JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Untitled, 1983
Silkscreen ink on canvas
57 1/2 x 75 1/2 inches (146.4 x 191.8 cm)
Signed and dated 1983 (on the reverse)
10 plus 2 artists proofs were made of this image, published by New City editions, Venice, CA.

Provenance
New City Editions, Venice
Akira Ikeda Gallery, Japan
Tony Shafrazi, New York (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)
Christie’s New York, 12 May 2005, lot 558 (consigned by the above)
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Auction History
Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
USD 3,680,000

Untitled | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

 

 

Brimming with tremendous graphic force and ferocious mark-marking, Untitled from 1983 is a riveting embodiment of the instinctive and unrivaled brilliance which distinguishes Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic oeuvre. One of a suite of twelve works executed in 1983, the present work emerges from a pivotal period in Basquiat’s career as he rose to extraordinary heights of critical and commercial prominence. Replete with the hallmark iconography and dazzling energy of Basquiat’s unique and coveted pictorial lexicon, Untitled fuses image, word, and gesture in a vibrant medley that contends with some of the most important and enduring subjects and concerns of the artist’s pioneering practice. Based on a collage of 28 drawings mounted on canvas, and drawn over in oil-stick, Untitled inverts the black-on-white palette of this original creation to create stark white marks on black-dominated canvas: a subversive commentary that flips the marginalization of Blackness on its head. Notably, the present work has been held in the collection of celebrated New York gallerist and artist Tony Shafrazi for over fifteen years; a friend and contemporary of Basquiat’s, Shafrazi championed the young artist’s work since the early 1980s, and hosted several pivotal exhibitions of his work.

A portrait of the artist’s unfiltered poetic thoughts, Untitled emerges with a dynamic symbolic resonance. For the present series of silkscreens, Basquiat chose to invert the original work, in which his off-white notebook pages were scrawled over with black oil stick. Emerging from a field of black, a single white, mask-like face radiates like a ghostly apparition; void of detail, the blank face is punctuated by a pair of cavernous eyes. Behind the central figure, Basquiat’s notebook pages create a compositional grid, a cacophony of text and imagery that, when taken as a whole, map out the vast genius of Basquiat’s inner thinking. Limited to a monochromatic palette and inverting the positive and negative space of the original composition, the present composition reads like a photographic negative; restrained and refined, Untitled possesses an arresting elegance that evokes the rigor of minimalism while remaining deeply informed by Basquiat’s gritty, street aesthetic.