included in the work states, “T H E V IE WS OF T H E JAW R E V ER SED ,” Basquiat simultaneously portrays frontal and side views of the head. Basquiat’s multiple im-

ages of the jaw capture the external, outward projecting surface of the face. At the same time, the work twice includes text, “FAT S T RY I NG TO E SC A PE T H E SK I N ,” focusing the viewer towards the interior realm of the human body.

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HEADS

BELOW

Pablo Picasso

The Weeping Woman (La femme qui pleure) , 1937

Etching, aquatint, and drypoint on paper 30 1/2 x 22 3/8 inches (77.4 x 56.8 cm) Private Collection RIGHT

Mask, Yoruba Culture, Nigeria Wood 9 7/8 inches high (25 cm) Private Collection

Untitled, 1982

Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 22 1/ 2 x 28 1/ 2 inches (57.2 x 72.4 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

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HEADS

Returning to the more complex, fully rendered black and white head image, Basquiat’s concern for the simultaneous depiction of exterior and interior realms is here even more fully and seamlessly captured.

While the drawing portrays the externally projecting facial features of eyes, nose, and mouth, it also alludes to a much less obvious interior dimension. In this regard, the work, which finds no other comparable example in Basquiat’s oeuvre of works on paper, brings to mind two key paintings, Untitled, 1981,1 and La Colomba, 1983. Central to both of these works is the subject of dually existing exterior-interior realms of being. As in the Schorr drawing, the painting, Untitled, presents an external physiognomic presence existing alongside a vitally functioning internal life. As first explored in the large painting, Untitled, and as later expressed in the Schorr drawing and La Colomba, the subject of the duality of external and internal realities would become a central theme for Basquiat’s pictorial practice. Whether through works rendered solely in black and white, such as Tuxedo, in which the artist reversed the original content of the work, turning original black line drawings on a white ground into white images on a black ground; or in the simple rendering of the scales of justice accompanied by the text “God and Law”; or the “x-raying” of a figure and simultaneously presenting aspects of human physiognomy and a more subtle interior realm, the artist continually returned to the theme of a duality underlying our existence. It is noteworthy that in one of the two colored head drawings in the Schorr family collection, Basquiat has depicted the scales of justice alongside the head. This symbolic image has not been casually inserted, but further evidences the importance Basquiat placed on the concept of a duality underlying the body of works depicting the human head.

What drew Basquiat almost obsessively to the depiction of the human head was his fascination with the face as a passageway from exterior physical presence into the hidden realities of man’s psychological and mental realms. As such, the two largest human orifices of the eye and mouth, the gateways enabling a passageway within, are depicted as both large and open. In the case of the eyes, they not only peer out as if seeing, but also invite the viewer to penetrate within. Equally, Basquiat’s depiction of the mouth not only implies an externalizing of expression—an outpouring of words and thoughts—but also the consumption of forces and energies drawn from an external source. While these heads hardly appear to be the depiction of “real” people whom we have encountered in our daily lives, their individualized expression and articulated emotive content evidence Basquiat’s fascination with our psychological as well as spiritual disposition.

Though these images might not reflect our experience of people who have crossed our paths, Basquiat’s images of heads feel both real and accessible because of their individuation. These images, evidencing the

Untitled, 1981

artist’s astute observation of diverse psycho-spiritual states of being, are the direct result of the countless

Acrylic and oil paintstick on

days and hours Basquiat spent on the street, observing and exploring. Having moved from the street to the studio, Basquiat turned to these images as his way of conveying to his new audience what he had witnessed and learned. While it remains unclear whether any of Basquiat’s images of heads from this formative moment depict a specific individual, I would propose that each resulted from the artist reflecting on or contemplating a specific experience. Each work, then, is a reflection upon a defined moment in time and

canvas 81 x 69 1/4 inches (205.7 x 175.9 cm) The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, Los Angeles

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La Colomba, 1983 Acrylic, oil paintstick and Xerox collage on canvas with tied wood supports

Diptych: 72 x 144 inches (183 x 365.5 cm) Private Collection

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Untitled (Scales of Justice) , 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection RIGHT, TOP

Untitled (Peso Neto) , 1982

Oil paintstick on paper 17 x 14 inches (43 x 35.5 cm) Private Collection RIGHT, BELOW

Untitled (God/Law) , 1981

Oil paintstick on paper 10 3/4 x 8 1/ 2 inches (27.3 x 21.6 cm) Private Collection, Courtesy of Lio Malca, New York

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NOTES

place. As such, something more involved than an artist desiring to portray the physical features of an assort-

1

Until the 2005-06 retrospective organized by the The Brooklyn Museum, this work had been repeatedly titled Skull. As I presented in my text for the catalogue accompanying that exhibition, that titling was incorrect.

ment of individuals caused each image to come forth.

Basquiat never gave a title to the work, and the titling of Skull was a misreading of the painting’s iconography.

Evidencing the importance of this seminal body of work, at the time of Basquiat’s death he owned no less than 27 of the head studies he executed in 1982. These 27 works on paper, each depicting a differentiated head image, were presented in the artist’s first posthumous exhibition, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawings, at the Robert Miller Gallery in November 1990. All of the works included in this exhibition were lent by the artist’s estate. Basquiat retained this group of images for a few different reasons. As previously noted, one of the head images on paper Untitled (Bust), 1984, was turned into a silkscreen image and used in each of the Blue Ribbon Paintings. That Basquiat kept a great number of his head images is also accounted for by the fact that most of his early collectors were primarily focused on acquiring paintings. Since Basquiat never again executed a comparable group of head images on paper leads to another, possibly more important reason why the artist possessed so many of these works. I would propose that Basquiat held on to them in order to stay close to his sources, to maintain a connection with a milieu from which he constantly drew his artistic energy and motivation.

In the 1990 exhibition, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawings, the head images were all presented on one long wall, reflecting the curator’s astute understanding that this group of works were Basquiat’s “portrait gallery.” That Basquiat, as well, thought of his diverse head studies as forming a portrait gallery, is evidenced in the multipanel painting Six Crimee executed at the same time as the 1982 head drawings. In the painting the artist has depicted six heads—each presented fully frontal, eyes and for the most part mouth wide open—gazing directly out at the viewer. While none of the heads depicted in this work can be identified as portraying a specific person, the rendering of each figure’s hair as well as their dark skin coloration leaves the viewer with the feeling of being positioned in front of members of the artist’s “crew.” As here presented, Basquiat’s associates are removed from the realm of earthly existence. With a radiating nimbus above each individual’s head, these immortal souls have transcended the capacities of functioning beings.

With the one exception of Untitled (Bust), 1984, Basquiat did not use any of his head images on paper as the specific source for a subsequent painting on canvas. Nonetheless, an individualized and highly emotive head does become the subject for a number of the works on canvas produced between 1982-84.

Paintings as diverse as The Philistines, The Ruffians, Untitled (Ernok), Cabezza, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, Notary, Palm Springs Jump, Banker, and Self-Portrait as a Heel all find their source in Basquiat’s raw, simply rendered images of heads on paper. The full expression of this subject is realized in the painting, Mitchell Crew, 1983. In this multi-panel masterwork, Basquiat transforms his initial interest in the individual head into a complete portrait gallery, presenting nine distinct heads, many sharing facial features with the early discrete head studies on paper. As the phrase repeated two times in the work states, the “MITCHELL CREW ” were members of the artist’s “ HALL OF FAME .”

