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Lot Essay
‘I’m not a real person. I’m a legend’ (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
Hauntingly prophetic and deeply introspective, the present work stands among Jean-Michel Basquiat’s last self-portraits. Executed in 1988, shortly before his death in August that year, it captures the whirlwind of celebrity and anguish that defined his final days. The work is drawn on a lithograph of the artist’s own poster design for his exhibition at Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, which took place in the early months of 1988. Beneath his name—written over by hand—Basquiat has daubed his own image, rendered with visceral vitality of his early oilstick heads. He is clad in a bow tie: an art world star ready to receive his public. At the same time, his head is gaunt and skull-like, eyes glaring and mouth wide open. A spoon, laden with untold meaning, hovers before him, the word struck through in conflicted doubt. Basquiat painted self-portraits throughout his oeuvre, grappling repeatedly with the force of his own legend. In Riding with Death, the Eroica paintings and others of 1988, the twenty-seven-year-old artist began to picture his own mortality. Like the late self-portraits of Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol, the present work weaves heroism and fatalism into a poignant reminder of life’s fragility.
Currently the subject of a groundbreaking exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Basquiat’s oilstick heads represent a key strand of his practice. Begun during the early 1980s, they took on a life of their own, with many only emerging after the artist’s death. These works remain some of his most raw, intimate and instinctive creations, channelling a lifelong fascination with human anatomy. Behind closed doors, and away from the machinations of the marketplace, the artist gave himself over to the fluid properties of oilstick, embracing its rich and expressive immediacy. Heads reigned supreme, their forms alive with electric, neuronal charge. The curator Anders Kold describes them as ‘archive[s] of emotions and spiritual and mental states’: sites where the noise of the outside world imploded (A. Kold, ‘Something Becomes Visible’, in Basquiat: Headstrong, exh. cat. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 2026, p. 30). While these works undoubtedly nourished Basquiat’s major skull paintings, they also stood alone, deeply wired into the artist’s hand and mind.
Basquiat’s complex self-images run like a golden thread through his practice. The artist was just twenty when he shed the pseudonymous street tag ‘SAMO’, and took his place at the forefront of the New York art world. Within a year of his breakout exhibition at MoMA P.S.1, he had rocketed to international acclaim. In 1982 he was the youngest artist to exhibit at Documenta VII in Kassel; in 1985, he was hailed as the face of contemporary art on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. His self-portraits confronted his own spiralling mythology, casting himself by turns as hero and martyr. At times he aligned himself with the greats: the athletes, musicians and other icons he admired. The spoon in the present work might be seen to nod to the centuries-old ‘spoonful’ trope—a metaphor for pleasure—explored by blues songsters from Charley Patton to Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James and others. Elsewhere, Basquiat painted himself in crowns of thorns, riffing on Christian iconography. In one canvas, he famously scrawled the words ‘Most young kings get their heads cut off’.
By 1988 Basquiat was more conscious than ever of his conflicted status. ‘I’m not a real person. I’m a legend’, he said in one of his final interviews (J-M. Basquiat, quoted in A. Haden-Guest, ‘Burning Out’, Vanity Fair, November 1988, p. 197). The artist had been deeply affected by the death of Warhol the previous year. The two had become close friends as well as collaborators, with the older artist serving as something of a mentor to his young colleague. In his late series of self-portraits, Warhol had held a mirror up to his mercurial identity, seemingly bearing his soul to the viewer through his direct gaze yet ultimately—dressed in a wig—continuing to hide in plain sight. Basquiat’s grief continued to linger as he rode the waves of his own success: in tandem with the Düsseldorf exhibition in early 1988, he mounted shows at Galerie Yvon Lambert and Galerie Beaubourg in Paris, followed by further presentations in Salzburg and New York. A preoccupation with death wrote its way into his works, palpable in the skeletal danse macabre of Riding with Death, and the repeated incantation ‘man dies’ that proliferates across two Eroica paintings. Even his heroes, Basquiat realised, were not immortal.
The curator Jeffrey Deitch delivered the eulogy at Basquiat’s funeral. ‘He was a personality unlike any other—a remarkable breadth, intelligence, passion, sympathy, generosity’, he told the congregation. His ‘charisma’ and ‘strength of character’, he went on, was such that even ‘a few lines drawn on paper could communicate so much’ (J. Deitch, quoted in P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 1988, p. 311). The present work, ultimately, bears witness to this statement. Within a single oilstick head, Basquiat captures a life lived through art: from the child who pored over Gray’s Anatomy and the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, to the young man working tirelessly in his studio to the thrum of cartoons and hip-hop music. It tells of days spent in the Brooklyn Museum looking at tribal masks and ancient Egyptian artefacts, and hours spent in front of Picasso’s Guernica at the Museum of Modern Art. His line crackles with energy; the surface quivers with the trace of his hand. It is a moving testament to an artist whose career was all too brief, and one who would live on through his art.
