NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Nov 13 @ 19:00UTC-5 : EST/CDT
Property From a Private american Collector
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
(1961-1988)
self-portrait
signed and dated "1985"
on the reverse
acrylic, oil stick, crown cork and
bottle caps on wood
35 x 59 in. (88.9 x 149.8 cm)
executed in 1985
ESTIMATE: $400,000-600,000
PROVENANCE
Private collection
LITERATURE
R.D. Marshall, JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, PARIS, 2000, p. 231 (illustrated)
The most common denominator of Jean-Michel Basquiat's œuvre is its hybridity. Throughout his tragically brief career, Basquiat mixed his media with unbridled freedom, often combining painting, drawing, collage and silk
SCREENED images onto a single canvas. The artist also absorbed a vast array of stylistic influences into his own signature idiom. He liberally quoted from the history of art, while also drawing inspiration from the urban street culture of New York City. This sophisticated mixture of high and low sources is certainly apparent in the present work. Here the canvas is covered with broad strokes of brown and beige paint. The swift, energetic brushwork and cascades of dripping pigment recall the techniques of Abstract Expressionism. As though describing the stylistic fusion of the present work, Robert Farris Thompson has explained that, "Basquiat himself did not parody Abstract Expressionism, as Pop masters sometimes did. As he fused his sources, his mood was more complex: humor, play, mastery, and stylistic companionship. He brought into being first-generation (Franz Kline) and second-generation (Cy Twombly) Abstract Expressionist citations and mixed them up amiably with cartoon, graffiti, and other styles. In the process, he physicalized fused signs of erudition and amiability with his own invented break-pattern art, his own, uniquely arrived at, auto-bricolage" (Robert Farris Thompson, "Royalty, Heroism, and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat," Jean-Michel Basquiat, exh. cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1992, p. 36).
As the present work, SELF-PORTRAIT, 1985, demonstrates, the human figure remained the central focus of Basquiat's paintings. "Basquiat's career divides into three broad though overlapping phases, each characterized by a shift of style, subject matter, and reference. In the earliest, from 1980 to late 1982, Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas, most often depicting skeletal figures and mask-like faces that signal his obsession with mortality, and imagery derived from his street existence, such as automobiles, buildings, police, children's sidewalk games, and graffiti.... He quickly abandoned the automobile and cityscape as subject, and introduced his unique depiction of man, specifically black man. Basquiat's early figures are frontal and flat, of stick-figure simplicity, and often partially reveal their internal skeleton and organs. Most pronounced is a halo or crown of thorns that lends the figures a superiority, specialness, and religious aura" (Richard Marshall, "Repelling Ghosts," ibid., pp. 15-16). Basquiat's aforementioned death obsession may be noted in the present figure, whose torso seems painfully severed just below the shoulders. Here the body suddenly terminates in ragged brushstrokes and dripping pigment. Also notable is the simple frontal and flat conception of the head, which is made intense by the black contours of paint, which then crown his head with wild shoots of his twisted, dreadlock hair, and Basquiat paints the eyes and mouth dramatically in white, giving the appearance of both fear and surprise. Moreover, the boldly painterly gesture of SELF-PORTRAIT, in addition to the collaged element arrangement creates a powerful image, and ultimately a Basquiat masterwork.
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Saturday November 1, 2003 10am to 5pm
Sunday November 2, 2003 1Pm to 5pm
Monday November 3, 2003 10am to 5pm
Tuesday November 4, 2003 10am to 5pm
Wednesday November 5, 2003 10am to 5pm
Thursday November 6, 2003 10am to 5pm
Friday November 7, 2003 10am to 5pm
Saturday November 8, 2003 10am to 5pm
Sunday November 9, 2003 1Pm to 5pm
Monday November 10, 2003 10am to 5pm
Tuesday November 11, 2003 10am to 5pm
Wednesday November 12, 2003 10am to 5pm
Additional Fees:
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