Six Crimee, 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on Masonite 72 x 144 inches (182.9 x 365.8 cm) The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Scott D. F. Spiegel Collection

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Mitchell Crew, 1983

Acrylic, oil paintstick, and paper collage on canvas with exposed wood supports and metal chain Triptych: 711/ 2 x 137 3/4 inches (181.5 x 350 cm) Private Collection

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Installation photo of Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawings, at the Robert Miller Gallery, 1990

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VI BOXERS

H

eralding the arrival of the young black male as a vital force in the evolving social and cultural arena of urban America, Jean-Michel Basquiat made key black historical figures the subject of several important

paintings. These included legendary jazz musicians and black boxing champions. From the outset of his artistic endeavors, in which Basquiat recognized Famous Negro Athletes, the young artist continually portrayed the subject of the black legends of boxing, including paintings referencing or depicting Cassius Clay, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson, and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Per Capita, 1981, depicts a single male figure wearing Everlast boxing shorts, positioned halfway between a vaguely defined cityscape and a surrounding pictorial field of abstract atmospheric effects.1 The work evolved out of the earlier group of works which I have referred to as cityscapes. Per Capita initiates the iconography of male boxers, red and black warriors, and other male figures evincing heroic, even exalted gestures that characterize some of the artist’s most recognizable, iconic paintings.

In Per Capita, the radiating halo hovering over the black boxer’s head as he holds a burning torch in his left hand seems to assert a universal theme. While socio-political commentary is undeniable, that does not adequately reflect the totality of the work. The depiction of a lit torch could possibly refer to the torch traditionally carried from ancient Olympia and used at the ceremonies inaugurating Olympic competitions.

In view of the painting, Cassius Clay, 1982, and Cassius Clay’s initial, worldwide recognition at the 1960 Olympic Games, we may conclude that Basquiat’s figure in Per Capita, too, pays homage to the legendary boxing champion and role model. The painting, however, is not simply an historical tribute. Rather, Basquiat’s black male declares the birthright of all mankind: the idea that each individual shares in, and is entitled to, his or her “per capita” distribution of God-given rights and responsibilities. It is this democratic ideal that is proclaimed by Basquiat’s champion as he enters the stadium of self-realization.

While none of the works on paper in the Schorr family collection reference a specific boxing legend, the subject of boxing is central to three works. Notably, Untitled (Boxing Ring), 1981, one of the earliest works in the collection, depicts the knockout punch being thrown by a wide-bodied, dark-skinned boxer onto the defenseless chin of a skinny, almost emaciated white soul—all unfolding before a seemingly elated crowd of onlookers. The two figures depicted are the artist and fellow artist and friend, Keith Haring. That this is a self-portrait is suggested by the inclusion of a crown placed on the head of the dark-skinned figure. Making this identification more probable is Basquiat’s depiction of the white figure, especially the white male’s physique, spiky hair, and the inclusion of black eyeglasses. All of these features, consistent with Haring’s

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Per Capita, 1981

Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas 80 x 150 inches (203 x 381 cm)

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring at the opening reception for Julian Schnabel

Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT

at the Whitney Museum, 1987 Photograph by George Hirose

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BOXERS

ABOVE OPPOSITE

Famous Negro Athletes, 1981

Jean-Michel Basquiat photographed in New York City, July 10, 1985 Photograph by Michael Halsband / Landov

22 7/ 8 x 35 inches (58.1 x 88.9 cm) Collection of Glenn O'Brien

Oil paintstick on paper

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appearance, enable the viewer to read the work as Basquiat’s portrayal of these two quickly emerging and increasingly vital forces in the downtown art scene. This is made even more evident by a perusal of the photographs of Haring from this time. Basquiat continued to be intrigued by the portrayal of himself and his fellow emerging artist in the boxing ring, as two years later he included a related image in Boxer Rebellion, one of the works on paper from The Daros Suite. But one may correctly ask why Basquiat would choose to portray himself and Haring in the boxing ring if they were such close friends? A casual perusal of the photo documentation included in any of the books and catalogues on the art of Haring, leaves one with the impression of a downtown New York art scene consumed with a very playful kind of energy. The New York art scene of the early 1980s was not so much about sell-out exhibitions and higher prices as found in today’s art world. This was a special moment when comradeship and support were as much a part of an artist’s makeup and commitment as financial success. As such, Basquiat’s drawing has a light-hearted quality, infusing this double portrait with the spirit of the art milieu which played such an important part of their still emerging careers.

Contemporaneous with Basquiat’s early double portrait of himself and fellow artist Haring, he executed the painting, The Ring, 1981. Here again, and unlike all of the boxer paintings Basquiat would paint over the following two years, the artist has portrayed a boxer positioned inside the boxing ring. In this work, Basquiat has depicted a standing black male with long, outwardly extending dreadlocks, holding a sphere-like weapon above his head. It is the inclusion of this object which distinguishes this figure from the traditional iconography of the prizefighter. The depiction of a sphere positioned over the figure’s head is the artist’s symbol of triumph or victory. Like the boxer depicted in Per Capita, Basquiat has turned the boxer into a subject conveying a universally recognized message. The boxer depicted in The Ring also shares important characteristics with the figure portrayed the following year in Self-Portrait, 1982. Not only are there similarities in the depiction of facial features and hair, but also the inclusion of an upward positioned sphere in both works allows us to conclude that these two works share a common iconography; and it is not too farfetched to conclude that Basquiat’s boxer in The Ring is also a self-portrait of the artist. At the very least, The Ring is an important precedent for the fully evolved representation of the heroic black male portrayed in Self-Portrait.

Basquiat’s depiction of the decisive and culminating moment in the ring must have been a wake up call.

The theme of boxing, first touched upon in a light, playful “gesture,” followed by a more iconic presentation of the same subject, would over the next two years become one of the prime vehicles employed by the artist as he sought to represent the black male and his search for identity. Hence, over the following twelve months Basquiat would focus on the subject of the heroic black boxer in no less than twelve works, including the previously discussed Per Capita as well as Untitled, 1982; Sugar Ray Robinson, 1982; The Ring, 1981

Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm) Acquavella Galleries

Untitled, 1982; Cassius Clay, 1982; Untitled, 1982; Cassius Clay, 1982; St. Louis Joe Surrounded by Snakes, 1982; Jersey Joe Walcott, 1982; Jack Johnson, 1982; and Sugar Ray Robinson, 1982. And contemporaneous with these representations of boxers, Basquiat would portray the black male figure with upraised arms.

This even more iconic gesture, capturing the newfound identity of the black male, is found in pictures

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BOXERS

Boxer Rebellion (Drawing 32/32 from The Daros Suite of Thirty-Two Drawings ), 1982– 83

Acrylic, oil paintstick, pastel, color crayon, charcoal, and pencil on paper 22 1/ 2 x 30 inches (57 x 76.5 cm) Daros Collection, Switzerland

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St. Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes, 1982

Acrylic, oil paintstick, and paper collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches (101.5 x 101.5 cm)

Jersey Joe Walcott, 1982 Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas and exposed wood support

Collection Stephanie Seymour Brant, Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT

72 x 72 inches (183 x 183 cm) Private Collection

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Untitled, 1982 Untitled (Boxer) , 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on linen

Acrylic and oil paintstick on linen 76 1/4 x 94 inches (193.5 x 239 cm)

76 x 94 inches (193 x 239 cm) Private Collection

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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such as Profit One, 1982; Untitled, 1982; and Self-Portrait, 1982. In each of these works, Basquiat’s black male figure takes on an even more universally identifiable meaning.

...