Hauntingly prophetic and deeply introspective, the present work stands among Jean-Michel Basquiat’s last self-portraits. Executed in 1988, shortly before his death in August that year, it captures the whirlwind of celebrity and anguish that defined his final days. The work is drawn on a lithograph of the artist’s own poster design for his exhibition at Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, which took place in the early months of 1988. Beneath his name—written over by hand—Basquiat has daubed his own image, rendered with visceral vitality of his early oilstick heads. He is clad in a bow tie: an art world star ready to receive his public. At the same time, his head is gaunt and skull-like, eyes glaring and mouth wide open. A spoon, laden with untold meaning, hovers before him, the word struck through in conflicted doubt. Basquiat painted self-portraits throughout his oeuvre, grappling repeatedly with the force of his own legend. In Riding with Death, the Eroica paintings and others of 1988, the twenty-seven-year-old artist began to picture his own mortality. Like the late self-portraits of Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol, the present work weaves heroism and fatalism into a poignant reminder of life’s fragility.
Currently the subject of a groundbreaking exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Basquiat’s oilstick heads represent a key strand of his practice. Begun during the early 1980s, they took on a life of their own, with many only emerging after the artist’s death. These works remain some of his most raw, intimate and instinctive creations, channelling a lifelong fascination with human anatomy. Behind closed doors, and away from the machinations of the marketplace, the artist gave himself over to the fluid properties of oilstick, embracing its rich and expressive immediacy. Heads reigned supreme, their forms alive with electric, neuronal charge. The curator Anders Kold describes them as ‘archive[s] of emotions and spiritual and mental states’: sites where the noise of the outside world imploded (A. Kold, ‘Something Becomes Visible’, in Basquiat: Headstrong, exh. cat. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 2026, p. 30). While these works undoubtedly nourished Basquiat’s major skull paintings, they also stood alone, deeply wired into the artist’s hand and mind.
Basquiat’s complex self-images run like a golden thread through his practice. The artist was just twenty when he shed the pseudonymous street tag ‘SAMO’, and took his place at the forefront of the New York art world. Within a year of his breakout exhibition at MoMA P.S.1, he had rocketed to international acclaim. In 1982 he was the youngest artist to exhibit at Documenta VII in Kassel; in 1985, he was hailed as the face of contemporary art on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. His self-portraits confronted his own spiralling mythology, casting himself by turns as hero and martyr. At times he aligned himself with the greats: the athletes, musicians and other icons he admired. The spoon in the present work might be seen to nod to the centuries-old ‘spoonful’ trope—a metaphor for pleasure—explored by blues songsters from Charley Patton to Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James and others. Elsewhere, Basquiat painted himself in crowns of thorns, riffing on Christian iconography. In one canvas, he famously scrawled the words ‘Most young kings get their heads cut off’.
By 1988 Basquiat was more conscious than ever of his conflicted status. ‘I’m not a real person. I’m a legend’, he said in one of his final interviews (J-M. Basquiat, quoted in A. Haden-Guest, ‘Burning Out’, Vanity Fair, November 1988, p. 197). The artist had been deeply affected by the death of Warhol the previous year. The two had become close friends as well as collaborators, with the older artist serving as something of a mentor to his young colleague. In his late series of self-portraits, Warhol had held a mirror up to his mercurial identity, seemingly bearing his soul to the viewer through his direct gaze yet ultimately—dressed in a wig—continuing to hide in plain sight. Basquiat’s grief continued to linger as he rode the waves of his own success: in tandem with the Düsseldorf exhibition in early 1988, he mounted shows at Galerie Yvon Lambert and Galerie Beaubourg in Paris, followed by further presentations in Salzburg and New York. A preoccupation with death wrote its way into his works, palpable in the skeletal danse macabre of Riding with Death, and the repeated incantation ‘man dies’ that proliferates across two Eroica paintings. Even his heroes, Basquiat realised, were not immortal.
The curator Jeffrey Deitch delivered the eulogy at Basquiat’s funeral. ‘He was a personality unlike any other—a remarkable breadth, intelligence, passion, sympathy, generosity’, he told the congregation. His ‘charisma’ and ‘strength of character’, he went on, was such that even ‘a few lines drawn on paper could communicate so much’ (J. Deitch, quoted in P. Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, London 1988, p. 311). The present work, ultimately, bears witness to this statement. Within a single oilstick head, Basquiat captures a life lived through art: from the child who pored over Gray’s Anatomy and the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, to the young man working tirelessly in his studio to the thrum of cartoons and hip-hop music. It tells of days spent in the Brooklyn Museum looking at tribal masks and ancient Egyptian artefacts, and hours spent in front of Picasso’s Guernica at the Museum of Modern Art. His line crackles with energy; the surface quivers with the trace of his hand. It is a moving testament to an artist whose career was all too brief, and one who would live on through his art.