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拍品專文
Untitled is a large and important mural-like painting that Basquiat executed at the height of his new-found fame in 1982. Widely known under the title of 'The Saint', this untitled painting develops one of the key motifs of Basquiat's art by concentrating on the powerful and mesmeric figure of a halo-capped 'hero' raising his arms in an ambiguous gesture that suggests both triumph and anger, admonishment and defiance.
Echoes of this figure dominate many of Basquiat's most important paintings of the period and seem to embody something of the artist's own personal ambivalence towards his rapidly achieved success. Like the majority of Basquiat's finest figures, this raw, powerful and crudely rendered image seems to shiver with a frenetic energy as if the figure has an electric current running through it. Conjuring an overall vision of a bad acid trip on Sesame-Street, the monstrous orange-faced figure with its radiating halo seems both terrifying and awe-inspiring - like a child's drawing of a fire-and-brimstone preacher gone berserk.
A large panoramic painting of wall-like proportions, Untitled seems less like the monumental canvas that it actually is and closer to a heavily graffiti-ed street wall or billboard hoarding. This urbanizing effect is embellished by the fact that Basquiat has painted over and obliterated a considerable amount of under-painted imagery with large white-wash-like sweeps of paint that conjure mental associations with the painterly abstraction of artists like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. Over this the sparse calligraphic scrawls of crudely-drawn crosses and of cartoon ducks appear as if they are symbolic records of some archaic numerical system. Seeming more like crucified crows than the decoy-ducks that Basquiat once identified them as in his famous interview with Marc Miller, these often featherless birds became a favoured motif in Basquiat's art over the next few years. Part comic-book, part cave art, the eccentric flock of birds painted here forms part of an ever-developing lexicon of personal mythology that, like his much celebrated list of black heroes (ranging from Marcus Garvey to Charlie Parker), populated his paintings with increasing regularity during this early period in his career. The formal association of these birds with the golden crucifixes in the painting seems to reinforce the suggestion that these birds - like so many of his 'heroes' - are totemic symbols of the sacrificial victim. The fact that these birds would later become transformed into shooting-gallery figurines also seems to reinforce this notion.
Righteous indignation and anger seems to seep from the central figure whose rage and energy impresses itself on the entire canvas. A variation of similar figures that appear in other important paintings from 1982, including Profit, Asbestos and Untitled (Baptism), this haloed creature is clearly a figure of importance. The halo, like the crown, is a pictorial device used by Basquiat to bestow a kind of mystical significance on the central figures of his art, and, like the crown, can be seen as both a symbol of success and as a burden. Indeed Basquiat's halos often double as crowns-of-thorns and adorn the figures of criminals as well as those of saints, heroes and mystics.
This figure, which seems to levitate like a ghost above a hole in the ground, is distinguished by the letters 'Aa'. The repeating of the letter 'a' is a common device in Basquiat's early paintings and often looks like a semi-literate and repetitive scream, but when simply doubled in this manner it can also be seen to refer to one of Basquiat's personal heroes - the legendary baseball player Hank Aaron. Aaron, who is best known for breaking Babe Ruth's extraordinary record of seven hundred and fifteen home runs, was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, after many years of having suffered appalling racial abuse under the Southern 'Jim Crow' laws of segregation. It was undoubtedly this rising above racial oppression to become a 'star', as well his remarkable athletic prowess, that would have appealed to Basquiat and led to the athlete being included in the artist's personal pantheon of heroes. While it is by no means clear that the figure in this painting refers to Aaron, the figure's fierce energy and partially triumphant pose emulates many of Basquiat's portraits of triumphant athletes and boxers. In Untitled this pose seems to suggest that this defiant figure has triumphed over extreme adversity as well as the failure and obscurity that rewarded so many other anonymous dead black heroes - heroes who are perhaps here represented by the bleak white landscape of skeletal crows and golden crucifixes. In this contest, the presence of a halo above this figure and its spectral-like features does, however, suggest that this triumph has perhaps come about only in or through death. Premature death was, after all, another favourite and auspicious theme of the artist.
Executed while Basquiat was famously painting in the basement of Annina Nosei's gallery, Untitled was painted towards the end of the artist's tenure with Nosei. It was also one of the paintings selected to represent Basquiat at the documenta VII in 1982. Twenty one years old at the time, Basquiat still remains the youngest artist ever to be represented at any documenta, and his first showing at this prestigious exhibition alongside such luminaries as Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly caused a sensation. For despite the tenderness of his years and the newness of his art, Basquiat's large and powerful paintings were universally seen to hold their own alongside the strongest work of the major figures in contemporary art.