A somewhat more elusive reference to boxing can be found in Untitled (Heel), 1986, in which Jean-Michel Basquiat portrays the right foot, ankle, and calf of a black figure accompanied by the repetition of the word “HEEL .” While neither imagery nor word specifically make reference to pugilism, their juxtaposition to the repeated, seemingly non-sensible text “IF REPEATED SOFT BLOWS ARE WORSE THAN ONE BIG ONE TO MAKE BETTER BOXING GLOVES ,” makes us reconsider Basquiat’s heel and recognize that it most likely

relates to the body part of a boxer. An overall meaning of other textual references found in this work, including the repetition of a phrase in Hawaiian as well as references to malnutrition and cleanliness, remains illusive.

Three years prior to the execution of this work, Basquiat introduced the image of the human heel in two drawings from The Daros Suite. In both of these earlier works, the heel is presented as part and parcel of the artist’s representation of, and textural reference to, a number of other body parts, including the leg, feet, teeth, spleen, and ear. In contrast to both of these earlier representations of the heel, in Basquiat’s 1986 drawing, the depiction of the foot, ankle, and calf complex have become the main subject of his work and enable a more specific kind of commentary on the human condition. Here the viewer is left with the impression of Basquiat focused on the vulnerability of the human body. Given the work’s references to boxing, one may assume that the artist is more specifically concerned with the physical condition of a boxer.

Equally illusive, in Untitled (Koto), 1986, one of the later and larger works in the Schorr collection, Basquiat juxtaposes the repeated image of the top of a can of Koto, a medicated herbal lineament, alongside an array of diversely rendered full and half-length figures, many of whom are smoking. These comic-like figures are peculiarly haunting. Very few appear to be entirely human. While several have the physical structure of a standing human being, their heads feel as much animal as human. In another grouping, Basquiat’s figures appear notably more apelike. While many of these figures are depicted as smoking, the viewer is not left with the impression that these figures are really alive. They appear more as zombies, the living dead, roaming almost aimlessly through some indeterminate body of space.

Sandwiched in between this gallery of “characters” Basquiat has depicted a single black male boxer. While this figure is small in scale, he is accurately rendered and appears as an actively functioning human being.

In this regard, he stands apart from the other figures depicted in this work. In fact, this lone figure is the only image in this work that feels real, who appears as fully human. As such, he appears removed from the pain and suffering of the dead, the half-dead, the pre-human. Basquiat’s black male boxer harkens back to his earlier representation in Per Capita. Here again, Basquiat has portrayed a victorious champion, now surrounded by some suffering souls in need of relief by means of medication.

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Untitled (Koto) , 1986

Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 3/4 inches (74.9 x 106 cm) The Schorr Family Collection BOT TOM

Detail of Untitled (Koto) NOTES 1

Portions of this text were included in my essay, “The Defining Years: Notes on Five Key Works,” in Marc Mayer, ed., Basquiat. New York: Brooklyn Museum, 2005, pages 129-39.

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BOXERS

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ABOVE

Untitled (Heel) , 1986

King Brand (Drawing 21/32 from The Daros Suite of

Oil paintstick, graphite and acrylic on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

Thirty-two Drawings ), 1982– 83 Acrylic, oil paintstick, pastel, color crayon, charcoal, and pencil on paper

The Schorr Family Collection

22 1/ 2 x 30 inches (57 x 76.5 cm) Daros Collection, Switzerland

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VII "CPRKR"

I

n Ross Russell’s classic biography Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, he characterizes the musical contribution of the legendary horn player:

Charlie Parker was the last of a breed of jazzmen apprenticed at any early age, styled in emulation of great master players, tempered in the rough-and-tumble school of the jam session, a master of his craft by the end of his teens, disciplined to the exacting requirements of the big swing bands, and, eventually, the maverick who turned his back on the big bands to create, almost single handedly, the musical revolution of the Forties.1 If one were to change the name and references from jazz in the 1940s to contemporary painting in the 1980s, one could apply a similar characterization to Jean-Michel Basquiat. The comparisons go even further than the stylistic and aesthetic breakthroughs achieved by Charlie Parker, emulated by the young painter some forty years later. Not only did Basquiat find inspiration in the music of “Bird,” but he also saw several parallels in their lives.

Both Parker and Basquiat were teenage prodigies. Parker began serious study of the saxophone by the age of 13 and was a member of a performing band when he was 15. During his 17th year, Basquiat began to sell hand-painted postcards and t-shirts to make a little money; and several months before his 20th birthday, Basquiat’s art was publicly exhibited for the first time in the now legendary Times Square Show. Neither Parker nor Basquiat completed high school. Parker dropped out in the 10th grade, while Basquiat, according to his autobiographical drawing, took “SOME ACADEMIC LIFE DRAWING IN THE NINTH GRADE (WAS THE ONLY CHILD THAT FAILED) ,” and dropped out of high school in the 11th grade. Both artists died

tragically in the prime of their careers.

Just as Parker was misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and not properly recognized, so too did Basquiat view his own life and career. For Basquiat, Parker would have been one of the few heroes of postwar black culture to whom the young painter felt compelled to both acknowledge and pay tribute. As recognition of the importance Basquiat assigned to the life and music of Parker, from 1982–84, the young painter made no fewer than fifteen paintings on the subject of the musician. Some of these works can be considered amongst Basquiat’s greatest works, especially Charles the First, 1982, a work that the painter so admired that he retained possession of it throughout his life and included it in his first major museum exhibition in 1984; the painting has since been exhibited in every retrospective of the artist’s work. That Basquiat was consumed by the life and story of Parker is further evidenced by the fact that the young painter not only had read

"CPRKR"

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Album cover for Charlie Parker's Koko Sessions, Savoy Records, 1945 RIGHT

CPRKR , 1982 Acrylic, oil paintstick, and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports 60 x 40 inches (152.5 x 101.5 cm) Private Collection OPPOSITE

Charles the First, 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas Triptych: 78 x 62 inches (198 x 158 cm) The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

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"CPRKR"

Bird Lives!, but also had multiple cartons of the book in his studio, which he regularly gave away to visitors.

When the artist gave away this book, he was not merely making his guest aware of “C PR K R ,” but also hoping that his own life and work would be considered in a larger historical and cultural context.

Basquiat’s most straightforward and empathic portrayal of Parker is Untitled (Charlie Parker), 1983, a work on paper from the Schorr family collection. In fact, of all the works by the artist referencing the musician, this is one of the only works including a lifelike depiction of the musician. Basquiat’s portrait of Parker is simply rendered by means of very few black strokes in oilstick placed on top of a washed light brown ground.

The drawing’s likeness to the musician is certain, verified by comparing the drawing to the image of Parker appearing on the album cover for his Koko Sessions on Savoy Records in the New Sounds in Modern Music series. In fact, this image is the specific source Basquiat used for his rendering of the musician.

Basquiat’s drawing pays homage to, and in part documents, the Koko Sessions, the now historic recording on November 26, 1945 when Parker was booked to record a standard 3 hour, 4 side session for tiny Savoy Records at WOR studios in New York City. This was Parker’s first session as a bandleader. The band he booked for this date was Charlie Parker’s Reboppers: Miles Davis on the trumpet, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet and piano, Bud Powell on the piano, Curly Russell on bass, and Max Roach on the drums. Interestingly, Basquiat’s drawing also includes a “shout out” to the legendary guitar man, Lloyd “Tiny” Grimes, who made four recordings with his own group and Parker, and which are today considered excellent examples of early Bebop jazz. With this lone reference aside, all of the text in the drawing refers to stylistic concepts and actual compositions recorded on the historic Savoy sessions. Summing up the breakthroughs Parker achieved that historic day, Devon “Doc” Wendell notes:

While playing over the changes of Ray Noble’s “Cherokee,” Parker realized that by abandoning the traditional melody line and improvising over the chord changes with altered harmonies he could do anything. “I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melody line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside of me.

