Jean-Michel Basquiat: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict

Jean-Michel

Basquiat Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict Written by Fred Hoffman

*Portions of this text were first published in the author’s book The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. 2017, Enrico Navarra Gallery, New York and Paris.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict was executed sometime in late 1982. The work was produced for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s November 1982 exhibition at the FUN Gallery. The central section of this complex and highly unusual multipanel construction includes the word morte directly above the image of a crucifix, implying that the artist’s reference to death embraces human mortality. Given the title of this work, Basquiat’s reference to death may have autobiographical implications.

This work is one of the artist’s most complex, delicate and unconventional multipanel paintings. It is composed of 10 separate wood surfaces that have been hinged, nailed or joined together, forming an irregular picture support.

Basquiat’s 1982 exhibition at the FUN Gallery included a number of paintings executed on unorthodox picture supports. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict is different. While many of the other works included in this seminal exhibition are loosely, even flimsily constructed, they all more or less conform to the traditional, rectilinear shape of a painting. In contrast, the shape of the picture support of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict is one of the most irregular in the artist’s oeuvre. This is not accidental, or the result of carefree exploration. I propose that Basquiat constructed this particular support to subtly link his work to an established pictorial tradition: that of the Renaissance altarpiece. As John Berger notes in his text on the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, “The altarpiece, no less than a Greek tragedy or a 19th-century novel, was originally planned to encompass the totality of life and an explanation of the world.”[1] Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict assumes a votive function. Like the altarpieces depicting Christ, the Madonna, saints and patrons in cathedrals and chapel apses that draw the worshipper from temporal existence to a spiritual higher plane, Basquiat’s work helps to explain his vision of the world and proposes that the viewer approach his subject with a degree of reverential submission.

Because the head in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict has none of the specificity of the other self-portraits executed at this time, such as Self Portrait as a Heel, Part Two or Dos Cabezas, this aspect of the work does not really provide any insight into the character or personal attributes of the artist. Rather, iconographic evaluation of the work’s imagery and the different kinds of pictorial actions undertaken by the artist in the realization of this work reveals the degree to which Basquiat was focused upon himself.

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Through a decoding of Basquiat’s imagery and techniques, it becomes evident that self-scrutiny and self-evaluation are the subjects of this work.

In contrast to Basquiat’s more “iconic” representations of the young black male, in which there are allusions to power, determination and conviction, the iconography of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict concerns a more mysterious and ultimately more introspective young black man.

While the work’s right panel represents an individual, possibly the artist, in the left panel Basquiat’s subject is graffiti culture and the art of the street.

This portion of the work is composed of separate pieces of wood that have been hinged together at both top and bottom, over which is a sheet of metal.

Both the wood and metal surfaces show signs of wear, as if they had been used and were marked and tagged. While some tags were from this picture surface’s earlier incarnation as part of a window or door, other bits of graffiti imagery were made by the artist. The double “S” markings on the center piece resemble other marks and gestures found in Basquiat’s paintings from this time, when he was transitioning from street to studio artist. The artist’s complete engagement with the pictorial surface is clear in the way the metal part has been layered with paint, oil paintstick drawing and drips of paint running over the edge of the metal and onto the surrounding wood.

This is significant given the work’s title, which suggests a personal statement of the artist himself. Graffiti had conflicting associations for Basquiat.

While he spent time on the streets of New York, he always saw himself as an artist committed to the defining issues of modernist painting. Having earlier produced artworks signing as SAMO, when he was tagging buildings in New York City, by 1982, Basquiat was exclusively immersed in the studio production of paintings and works on paper. While the entire picture support used in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict came from found materials (except the hinges, purchased from a hardware store), this work was completely constructed and painted in his Crosby Street studio.

Basquiat maintained close ties to those artists who continued as graffitists and executed their creative visions on both public and private property in New York City. For Basquiat, graffiti was not only part of his artistic foundation but also a culture he continued to embrace and support.