Echoes of this figure dominate many of Basquiat's most important paintings of the period and seem to embody something of the artist's own personal ambivalence towards his rapidly achieved success. Like the majority of Basquiat's finest figures, this raw, powerful and crudely rendered image seems to shiver with a frenetic energy as if the figure has an electric current running through it. Conjuring an overall vision of a bad acid trip on Sesame-Street, the monstrous orange-faced figure with its radiating halo seems both terrifying and awe-inspiring - like a child's drawing of a fire-and-brimstone preacher gone berserk.
A large panoramic painting of wall-like proportions, Untitled seems less like the monumental canvas that it actually is and closer to a heavily graffiti-ed street wall or billboard hoarding. This urbanizing effect is embellished by the fact that Basquiat has painted over and obliterated a considerable amount of under-painted imagery with large white-wash-like sweeps of paint that conjure mental associations with the painterly abstraction of artists like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. Over this the sparse calligraphic scrawls of crudely-drawn crosses and of cartoon ducks appear as if they are symbolic records of some archaic numerical system. Seeming more like crucified crows than the decoy-ducks that Basquiat once identified them as in his famous interview with Marc Miller, these often featherless birds became a favoured motif in Basquiat's art over the next few years. Part comic-book, part cave art, the eccentric flock of birds painted here forms part of an ever-developing lexicon of personal mythology that, like his much celebrated list of black heroes (ranging from Marcus Garvey to Charlie Parker), populated his paintings with increasing regularity during this early period in his career. The formal association of these birds with the golden crucifixes in the painting seems to reinforce the suggestion that these birds - like so many of his 'heroes' - are totemic symbols of the sacrificial victim. The fact that these birds would later become transformed into shooting-gallery figurines also seems to reinforce this notion.
Righteous indignation and anger seems to seep from the central figure whose rage and energy impresses itself on the entire canvas. A variation of similar figures that appear in other important paintings from 1982, including Profit, Asbestos and Untitled (Baptism), this haloed creature is clearly a figure of importance. The halo, like the crown, is a pictorial device used by Basquiat to bestow a kind of mystical significance on the central figures of his art, and, like the crown, can be seen as both a symbol of success and as a burden. Indeed Basquiat's halos often double as crowns-of-thorns and adorn the figures of criminals as well as those of saints, heroes and mystics.
This figure, which seems to levitate like a ghost above a hole in the ground, is distinguished by the letters 'Aa'. The repeating of the letter 'a' is a common device in Basquiat's early paintings and often looks like a semi-literate and repetitive scream, but when simply doubled in this manner it can also be seen to refer to one of Basquiat's personal heroes - the legendary baseball player Hank Aaron. Aaron, who is best known for breaking Babe Ruth's extraordinary record of seven hundred and fifteen home runs, was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, after many years of having suffered appalling racial abuse under the Southern 'Jim Crow' laws of segregation. It was undoubtedly this rising above racial oppression to become a 'star', as well his remarkable athletic prowess, that would have appealed to Basquiat and led to the athlete being included in the artist's personal pantheon of heroes. While it is by no means clear that the figure in this painting refers to Aaron, the figure's fierce energy and partially triumphant pose emulates many of Basquiat's portraits of triumphant athletes and boxers. In Untitled this pose seems to suggest that this defiant figure has triumphed over extreme adversity as well as the failure and obscurity that rewarded so many other anonymous dead black heroes - heroes who are perhaps here represented by the bleak white landscape of skeletal crows and golden crucifixes. In this contest, the presence of a halo above this figure and its spectral-like features does, however, suggest that this triumph has perhaps come about only in or through death. Premature death was, after all, another favourite and auspicious theme of the artist.
Executed while Basquiat was famously painting in the basement of Annina Nosei's gallery, Untitled was painted towards the end of the artist's tenure with Nosei. It was also one of the paintings selected to represent Basquiat at the documenta VII in 1982. Twenty one years old at the time, Basquiat still remains the youngest artist ever to be represented at any documenta, and his first showing at this prestigious exhibition alongside such luminaries as Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly caused a sensation. For despite the tenderness of his years and the newness of his art, Basquiat's large and powerful paintings were universally seen to hold their own alongside the strongest work of the major figures in contemporary art.