That’s when I was born.”2 Basquiat’s drawing is a warm, genuine tribute to this musical giant. While this drawing is a quite simple, even modest, rendering of Parker, many of the paintings Basquiat undertook with the musician as his subject are neither simple nor modest. Major works such as CPRKR, 1982; Charles the First, 1982; Now’s the Time, 1985; or Horn Players, 1983, evidence the inspiration that Parker’s musical contribution gave to the young Basquiat. In these works, Basquiat achieves a similar “revolution” in painting as that achieved by Parker in music.

...

Discography (Two) , 1983

Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas 66 1/8 x 59 7/8 inches (168 x 152 cm) Bischofberger Collection, Switzerland

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Untitled (Estrella), 1985, is one of the larger and more fully rendered works on paper produced by JeanMichel Basquiat. While drawn in graphite, colored pencil, and oilstick, the tight intermeshing of imagery and text gives this work the feeling of a full pictorial statement—much like a painting. In this work, Basquiat’s intent is nothing less than the realization of a complex, multi-faceted iconography, much like he would have realized in major “narrative” paintings such as Notary, 1983, or The Nile, 1983, or in select examples from the The Daros Suite of works on paper executed the previous year.

Deciphering an overall meaning of Basquiat’s drawing is somewhat illusive. Subjects included in the work are historical references to jazz history and the portrayal of the human being, both externally and internally.

Most of Basquiat’s musical references are again to Charlie Parker’s historic Savoy recording sessions from 1945, including portions of the playlist such as “Billie’s Bounce,” “Now’s the Time,” “Thriving on a Riff,” “Meandering,” and “Koko.” The drawing also includes references to some of the players and their instruments on the session, and an acknowledgment of Ray Noble’s tune “Cherokee,” the inspiration and springboard for the Koko Sessions: “C H PK R-A LT SXOPH N ” (Charlie Parker – Alto Saxophone), “DZZGE- PNO ” (Dizzie Gillespie – Piano), “SDK HK M-P ” (Argonne Thorton a.k.a. Sadik Hakim – piano), “M X R ” (Max Roach), and “C H R K ” (“Cherokee”). Interestingly, the drawing also includes four representations of an unidentified “DI A L” record, most probably Basquiat’s reference to Parker’s 1946–47 recordings on the Dial label.

In the top center of the work, Basquiat has portrayed a human head. Rendered three-quarters frontally, the artist presents a hairless black male figure with smooth, broad forehead, nostrils flaring wide across the figure’s upper lip, cowry-shaped eyes, vertical scarification rising from eyes to forehead, and a yellow cap resting on top of his head. These features evidence the artist reflecting on and possibly deriving his image from Sub-Saharan African sculpture.

Alongside the centrally positioned head, Basquiat has depicted two frontally positioned hands as if seen from above. Each hand is rendered with great attention to detail, especially the joints, nails, and veins running from wrist towards fingers. While the right hand appears to be slightly cupped, both hands evidence a broadness, implying a reaching out, both a lateral and an upward extension. On first viewing, these hands, as in other contemporaneous works by the artist, are a mystery.3 Part of their mystery is resolved by considering the way Basquiat has positioned the two hands. Notably, they are centered directly in front of the viewer. It is almost as if we enter into the picture by means of first identifying with the hands Basquiat has rendered. They function as a visual as well as a visceral device guiding our entry into a seemingly complex array of images and references. At the same time, these hands are declarative gestures. In their upward ascent, they become another version of the arms and hands Basquiat ABOVE

FOLLOWING PAGES

Now's the Time, 1985

Acrylic and oil paintstick on wood Diameter: 92 1/ 2 inches (235 cm)

Detail of Untitled (Estrella) , 1985 Oil paintstick, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 5/ 8 inches (74.9 x 105.7 cm)

Private Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

included in his many depictions of the young black male. In this sense, these hands are an abbreviated version of the gestural presentation in a painting such as Profit One, or in the many works on paper depicting

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a single black male figure. The same feeling of ascent or liberation—a rising up heavenward—is conveyed

SUGAR CUBES DRY PRESSED FLOWERS ICE CUBES BLOOD VENUS ALCOHOL RUBBER RATIONS OXYGEN

in these two hands as previously captured in the depiction of a full figure. This conclusion is enhanced by

NIPPLES PALM OIL NUT OIL TEETH DIRT AND WATER MIX SCARCITY WAR HISTORY BROKEN YOUR NECK

the inclusion of the single word “E ST R EL L A” positioned directly above the images of head and hands.

SHAKE UP YOUR LIFE

Here Basquiat refers to the Spanish word for “star.” As we automatically associate a star with an experience unfolding above, Basquiat’s inclusion of this word would support and validate the gestural meaning of

Basquiat’s drawing is a portrayal of worlds colliding. He has captured not only the life of Parker, but also the

Basquiat’s hands. Further validation is provided by a second definition of the Spanish word. For “Estrella” is

ebb and flow underlying all of life’s experience. The work depicts the constant evolving interaction between

also a literary means of conveying destiny. In context with Basquiat’s portrayal of ascending hands, the word

man’s allurement and search for a “higher” place from which creativity flows—an “Estrella”—and the

“Estrella” allows us to conclude that these hands are not simply physically moving in an upward direction,

constraint and constant pulling of the hardcore realities binding us to our bodies and to this earth.

but also suggest the possibility of liberation and transcendence.

Basquiat’s presentation of a pair of hands, positioned front and center in a declarative gesture, are his actors,

NOTES

asserting not only their presence but also their ability to “get the job done.” The artist alludes to something

1

quite different in two other segments of the work portraying portions of the internal make-up of the human

2

being. Directly to the right of the head/hand portion of the work, the artist has rendered, seemingly in cross section, the passageway from the mouth to esophagus to stomach; and directly to the right of this portion of the work he has portrayed portions of the lumbar cavity including the lungs and their connecting passageways. Basquiat’s portrayal of internal organs was his means of asserting a contrast between these internal body parts and his outward extending hands. In so doing, he alludes to the inherently existing dialogue between two fundamental aspects of our being. While the portrayal of upward ascending hands alludes to an active search for the transcendental, Basquiat counters this with his representation of those more passive aspects of life over which we have far less control. Consistent with the artist’s continual fascination with dualities, whether it be “God and Law,” the scales of justice, or black and white, here some of the mystery of this complex work unfolds with the recognition of how Basquiat’s imagery and accompanying text allude to distinct and counterpoising realms of being.

Positioned directly beneath the right, slightly cupped hand, Basquiat has repeated no less than five times the phrase, “SO BE I T.” Immediately to the right he has compiled a “list ” of tools and devices used by the hands as weapons, including “R A ZOR S, SWOR DS, K NI V E S, BIL L IHOOK S, A X E S, A R ROW H E A DS, ST IRRU P S. ” The phrase “SO BE I T ” is a statement of acceptance. It implies resignation and the willingness to live

with a given situation even though it is not entirely favorable. Yet the tools Basquiat references imply an ability to attack and/or defend oneself. These are devices used to affect change. Here again Basquiat suggests two realities—those active forces enabling transformation versus the acceptance of one’s situation. As applied to the drawing’s predominance of musical references to Charlie Parker’s Koko Sessions on Savoy Records, and as supported by Basquiat’s fifteen paintings on the subject of “C PR K R ,” the work may be read as the conjunction of the history and myth of the musical giant countered by the realities of his physical existence. In this sense, the work may be read as a portrait of the musician. As portrayed by the young painter, the two realities he has portrayed interact, front and center, as the work states, in “A HOLY C I T Y,” filled with a far-reaching array of allurements, enticements, and experiences. A small sampling of these references, in no particular order or prioritization, include:

Ross Russell, Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker. De Capo Press, 1996: page 34.