The left panel of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict represents Basquiat’s “shout-out” to the aesthetics of graffiti.[2] While it became less and less a part of Basquiat’s art production, there are continued references to graffiti style in his paintings and works on paper, such as the “S” symbol. ▶

THIS PAGE: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DERELICT, 1982 PRIVATE COLLECTION © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

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The central panel of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict also includes references to graffiti culture. In this portion of the work, Basquiat’s words, symbols and images are interspersed among layers of paint against a black or gray background. Basquiat’s choice of color for the background portions of this section was carefully planned. Here the artist pays homage to one of the most important realizations of graffiti art: Keith Haring’s white chalk drawings on the black paper used to cover advertisements in the New York City subway stations.[3] Between 1981 and 1985, Haring executed an estimated 500 drawings on New York City subway station platforms, all during daylight hours. For these four years, as Barry Blinderman put it: Having turned the Manhattan Transit Authority into his own museum of the underground, his ever-changing exhibition was open to the public 24 hours a day, for the price of a token.[4] As Blinderman also notes:

It isn’t stretching it to take note of where Haring chose to place his largest body of work. The multiple meanings of underground are so applicable to Haring’s subway work: an avant garde — a secret, stealthy or illegal activity — a clandestine political movement — and, of course, another term for subway.[5] In terms of its aesthetic as well as sociocultural function, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict is significantly different from Keith Haring’s subway drawings. Basquiat’s painting was created in the studio. The pictorial surface, beginning with the construction of the picture support, was built up progressively. Even though it conveys the impression of great spontaneity, the completed pictorial surface is the result of a systematic layering of images, words and quickly applied gestural strokes of paint. While Basquiat’s techniques result in a highly resolved and compelling pictorial composition, aspects of this work are strongly reminiscent of the actions of the graffitist.

Reinforced by Basquiat’s reference to the urban milieu in his depiction of a skyscraper on the right edge of the central panel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict may be seen as Basquiat’s tribute to his fellow artist and his radical undertaking.

Not every image or text included in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict is part of Basquiat’s reflection on graffiti culture and mortality. In deciphering the many images included in the painting, we begin to recognize that when the artist undertook a work with a multifaceted iconography, he often introduced subthemes into a picture. One example is his allusion to the fruits of his labor becoming a commodity. The artist addresses the commodification of art when he writes the word salt at the bottom of the work’s central panel. As presented in this picture, as well as in several other paintings produced at this time, including Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982) and The Nile (1983), salt references the historic trade

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of this important product. The Moors traded salt for gold in sub-Saharan Africa; wars were fought in the American colonies over salt and salt taxes.

When Gandhi resided in South Africa, he led the Salt Satyagraha protests over the production of salt, which was then illegal under British rule.

While Basquiat’s reference to salt is an acknowledgment of its historic value in various cultures, he also links this mineral’s significance to his own life as a young artist creating a product. For Basquiat, the inclusion of the word salt makes this connection — a product with both aesthetic and quantifiable value.

Tangentially, today, when the art market regularly assigns significant value to the artworks of Keith Haring, his subway drawings trade for considerably less than those works produced by him in his studio. Because the provenance of the subway drawings is difficult to determine, the estate of the artist has chosen not to issue certificates of authenticity for these works, and the auction houses have often declined to offer them for sale. Haring’s subway drawings are not regularly traded, and their value is difficult to assess. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, with its allusions to these works, draws attention to the question of their value.

Unraveling the meaning of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict requires the viewer to link together seemingly disparate images and texts. Such is the case with the work’s references to human anatomy. A good portion of the central panel of the work focuses on the subject of the human ankle. Throughout Basquiat’s career, references to human anatomy were often featured in paintings, drawings and silkscreen prints[6] and also became the overall subject of a work. A case in point is Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, a reflection on the Renaissance painter’s famed anatomical studies, painted at the same time as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, for Basquiat’s 1982 exhibition at the FUN Gallery. Here, Basquiat’s repeated references to anatomical parts, especially the word heel, refer to the capacities of the human body in the context of work, particularly the social, cultural and economic practice of servitude. While Basquiat was clearly fascinated with the human form, in Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits it became a counterpoint to the representation of a black man toiling on a railroad track with a sledgehammer raised over his head. The artist contrasts aspects of an idealized human being with a symbol of the physical toil and suffering mankind has unleashed upon those less fortunate.

In the central panel of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, Basquiat drew two ankles, above which he wrote the ankle © and below, repeated three times, ankle, ankle, ankle. Positioned between images and the repeated word is a white crown floating against a darker background. It is the inclusion of this three-pointed icon that clarifies Basquiat’s intent. In the jargon of the street, reference to the ankle implies the idea that “you broke his ankles,” suggesting domination. In the context of street sports, Basquiat’s representations of the ankle imply an offensive move to evade a defender,

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causing the defender to lose his balance and stare stupidly as the offensive player passes him by. Given the multiple references in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict to graffiti culture and Keith Haring’s subversive acts below the streets of New York City, Basquiat’s juxtaposition of this particular part of the human anatomy and his crown was his means of heralding these artists’ actions.

a threat to commonly held societal practice. Basquiat’s young derelict is that individual willing to die for his vision. The painting becomes a shrine or altarpiece honoring those fallen heroes, those alienated young derelicts who are perceived as a threat to society. In an earlier time, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict could have been a painting installed on the high altar of a cathedral, replete with symbols and references heralding a fallen soul whose spirit is eternally present.

