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Lot Essay
The role of the black hero plays a central role in Basquiat's art. From cultural leaders such as Marcus Garvey and Muhammed Ali to Basquiat's own favourite Bebop heroes Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie, black heroes appear frequently in his paintings like mythological talismans of a personal mythology. As Untitled illustrates, Basquiat did not restrict himself to painting well-known figures, he also often celebrated the many great unknown black heroes that have, due to the racism of history, remained faceless, nameless and anonymous. Like his more specific paintings depicting the 'undiscovered genius of the Mississippi Delta', Untitled portrays the face of another anonymous hero. Like all of Basquiat's heroes, this figure has been crowned as a King by the artist - a pictorial device that Basquiat frequently used to identify the divinities of his own personal pantheon.
The bestowing of a symbol of royalty upon his own personal - and always black - heroes is an act that not only has a profound cultural resonance, but one that more importantly had deep personal significance for Basquiat with regard to his own sense of identity as the first black painter to make the big-time. Despite his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was never able to shake off being seen as a black man and as a novelty. Even at the height of his fame he was often unable to get a taxi in New York, while in the art world, where he was undoubtedly a 'king', he was patronised as being a Van Gogh of the ghetto - an ingenue whose work was the product of a great raw and untamed talent. Consequently much emphasis was put upon the supposed primitivism and raw expressionism of Basquiat's painting and little attention was paid to the underlying sophistication of the aesthetic that he had consciously evolved from the hip, cynical and subversive street art that he had made under the guise and pseudonym of SAMO.
As a result of the way he came to be perceived by an art world all too eager to find what it needed within the persona Basquiat presented, Basquiat himself developed an ever-increasing insecurity about his own identity and position within the art establishment. "I wanted to be a star not an art world mascot" - he once complained. In its own way Untitled addresses these issues. An early work from Basquiat's key breakthrough year, (the year 1982 when he was famously painting in the basement of Anina Nosei's gallery), the painting is an expressionistic jumble of painterly form dominated by the spectral image of a crowned face. Somewhat reminiscent of the half-desperate, half-triumphant figures that populated many of Basquiat's 1982 paintings and culminated in the paintings Profit 1 and Self-Portrait, the figure of the anonymous king can also be seen as an allegorical self-portrait. The crown representing the symbol of the fame and stardom that Basquiat had always sought while the tormented ghost-like face of the figure wearing it conveys a sense of the uneasiness with which such a formal honour is worn. The crown was a trademark for Basquiat that had previously adorned his SAMO tag, in Untitled however, it has evolved into a more powerful symbol that speaks also of the potential for tragedy that unhappily proved all too true in Basquiat's case. As Basquiat had caustically pointed out in his 1982 homage to his idol Charlie Parker, 'Most Young Kings Get Thier Heads Cut Off' (sic). By the following year, Basquiat was voicing his private fears in public. In an interview for Art News he explained his uneasiness with his new role declaring that "I felt much more happy about all this in the beginning when I was coming from the extreme situation of not having any money at all; and then there was the fact that there weren't many black painters - so I had the feeling that I was doing it for people other than just me - and the fun of being the youngest and being pitted against the adult element. I like the business part of it, the notion that I'm working for myself, (but) maybe I'm selling my soul to the devil or something."
Julian Schnabel, in his 1996 movie of the artist's life, made much from the following story that, he claimed, Basquiat's mother would often tell the young Jean-Michel. It is a story that sums up much of Basquiat's life and of the figure in Untitled. "There was this little prince with a magic crown. An evil warlock kidnapped him, locked him in a cell in a huge tower and took away his voice. There was a window made of bars. The prince would smash his head against the bars hoping that someone would hear the sound and find him. The crown made the most beautiful sound that anyone ever heard. You could hear the ringing for miles. It was so beautiful, that people wanted to grab the air. They never found the prince. He never got out of the room. But the sound he made filled everything up with beauty."
The bestowing of a symbol of royalty upon his own personal - and always black - heroes is an act that not only has a profound cultural resonance, but one that more importantly had deep personal significance for Basquiat with regard to his own sense of identity as the first black painter to make the big-time. Despite his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was never able to shake off being seen as a black man and as a novelty. Even at the height of his fame he was often unable to get a taxi in New York, while in the art world, where he was undoubtedly a 'king', he was patronised as being a Van Gogh of the ghetto - an ingenue whose work was the product of a great raw and untamed talent. Consequently much emphasis was put upon the supposed primitivism and raw expressionism of Basquiat's painting and little attention was paid to the underlying sophistication of the aesthetic that he had consciously evolved from the hip, cynical and subversive street art that he had made under the guise and pseudonym of SAMO.
As a result of the way he came to be perceived by an art world all too eager to find what it needed within the persona Basquiat presented, Basquiat himself developed an ever-increasing insecurity about his own identity and position within the art establishment. "I wanted to be a star not an art world mascot" - he once complained. In its own way Untitled addresses these issues. An early work from Basquiat's key breakthrough year, (the year 1982 when he was famously painting in the basement of Anina Nosei's gallery), the painting is an expressionistic jumble of painterly form dominated by the spectral image of a crowned face. Somewhat reminiscent of the half-desperate, half-triumphant figures that populated many of Basquiat's 1982 paintings and culminated in the paintings Profit 1 and Self-Portrait, the figure of the anonymous king can also be seen as an allegorical self-portrait. The crown representing the symbol of the fame and stardom that Basquiat had always sought while the tormented ghost-like face of the figure wearing it conveys a sense of the uneasiness with which such a formal honour is worn. The crown was a trademark for Basquiat that had previously adorned his SAMO tag, in Untitled however, it has evolved into a more powerful symbol that speaks also of the potential for tragedy that unhappily proved all too true in Basquiat's case. As Basquiat had caustically pointed out in his 1982 homage to his idol Charlie Parker, 'Most Young Kings Get Thier Heads Cut Off' (sic). By the following year, Basquiat was voicing his private fears in public. In an interview for Art News he explained his uneasiness with his new role declaring that "I felt much more happy about all this in the beginning when I was coming from the extreme situation of not having any money at all; and then there was the fact that there weren't many black painters - so I had the feeling that I was doing it for people other than just me - and the fun of being the youngest and being pitted against the adult element. I like the business part of it, the notion that I'm working for myself, (but) maybe I'm selling my soul to the devil or something."
Julian Schnabel, in his 1996 movie of the artist's life, made much from the following story that, he claimed, Basquiat's mother would often tell the young Jean-Michel. It is a story that sums up much of Basquiat's life and of the figure in Untitled. "There was this little prince with a magic crown. An evil warlock kidnapped him, locked him in a cell in a huge tower and took away his voice. There was a window made of bars. The prince would smash his head against the bars hoping that someone would hear the sound and find him. The crown made the most beautiful sound that anyone ever heard. You could hear the ringing for miles. It was so beautiful, that people wanted to grab the air. They never found the prince. He never got out of the room. But the sound he made filled everything up with beauty."