The first edition of this book was published in 1973.

Devon “Doc” Wendell, “A Twist of Doc: The 67th Anniversary of Charlie Parker’s The Koko Sessions.” Posted online on The International Review of Music; not dated.

3

In this regard it is interesting to compare the hands in this drawing to those depicted in another drawing, Untitled (Black), 1983, reproduced in Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works on Paper, page 236.

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

VIII FROM LEONARDO In November 1982, Jean-Michel Basquiat returned to Los Angeles in order to produce work for his second solo exhibition at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in West Hollywood. As previously noted, the artist had taken up residency in the ground floor gallery/living space at Gagosian’s Venice residence. Shortly after Basquiat’s arrival, Gagosian asked me to meet with the artist for the purpose of working on the production of a new silkscreen edition. The result of this collaboration was the 8 ½ x 5 foot silkscreen print on canvas which Basquiat titled Tuxedo. Following the completion of this work, Basquiat and I produced five additional silkscreen editions. Two of the works in this exhibition, Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983, and Academic Study of The Male Figure, 1983, were part of that group of works.

Both of these works, as well as one additional work, Leg of a Dog, 1983, came into being as a result of somewhat unusual and insightful circumstances. In the course of working with Basquiat, I spent a great deal of time in the artist’s studio, often watching him paint the entire night. During this period, I came to learn of the artist’s interest in the work of Leonardo da Vinci. As a recent Ph.D in the History of Art, I knew that Jean-Michel would enjoy perusing through some of the books on Leonardo which I had collected. Having deposited a couple of these books in his studio, Basquiat mentioned to me that he would be interested in producing a print based on the art of Leonardo. In discussing this idea further, we decided that he would draw on clear acetates, transferring the images photographically to silkscreen and printing on whatever kind of paper he thought appropriate. I therefore delivered several sheets of acetate to the artist. About a week later, I noticed that many of the acetates were lying on the floor of the studio, now integrated with sheets of drawing paper, photocopies of drawings, paints and oilsticks, along with music cassettes, cigarette butts, and other “stuff” from the artist’s immersion in his studio. In response to the status of the acetates, I offered to remove them from the floor and place them back on the wall. Jean-Michel quickly replied that he would like them left as they were. I found that curious, but having early on come to recognize Basquiat’s complete sense of direction and focus, I knew that he was not only aware of the condition of the acetates but also had a well-conceived plan in mind. Another week passed, and Jean-Michel said that the acetates, now again tacked to the wall, were ready for printing. Not only had the artist drawn images and texts on the acetates, but their life on the studio floor had become part of the completed images. The subtlety and delicacy of the images Basquiat produced, as well as the artist’s desire to more fully contextualize them with the drawings of the Italian master, led him to choose a beautiful Japanese rice paper for the presentation of his imagery. What was totally unexpected was how the random markings resulting from lying on the studio floor would not only complement Basquiat’s drawn images, but would also actually give these works a “patina”— as though they were as old as the sources they referenced.

...

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

FROM LEONARDO

OPPOSITE

TOP

Detail of Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983 Two color silkscreen in five parts, printed on Okawara rice paper Edition of 45 34 3/4 x 30 inches (88.3 x 76.2 cm)

Leonardo da Vinci

The Schorr Family Collection

Six Figures, Study for an Epiphany

Pen and brown ink on paper 11 x 8 1/4 inches (27.7 x 20.9 cm) Départment des Arts Graphiques du Musée du Louvre, Paris

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

ABOVE

OPPOSITE

Leonardo da Vinci

Detail of Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983

Verso: The vertebral column, c. 1510

Pen and ink with wash, over black chalk

Two color silkscreen in five parts, printed on Okawara rice paper Edition of 45

111/4 x 7 7/ 8 inches (28.6 x 20 cm) Royal Collection Trust

34 3/4 x 30 inches (88.3 x 76.2 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

123

FROM LEONARDO

ABOVE, LEF T

Leonardo da Vinci

The Bones of the Foot, and the Shoulder, c. 1510

Pen and ink with wash, over traces of black chalk 11 1/4 x 7 3/4 inches (28.7 x 19.8 cm) Royal Collection Trust ABOVE, RIGHT OPPOSITE

Leonardo da Vinci

Leg of a Dog, 1983

A Comparison of Men’s and Horses’ Legs, c. 1506 –10

Two-color silkscreen on Okawara rice paper

Pen and ink and red chalk on pale red prepared paper

Edition of 11 40 x 311/4 inches (101.6 x 79.4 cm)

11 1/ 8 x 8 inches (28.2 x 20.4 cm) Royal Collection Trust

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

FROM LEONARDO

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In May 1968, the seven-year old Jean-Michel Basquiat was hit by an automobile while playing in the street.

Leonardo? I would propose that Basquiat chose to depict these figures in classical poses as his means of

The young boy broke his arm and suffered various internal injuries, resulting in the removal of his spleen.

creating a contrast with the more “gritty” images of bones, skulls, and body parts. While Basquiat’s classical

While recuperating at King’s County Hospital for one month, Matilde Basquiat brought her son a copy of

figures allude to an idealized concept of the human being, his visual as well as textural references to those

Gray’s Anatomy. Given Basquiat’s now real-life experience with physical pain and transformation, his

“internal” aspects of the human being—of how we are made up—present a very different picture of who we

mother insightfully provided him with a means to better understand the mysteries and complexities of the

are. Figures referencing Greco-Roman sculpture allude to an abstract, mentally driven and idealized concept

human body. While there are no extant drawings from this time, one must assume that Basquiat not only

of the human being. In contrast, the depiction of bones and skulls draws us back to the physical, tactile, and

studied the text, but also drew from it.

transitory realities of our daily-lived experience. While Basquiat gleaned a great deal from studying and “digesting” Leonardo, he never lost sight of his own artistic needs and vision. In this light, it is noteworthy that

It would only be a matter of time before Basquiat, now the ever-inquisitive young artist, would have been

while Basquiat’s painting Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits has a multitude of references to specific Leonardo

drawn to Leonardo da Vinci’s investigative studies of the human being—from anatomical to physiological,

drawings, the work also includes the depiction of a working black man toiling with a sledgehammer on a

from birth to death. In the work of Leonardo, Basquiat found a viable means of educating himself about

railroad track. This figure was Basquiat’s means of balancing references to an historical past with the reality

human form and function. Equally, in both the drawings and texts of Leonardo, Basquiat would have identi-

of the here and now. As in Untitled: From Leonardo, the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits is the

fied a kindred spirit able to transform scientific truth into artistic vision. Leonardo’s seemingly compulsive

underlying duality of complementary, constantly interacting and shifting realms of consciousness making

investigation of human anatomy and physiology would become a lifelong passion for Basquiat. It informs

up human experience.

both works making specific reference to the Renaissance master as well as countless others in which Basquiat explores aspects of our physical condition.

...

NOTES 1

The completed print also includes references to Andreas Vesalius' text, The Fabric Of The Human Body: an annotated translation of the 1543 and 1555 editions of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem.