There are only a few works in the oeuvre with such a descriptive title as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict. Surely the painter was aware of James Joyce’s novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Basquiat was not concerned with the people, events or historical context of the novel. He saw the compelling literary title as an inspiration for his own recognition of graffiti artists, whom he saw as cultural heroes but society regarded as renegades, outliers, outlaws and derelicts. They challenged the status quo by breaking established societal codes regarding property. By 1982, JeanMichel Basquiat was no longer tagging public spaces around New York, but he was still friends with many active graffitists. He was emotionally invested in their practice and in many ways saw their situation as his own. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict foreshadows the destiny of the graffitist, and his own fate. With this in mind, Basquiat included the word morte above the cruciform in the lower right portion of the painting’s central panel. While the representations of the human ankle most probably allude to victory or triumph, they are juxtaposed with Basquiat’s references to death.

In Basquiat’s 1982 FUN Gallery exhibition, he placed Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict next to a small sculpture, See Plate III. This small object contains the same quotation from the Book of Luke as does the painting. The sculpture is in two parts, a wooden four-legged base with texts on its flat sides, above which rests a black canvas-covered box construction with text and images on each of its surfaces (four sides and top). The hic e[st] rex text is on two faces of this small, highly unusual work. Given its references to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and that both painting and sculpture were created at the same time and for the same exhibition, one can speculate that Basquiat saw this small object as a companion piece to the painting. While Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict functioned as “the high altar,” See Plate III was a more portable votive shrine honoring the vision, the lifestyle, the commitment of those street artists who were so much a part of Basquiat’s life and artistic vision.

The allusion to death in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict became real for a member of his graffiti crew. One year after the completion of the painting, Michael Stewart, a young black graffiti artist and close friend of Basquiat, was arrested and subsequently died of injuries sustained while in the custody of the New York City police. As noted by Keith Haring: One thing that affected Jean-Michel greatly was the Michael Stewart story. . . . He was completely freaked out. It was like it could have been him.

It showed him how vulnerable he was.[7] Jean kept saying, “It could have been me. It could have been me.” [8] In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict, Basquiat equated his plight and destiny — and by extension that of graffitists, the young derelicts with whom he so closely identified — with the historical figure of Jesus Christ at the moment of his crucifixion. In the right panel of the painting, Basquiat wrote and then crossed out the words hic e[st] rex. This phrase comes from Luke 23:38 in the New Testament: And there was also a superscription written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: “This is the King of the Jews” [“Hic Est Rex Judaerom”].

In this light, Basquiat’s “portrait” or characterization of the artist is not merely that of a derelict but also a martyr whose foresight is perceived as

Keith Haring might have recognized the meaning as well as the accessibility of this small work, for after the FUN Gallery exhibition he acquired it from the artist. As Tseng Kwong Chi’s 1987 photograph documents, for some time (possibly until Haring’s death, at which time it was sold), it was on the floor of the living room they shared, below the double portrait of Haring and Tseng Kwong Chi painted by Andy Warhol.

Endnotes [1] John Berger, “Matthias Grünewald,” Portraits. London, Verso Press, 2015, page 50.

[2] Very few other works by the artist have such specific focus on this subject. One other is in a private California collection.

[3] The author has written extensively on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s close friendship and association with Keith Haring (Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works on Paper from the Schorr Family Collection, 2014. New York, Acquavella Gallery and Rizzoli publishers); and evidence of that association are the several works on paper Basquiat produced depicting both himself and his fellow artist, including the drawing portraying the two engaged in the boxing ring.

[4] Barry Blinderman, Keith Haring: Future Primeval. New York, 1990, page 18.

[5] Ibid., page 19.

[6] See Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing. Acquavella, New York, 2014.

[7] Quoted in Anthony Haden-Guest, “Burning Out,” Vanity Fair, November 1988, pages 180-98.

[8] Recounted to Franklin Sirmans by Suzanne Mallouk in his biographical notes for Jean-Michel Basquiat, Whitney Museum, 1992, page 243 and footnote 40.