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Lot Essay
With its vivid depiction of a horse, adorned with the artist’s signature ‘crown of thorns’, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled captures the explosion of his artistic language in 1981: a crucial year in his career. This was the moment Basquiat’s rise to fame accelerated, as critical buzz, key gallery support, and a rapidly expanding audience pushed him into the global spotlight. Rendered in explosive strokes of oilstick and acrylic, the work marks his monumental leap from street art practices to a distinctive, electrifying studio language. With its untamed, triumphant energy, it featured in the major survey exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2015.
Evoking power, heroism, and the relentless progression of human civilization, the horse is a dynamic, historically-charged subject. Across cultures and eras, it has been a faithful companion in battle, exploration, labour, and innovation. In Chinese culture, the horse is a powerful symbol of energy, speed, and success. As a fire sign in Chinese astrology, it signifies dynamism and passionate energy. Basquiat spent long hours in New York’s museums, and was attuned to the histories of art and mythology. He frequently referenced stories from Greek mythology, including the legendary Trojan Horse — an icon of meticulous military strategy that enabled the Greeks to infiltrate Troy marked pivotal moment that transformed the course of the Trojan War.Horses were also used for royal processions, symbolizing prestige, authority, and elevated status. Basquiat would revisit the subject, subverted in haunting skeletal form, in his poignant masterwork Riding with Death (1988), executed in the final year of his life.
In the present work, Basquiat embellishes the horse with one of his most important motifs. Evocative of religious iconography, yet simultaneously evoking a buzzing electric circuit, the halo-like crown of thorns became a symbol of bravado, martyrdom and creative energy. It crowned many figures across his practice: from fellow artists such as Keith Haring, to the celebrated Black musicians and athletes he admired, to his own self-image. Basquiat defined the focus of his art as “Royalty, heroism, and the streets” (H. Geldzahler, Art: From the Subways to Soho, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Interview, January 1983). Here, he pays tribute to an animal that has carried people through centuries of upheaval and transformation. At once celebratory and solemn, noble and burdened, the crown of thorns captures the complicated, often contradictory nature of heroism itself: the glory it bestows and the cost it demands.
“[I was] inspired by John Cage at the time – music that isn’t really music. We were trying to be incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful.” — Jean-Michel Basquiat
(J-M Basquiat, quoted in E. Fretz, Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography, Santa Barbara 2010, p.39).
During the early 1980s, Basquiat transformed visual mark-making into a rhythmic, almost musical force. Here, in dialogue with the horse motif, the repeated letters become a driving auditory pulse that animates the entire composition. The pictorial space crackles with repeated letters “RRR,” aggressive lines, and layered textures. This raw visual intensity is inseparable from his musical background. Basquiat spent his formative years in the band Gray, and even after leaving the group in 1981, the improvisational, percussive spirit remained deeply embedded in his artistic approach. His paintings feel alive, almost audible and buzzing with the restless pulse of music. Basquiat was also heavily inspired by cartoons and worked in his studio to a steady thrum of televisual noise. In this work, the insistent “RRR” seems to become a visual onomatopoeia, echoing the rumble of hooves and the breath of an animal in motion.
1981 stands as a watershed year in Basquiat’s career — the moment he transitioned from an emerging downtown talent to a formidable force in the international art world. During this pivotal period, he vaulted from the margins into widespread recognition: first catapulted into fame with his inclusion in Diego Cortez’s New York/New Wave exhibition. That show assembled artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, blending creative worlds in a way that echoed Basquiat’s own multifaceted sensibility. He subsequently held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, Italy, and secured a studio beneath his primary art dealer Annina Nosei’s Prince Street gallery, gaining rapid gallery and national visibility. By the end of the year, René Ricard crowned him ‘The Radiant Child,’ a title that would ignite his ascent to legend. Works from this period reveal a confident, ambitious young artist discovering the full potential of his visual language.
With its rich, neo-expressionist textures, the present work on paper belongs to a vital body of Basquiat’s output from 1981–83. The bold, vibrant acrylic paint and frenetic, quasi-spontaneous oilstick lines capture the immediacy, spontaneity, and gritty atmosphere of early 1980s New York. During these years, Basquiat’s works on paper were not secondary gestures but bold experiments where he forged a new syntax of mark-making. Many of these drawings remained unexhibited during his lifetime, underscoring their personal resonance: his oilstick heads from this period are currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The present work offers an intimate glimpse of Basquiat’s burgeoning language—direct, unfiltered, and alive with the creative urgency that would define his artistic approach.