2

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s exhibition at the Fun Gallery in November 1982 included several of the artist’s most accomplished works. Herbert and Lenore Schorr acquired Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, 1982, on the opening night of this now historic exhibition. In this work, Basquiat included a number of images making direct reference to the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, including studies of the human leg, torso, and feet.

This four-panel painting represents the artist’s most accomplished work combining references from the art of the Renaissance master and his own portrayal of the human figure.

Basquiat’s attraction to the anatomical drawings of Leonardo was clearly not satiated with the realization of Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, as only a few months after the exhibition of the painting, he produced the three silkscreen editions in his Venice studio. Several of the images presented in Untitled: From Leonardo, Academic Study of the Male Figure, and Leg of a Dog derive from portions of drawings by Leonardo, including images of the human spine, teeth, portions of bones, and the human skull. 1 One of the five sheets comprising Untitled: From Leonardo depicts five classically influenced, full-length male figures. The representation of an idealized human figure is the anomaly in both the paintings and drawings of Basquiat.

In fact, poses derived from classical sculpture are rare in the drawings of Leonardo, and it still remains unclear whether the figures included in Basquiat’s print actually derive from a specific source in Leonardo’s drawings.2 This raises the question why the artist chose to include classical figures in his print recognizing

A possible source for Basquiat’s figures is Leonardo da Vinci’s Figural Studies for the Adoration of the Magi, c. 1481, pen and ink; reproduced in Johannes Nathan & Frank Zöllner, Leonardo da Vinci. Complete Paintings and Drawings. 2011, Taschen, page 266, number 12. This work is alternately titled Six Figures, Study for an Epiphany and is in the permanent collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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IX UNTITLED, 1982 Midway through 1982, Jean-Michel Basquiat executed five works on paper which today must be considered a highlight of his career. For a work on paper, each is notably large, measuring 60 x 40 inches. Four of the five depict a single standing figure, while the fifth depicts a standing male-female couple. After having created this small group of works, Basquiat never again attempted to create another work resembling them.1 The intensity and frenetic energy conveyed in each of these masterworks was neither translatable nor sustainable. In fact, in discussing with Herbert and Lenore Schorr their acquisition of one of the five works, they stated that Basquiat told them that he would never again attempt a similar kind of drawing. The Schorrs acquired their drawing a few days after its completion. Directed by Annina Nosei to visit her framer in SoHo, where “some just finished works on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat were being framed,” the Schorrs spent hours trying to distinguish the attributes of one work from another. That Basquiat recognized the importance of these works is supported by the fact that at the time of his death, two of the five were in his personal collection.2 What distinguishes these five works is the artist’s rendering of his subject. The presentation of a single standing figure, more or less floating in an indeterminate body of space, in and of itself would hardly set apart these five works. Rather, it is the means used by the artist to create each figure which is both unforgettable and distinctive. Each figure results from the repeated attack of linear strokes made with a multitude of colored oilsticks. In three of the five works, these strokes are repeated in a somewhat evenly spaced linear pattern. In one, the figure is built up with a layering of linear and circular strokes, seemingly with no a priori strategy for order or placement. While the strokes used to create these figures are varied, in each of the five works the artist’s marks result in a dense, tight, and highly compact form. In both the variety of strokes used to render each figure as well as the obsessive repetition of strokes, Basquiat’s figures take on qualities not normally associated with functioning human beings. Laden with a new, seemingly unexplainable type of corporeal density, these figures rise up before the viewer. While these figures feel weight-bearing, they equally appear as apparitions.

These impressions are not only supported, but also enhanced by Basquiat’s treatment of the space surrounding each figure. Many of the same types of strokes, repeated incessantly, are found in the rendering of the background of these compelling figure drawings. In addition, Basquiat has surrounded each figure with an array of words, symbols, and images, many of which are repeated over and over again. These background forms fill up the space of each work, creating the feeling of a dense and highly energized atmosphere.

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

UNTITLED, 1982

OPPOSITE

Untitled, 1982 Oil paintstick and ballpoint pen on paper 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm) Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT RIGHT

Untitled, 1982 Oil paintstick on paper 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm) Collection of Jerome Dahan

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

UNTITLED, 1982

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NOTES

Specific to the Schorr drawing, Basquiat introduced two heads as well as two standing figures into the work’s

1

Several years ago Richard Marshall called to my attention an additional 60 x 40 inch work on paper, clearly executed around this same time. I feel that this work has some significant distinctions from the other five, and

background—one on a stick-like body, the other as a small, ghost-like personage. This latter figure presses

therefore have not included it in this discussion. Notably, the rendering of both figure and background of this

forward, away from the marks and forms comprising the work’s background.

sixth work is neither as complicated nor dense, thus not conveying the same frenetic energy distinguishing the other five.

The specific figural presence conveyed in each of these five works on paper distinguishes them not only in the artist’s oeuvre but also in all of 20th-century art. What is truly remarkable is the artist’s ability (and confidence!) to unleash seemingly frenetic marks and energy, yet never allowing what he has depicted to appear overdone, muddled, or confused. In these works, all the information conveyed remains absolutely clear.

The centrally positioned figure in each of these five works is nothing less than mesmerizing. These figures raise the question whether they are the source or receiver of the energy depicted. In the Schorr example, there appears to be an equilibrium between figure and its surrounding forms and space. The same frenzy engulfing Basquiat’s figure pulsates from the background forms. Possibly the positioning of the arms and hands in the Schorr work evidences a source of energy. In their gesture, they suggest a “doer” more than a “receiver.”

It is energy, both depicted and implied, which is the underlying subject of these works; and it is the experience of energy which draws the viewer to them. In the case of these few works, how they came about is one and the same with what the artist has depicted. Since the same kind of marks used to realize the figure define the ambient space, the figure does not entirely separate itself from its surroundings. As such, Basquiat shifts the focus to those features shared by figure and space. They both share an unrelenting experience of raw, primal energy. I would suggest that these works evidence Basquiat’s newfound recognition of how his life was not only drawn to, but also guided by something not easily identified or described. It is this subtler dimension which Basquiat not only turned to in order to realize these works, but also made into their content. Basquiat has portrayed these figures as enveloped, even consumed, by a non-material dimension of experience. While these figures still maintain a connection to the physical realm, they are equally being pulled toward another. They exist in a state of flux. Illuminated in their experience of this subtler realm, they herald a more universal reality.

2

The two 60 x 40 inch works on paper retained by Basquiat were included in the 1990 exhibition held at the Robert Miller Gallery, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawings. Both of these works were acquired from this exhibition

by John McEnroe and are currently in The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT.

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X CONCLUDING REMARKS For Jean-Michel Basquiat, the creative process began with observation. Like any other practice, Basquiat’s became seasoned by his own life experience. Beginning with television and the consumption of books, magazines, and comic books, the artist’s observation skills became more fully realized from his experience on the streets of New York City. This is where he finally discovered his ability to “see.” Born with this unique gift, developed and refined through rigorous and constant practice, Basquiat would tap this source throughout his career.

For Basquiat, the practice of observation never shut down. The artist recognized that he could function as a constantly open “channel” through which this process could flow. He recognized that it was neither his senses (his eyes, his ears) nor his mind, but some other part of his being that was engaged with the act of observation.

In this regard, he learned several things. First, he realized that he could take in a great amount of source material. Having opened himself up to the constant reception of observations, Basquiat simply took in a significant amount more than what normal human receptivity permits. Secondly, the young artist learned that what the senses perceive and the mind processes is only a small portion of what we actually experience.

