JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
The Guilt of Gold Teeth, 1982
Acrylic, spray paint and oilstick on canvas
94.5 x 165.9 inches (240 x 421.3 cm)
Titled ‘“THE GUILT OF GOLD TEETH”’ (lower left)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘MODENA / JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT 1982’ (lower right)
Signed, titled, inscribed and dated again ‘”THE GUILT OF GOLD TEETH” Jean-Michel Basquiat 1982 MODENA” (on the reverse)
Provenance
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich
Galerie Thomas, Munich
Private collection, Europe
Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 14 May 1998, lot 45
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
USD 40,000,000
Source: Christie’s
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) (christies.com)
Painted in 1982, the seminal year of the artist’s career, The Guilt of Gold Teeth is an epic painting filled with the enigmatic words, signs and cyphers that occupy the very best examples of the artist’s work. In this particular example, Basquiat carefully balances color and form by combining shifting fields of rich pigment with spray painted graffiti to produce one of his most intriguing and dramatic canvases. With strong visual references to his Haitian heritage, this is one of a group of works that Basquiat painted during a momentous trip to Modena, Italy in 1982. Measuring nearly fourteen-feet wide, and eight-feet tall, this is one of the largest paintings that Basquiat executed in this crucial year. On this monumental scale, the artist arranges painterly layers of personal experience, cultural recollection, and his life in New York City, to produce a bustling and intoxicating canvas. Against a painterly backdrop of warm shades of atomic tangerine and cool blues, Basquiat presents the figure of Baron Samedi. As Master of the Dead, Samedi is an important figure in Haitian Voodoo, and indeed, his top-hat, painted face, and dark frock coat, mark him out as an imposing figure.
The Guilt of Gold Teeth was created Jean-Michel Basquiat during his second stay in Modena, Italy. The artist had a planned show at Emilio Mazzoli’s gallery in Modena in March 1982. Feeling exploited, the show was cancelled because Basquiat was pressured to churn out eight canvases in one week. He severed ties with Mazzoli and his New York dealer Annina Nosei shortly thereafter.
The gigantic painting, which measures almost 14 feet across, features Baron Samedi, chief of the Guede family of Ioa in Haitian Vodou, responsible for accepting individuals into death and resurrection. The keeper of death’s iconography includes a black top hat and long black coat, and his face painted like a skull. Basquiat, whose father was from Haiti, also portrayed Baron Samedi in his 1987 painting Después de un Puño.
The Guilt of Gold Teeth was sold at Sotheby’s for $387,500 in 1998. In November 2021, it sold for $40 million at Christie’s 21st Century Art Evening Sale in New York.