Evoking power, heroism, and the relentless progression of human civilization, the horse is a dynamic, historically-charged subject. Across cultures and eras, it has been a faithful companion in battle, exploration, labour, and innovation. In Chinese culture, the horse is a powerful symbol of energy, speed, and success. As a fire sign in Chinese astrology, it signifies dynamism and passionate energy. Basquiat spent long hours in New York’s museums, and was attuned to the histories of art and mythology. He frequently referenced stories from Greek mythology, including the legendary Trojan Horse — an icon of meticulous military strategy that enabled the Greeks to infiltrate Troy marked pivotal moment that transformed the course of the Trojan War.Horses were also used for royal processions, symbolizing prestige, authority, and elevated status. Basquiat would revisit the subject, subverted in haunting skeletal form, in his poignant masterwork Riding with Death (1988), executed in the final year of his life.
In the present work, Basquiat embellishes the horse with one of his most important motifs. Evocative of religious iconography, yet simultaneously evoking a buzzing electric circuit, the halo-like crown of thorns became a symbol of bravado, martyrdom and creative energy. It crowned many figures across his practice: from fellow artists such as Keith Haring, to the celebrated Black musicians and athletes he admired, to his own self-image. Basquiat defined the focus of his art as “Royalty, heroism, and the streets” (H. Geldzahler, Art: From the Subways to Soho, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Interview, January 1983). Here, he pays tribute to an animal that has carried people through centuries of upheaval and transformation. At once celebratory and solemn, noble and burdened, the crown of thorns captures the complicated, often contradictory nature of heroism itself: the glory it bestows and the cost it demands.
“[I was] inspired by John Cage at the time – music that isn’t really music. We were trying to be incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful.” — Jean-Michel Basquiat
(J-M Basquiat, quoted in E. Fretz, Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography, Santa Barbara 2010, p.39).
During the early 1980s, Basquiat transformed visual mark-making into a rhythmic, almost musical force. Here, in dialogue with the horse motif, the repeated letters become a driving auditory pulse that animates the entire composition. The pictorial space crackles with repeated letters “RRR,” aggressive lines, and layered textures. This raw visual intensity is inseparable from his musical background. Basquiat spent his formative years in the band Gray, and even after leaving the group in 1981, the improvisational, percussive spirit remained deeply embedded in his artistic approach. His paintings feel alive, almost audible and buzzing with the restless pulse of music. Basquiat was also heavily inspired by cartoons and worked in his studio to a steady thrum of televisual noise. In this work, the insistent “RRR” seems to become a visual onomatopoeia, echoing the rumble of hooves and the breath of an animal in motion.
1981 stands as a watershed year in Basquiat’s career — the moment he transitioned from an emerging downtown talent to a formidable force in the international art world. During this pivotal period, he vaulted from the margins into widespread recognition: first catapulted into fame with his inclusion in Diego Cortez’s New York/New Wave exhibition. That show assembled artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, blending creative worlds in a way that echoed Basquiat’s own multifaceted sensibility. He subsequently held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, Italy, and secured a studio beneath his primary art dealer Annina Nosei’s Prince Street gallery, gaining rapid gallery and national visibility. By the end of the year, René Ricard crowned him ‘The Radiant Child,’ a title that would ignite his ascent to legend. Works from this period reveal a confident, ambitious young artist discovering the full potential of his visual language.
With its rich, neo-expressionist textures, the present work on paper belongs to a vital body of Basquiat’s output from 1981–83. The bold, vibrant acrylic paint and frenetic, quasi-spontaneous oilstick lines capture the immediacy, spontaneity, and gritty atmosphere of early 1980s New York. During these years, Basquiat’s works on paper were not secondary gestures but bold experiments where he forged a new syntax of mark-making. Many of these drawings remained unexhibited during his lifetime, underscoring their personal resonance: his oilstick heads from this period are currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The present work offers an intimate glimpse of Basquiat’s burgeoning language—direct, unfiltered, and alive with the creative urgency that would define his artistic approach.