While he was constantly consuming sensory, tactile, and psychologically derived information from the world around him, he learned to become aware of, and receptive to, subtler forces and energies. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, from the experience of constantly processing objectively identifiable as well as more subtle stimuli, Basquiat became seasoned in the art of detachment. Basquiat was able to treat all kinds of sources as more or less of equal importance. Almost as if there was some aspect of his psyche which watched over his senses and mind, Basquiat observed without discrimination and judgment. Not identifying with the content he took in, Basquiat developed a kind of distancing or separation, enabling him to not only consume a tremendous range of “content,” but also to put it back out from a more egalitarian point of view.

From this less judgmental place, Basquiat became in touch with a “bigger picture.” It was from this broader vantage point that he was able to create his worldview. Functioning like a witness, Basquiat recognized that the subject of his art was a more basic kind of truth—something more substantive than that which the eyes see and the mind cognates. As Glenn O’Brien succinctly put it, “Jean-Michel was compelled to tell the truth as he saw it.”

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

135 135

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Ascent (Drawing 5/32 from The Daros Suite of Thirty-two Drawings ), 1982–83

Acrylic, oil paintstick, pastel, color crayon, charcoal, and pencil on paper 22 1/ 2 x 30 inches (57 x 76.5 cm) Daros Collection, Switzerland

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

Basquiat is not just another highly gifted contemporary artist, and his art is not just another chapter in modernist art history. Yes, his work acknowledges, honors, and partakes of that cultural tradition, but it comes from and addresses something else. It is this “something else” which ultimately draws us to his work, and which attracts even those not versed in contemporary art. As viewers, we intuit that Basquiat’s creative output is not merely the reflection of his personal thoughts, feelings, and passions. What Basquiat has put before us transcends the vision of an individual. Rather, it reflects and speaks to more universal truths shared by all cultures, all peoples, for all times. The art of Jean-Michel Basquiat provides us with a means of learning about who we really are.

FRED HOFFMAN SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA FEBRUARY 2014 Fred Hoffman is preparing a comprehensive study, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Portions of this text were first written for this forthcoming publication.

HERBERT AND LENORE SCHORR AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

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WORKS IN EXHIBITION

140

Untitled (Grid) , 1981 Oil paintstick on paper 24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

141

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

143

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled, 1981 Acrylic, marker, paper collage, oil paintstick, and crayon on canvas 48 1/ 2 x 62 inches (123 x 157.5 cm)

144

Untitled (Boxing Ring) , 1981 Oil paintstick on paper 22 1/ 8 x 30 1/ 8 inches (56.2 x 76.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Just Sour) , 1982 Oil paintstick on paper 30 1/ 8 x 22 1/ 2 inches (76.5 x 57.2 cm)

147 147

148

Untitled (Bluto Nero) , 1982 Acrylic and oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 inches (76 x 56 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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150

Untitled (Scales of Justice) , 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

151

152

Untitled, 1982 Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 1

1

22 / 2 x 28 / 2 inches (57.2 x 72.4 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Police Hospital) , 1983

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

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Untitled (All Stars) , 1983

Oil paintstick, ink, acrylic, graphite and paper collage on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

156

Untitled (Charlie Parker) , 1983

Oil paintstick and ink on paper 1

30 x 22 /4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Francesco Clemente) , 1983 Oil paintstick, ink and paper collage on paper

30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

157

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Herbert and Lenore Schorr) , 1983

Acrylic on paper 30 x 22 3/8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

159

160

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Walt Disney) , 1983

Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) , 1983

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

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Untitled (Bird Headed Kachinas) , 1985 Oil paintstick on paper 23 x 29 inches (58.4 x 73.7 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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164

Untitled (Greenish Skin) , 1983 Acrylic, colored crayon, oil paintstick, and pencil on paper 22 1/ 4 x 30 inches (56.5 x 76.2 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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166

Leonardo da Vinci's Greatest Hits, 1982

Acrylic, oil paintstick and paper collage on canvas 83 15/ 16 x 72 3/ 16 inches (213.2 x 183.4 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

167

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Academic Study of Male Figure, 1983

Two color silkscreen on Okawara rice paper, Edition of 13 40 x 31 1/4 inches (101.6 x 79.4 cm)

169

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983 Two color silkscreen in five parts, printed on

Okawara rice paper, Edition of 45 34 3/4 x 30 inches (88.3 x 76.2 cm)

171

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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE

Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983 Two color silkscreen in five parts, printed on

Okawara rice paper, Edition of 45 Each: 34 3/4 x 30 inches (88.3 x 76.2 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

173

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled, 1982 Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm)

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Untitled (Union of Burma Bank) , 1985

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Untitled (Heel) , 1986 Oil paintstick, graphite and acrylic on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

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Untitled (Koto) , 1986

Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 3/4 inches (74.9 x 106 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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Untitled (Estrella) , 1985 Oil paintstick, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 5/ 8 inches (74.9 x 105.7 cm)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST NOTE: None of the works on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat in this exhibition were titled or dated by the artist. The titles in parentheses are descriptive titles given to the works by someone other than the artist.

Untitled, 1981 Acrylic, marker, paper collage, oil paintstick, and crayon on canvas 48 1/ 2 x 62 inches (123 x 157.5 cm)

Untitled (Boxing Ring) , 1981 Oil paintstick on paper 1 1 22 / 8 x 30 / 8 inches (56.2 x 76.5 cm)

The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection Untitled (Grid) , 1981 Oil paintstick on paper 24 x 18 inches (61 x 45.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled, 1982

Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 22 1/ 2 x 28 1/ 2 inches (57.2 x 72.4 cm) The Schorr Family Collection Untitled (Just Sour) , 1982 Oil paintstick on paper 30 1/ 8 x 22 1/ 2 inches (76.5 x 57.2 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled (Bluto Nero) , 1982 Acrylic and oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 inches (76 x 56 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled (Scales of Justice) , 1982

Acrylic and oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

186

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

187 187

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

Untitled (Police Hospital) , 1983

Untitled (All Stars) , 1983

Untitled (Charlie Parker) , 1983

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

Oil paintstick, ink, acrylic, graphite and paper collage on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

Oil paintstick and ink on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

Untitled (Francesco Clemente) , 1983 Oil paintstick, ink and paper collage on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm)

The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled (Bird Headed Kachinas) , 1985 Oil paintstick on paper 23 x 29 inches (58.4 x 73.7 cm) The Schorr Family Collection Untitled (Herbert and Lenore Schorr) , 1983

Untitled (Walt Disney) , 1983

Acrylic on paper 30 x 22 3/8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm)

The Schorr Family Collection

The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled (King Alphonso XIII) , 1983

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 3/ 8 inches (76 x 56.8 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

188

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWING

189

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

Untitled (Greenish Skin) , 1983 Acrylic, colored crayons, oil paintsticks, pencils on paper 22 1/ 4 x 30 inches (56.5 x 76.2 cm)

The Schorr Family Collection Leonardo da Vinci's Greatest Hits, 1982

Academic Study of Male Figure, 1983

Untitled (Union of Burma Bank) , 1985

Acrylic, colored crayon, oil paintstick, and pencil on paper 83 15/ 16 x 72 3/ 16 inches (213.2 x 183.4 cm) The Schorr Family Collection; on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

Two color silkscreen on Okawara rice paper, Edition of 13 40 x 31 1/4 inches (101.6 x 79.4 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Oil paintstick on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled, 1982 Oil paintstick and graphite on paper

Untitled (Heel) , 1986 Oil paintstick, graphite and acrylic on paper 1 30 x 22 /4 inches (76 x 56.5 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled: From Leonardo, 1983 Two color silkscreen in five parts, printed on Okawara rice paper, Edition of 45 Each: 34 3/4 x 30 inches (88.3 x 76.2 cm)

The Schorr Family Collection

60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm) The Schorr Family Collection; on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

Untitled (Koto) , 1986

Oil paintstick and graphite on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 3/4 inches (74.9 x 106 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Untitled (Estrella) , 1985

Oil paintstick, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 29 1/ 2 x 41 5/ 8 inches (74.9 x 105.7 cm) The Schorr Family Collection

Jean-Michel Basquiat signing “In Plumbing,” Appenzell, 1982 Photograph by Stephen Torton

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Jean-Michel Basquiat in his studio on Great Jones Street, New York, 1987. Photograph by Tseng Kwong Chi.

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IMAGE CREDITS All works of art by Jean-Michel Basquiat are © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, New York 2014 Front cover: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Scales of Justice), 1982. Photograph by Kent Pell. Endpapers: Jean-Michel Basquiat at work on Punch Bag, January 1983. Photograph by Lee Jaffe / Hulton Archive / Getty Images. Page 2: Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1986. Photo by William Coupon. Page 6: Jean-Michel Basquiat at work on Punch Bag, January 1983. Photograph by Lee Jaffe / Hulton Archive / Getty Images. Page 8: Photograph © Beth Phillips. Page 10: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 14: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 15: Image detail of Untitled (History of Jazz), 1983. Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 17: Courtesy © New York Beat Films, LLC, By permission of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, all rights reserved. Page 19: Photograph © Beth Phillips. Page 20: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 22: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 24: Detail of Untitled (Herbert and Lenore Schorr), 1983. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 26: Photograph by Princeton University Art Museum. Page 27: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 29: Photograph © Paula Court. Page 30: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 32: Image detail of Untitled (Just Sour), 1982. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 35: Images courtesy of Akira Ikeda Gallery, Japan / © Akira Ikeda Gallery, Japan. Page 38, top: Art © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Page 38, bottom: Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Art© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Page 39: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 43: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 44-45: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 46-47: Photo by Bruce M. White. Page 51, top: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 51, bottom right: Photograph © Edward Keating / The New York Times / Redux. Page 5253: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 54: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 56: Photo © Christie’s Images / The Bridgeman Art Library. Page 57: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 58: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 59, left: Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art. Page 62: Image detail of Untitled (Grid), 1981. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 66, left: Image courtesy Sotheby’s. Page 67: Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Page 68: Photograph by the Princeton University Art Museum. Page 70: Image detail of Untitled (Bluto Nero), 1982. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 72: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 73, left: Photograph © Christie’s Images / The Bridgeman Art Library. Art © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Page 73, right: Photograph Paul Freeman / The Bridgeman Art Library. Page 75: Photograph Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles. Page 76-77: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 78: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 79, top: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 79, bottom: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 81: Photograph by Paula Goldman. Page 82-83: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 84-85: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 86: Image detail of Untitled (Boxing Ring), 1981. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 89: Photograph © George Hirose.

Page 90: Photograph Michael Halsband / Landov. Page 92: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 96: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 98: Photograph © Christie’s Images / The Bridgeman Art Library. Page 99: Photograph Studio Tromp, Rotterdam. Page 101: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 102: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 104: Image detail of Untitled (Charlie Parker), 1983. Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 106, right: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 107: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 109: Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery / Photo by Robert McKeever. Page 112-13: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 116: Image detail of Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, 1982. Photograph by Bruce M. White. Page 118: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 119: Photograph Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library. Page 120: © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014. Page 121: Photograph by Kent Pell. Page 122: Photograph by Susan Einstein.

Page 123: © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014. Page 126: Image detail of Untitled, 1982 (Page 174). Photograph Bruce M. White. Page 128: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 129: Image courtesy Galerie Enrico Navarra. Page 132: Image detail of Untitled, 1982 (Page 152). Photograph by Kent Pell.

Page 137: Jean-Michel Basquiat at work on Punch Bag, January 1983. Photograph Lee Jaffe / Hulton Archive / Getty Images. Pages 141-165: Photographs by Kent Pell. Page 167: Photograph by Bruce M. White. Pages 168-173: Photographs by Kent Pell. Page 174: Photograph by Bruce M. White. Page 177-183: Photographs by Kent Pell. Page 191: Photograph © Stephen Torton / ADAGP, Paris. Page 192: Photograph © 1987 Muna Tseng Dance Projects, New York. www.tsengkwongchi.com Page 195: Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Photograph by Andy Warhol. Collection of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Art © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

WORKS IN EXHIBITION

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acquavella Galleries would like to thank the staff at the Princeton University Art Museum, and particularly Associate Registrar James Kopp, for facilitating our borrowing the two works that have been on long-term loan to the museum at Princeton. Jeffrey Evans, Photographer and Manager of Visual Resources at the Princeton University Art Museum, kindly helped us with photography of several of the Schorr’s works that have been on loan to the museum.

We would like to warmly thank Galerie Enrico Navarra, including Romain Brun, Nathalie Prat-Couadeau, and Enrico Navarra, for their support of this project and for providing numerous images and information on works reproduced in this book.

For the design and production of this book, our sincere gratitude goes to our graphic designer, Henk van Assen and his staff including Anna Wexler at HvADESIGN. We are particularly thankful for all of the hard work our printer, Keith Harrington, and his team at Phoenix Lithographing, put into the production of our catalogues and books.

We are grateful to the following photographers, who kindly allowed us to reproduce their photos of Jean-Michel Basquiat: William Coupon, Michael Halsband / Landov, George Hirose, Muna Tseng (and Cindy Lee at Muna Tseng Dance Projects), Beth Phillips, Stephen Torton (and Marcia Mercadante), Maripol, Paula Court, and Naoki Okamoto. We would also like to acknowledge the following people for their help in securing images for this book: Marianne Aebersold at the Daros Collection; Jennifer Belt at Art Resource; Greg Burchard at The Andy Warhol Museum; Jina Dishman at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Helmy Frank at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands; the Suzanne Geiss Gallery; Clara Goldman at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Jeannine Guido at The Broad Art Foundation; Akira Ikeda Gallery; Lisbeth Murray at the Robert Miller Gallery; Seraina von Laer, Valerie Degoumois, and Tobias Mueller at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger; Peter Kersten at Getty Images; Zoe Larson at The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT; Elizabeth Piazza and Annie Maybell at Fashion Concepts; Elizabeth Portanova at Los Angeles Modern Auctions; James McKee at the Gagosian Gallery; Agata Rutkowska at the Royal Collection; Nicole Schloss at Sotheby’s; and Kajette Solomon at the Bridgeman Art Library. Our sincere thanks also go to Alan Baglia at the Artists Rights Society for his help securing copyrights for this book.

And last but not least, we would like to thank Ellen Cohen and Charles Miers for their enthusiasm about the publication and for organizing Rizzoli’s distribution of the book.

CURATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge what an absolute pleasure it has been to work on this exhibition and publication with Herb and Lenore Schorr and Acquavella Galleries.

I am grateful for the thoroughness, professionalism, and commitment of the gallery. I would especially like to acknowledge and thank Emily Crowley, with whom I have worked closely on this publication. As a writer, I have never had a more understanding and thoughtful editor; and for this I am truly appreciative.

It is now 32 years since I first met Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was instantly taken with both the artist and his work. Every time I consider his work I discover something new and unexpected. The study of the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat is a life-long pursuit.

ACQUAV E LLA 18 East Seventy-Ninth Street, New York, New York 10075 www.acquavellagalleries.com