Rare Basquiat Painting 'Monticello' Poised To Make $1.2 Million At Auction

"Monticello" was created in 1986, only two years before Basquiat's untimely death at 27 years old after overdosing on heroine. The piece, although less busy than his more well-known graffiti-swamped canvasses, weaves together diverse influences and styles in Basquiat's signature fashion. The young artist possessed a great talent for seamlessly folding together racial, political and economic references in a whirring visual language simultaneously naive and complex.

The painting depicts a U.S. five cent coin, circling around Monticello, the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, a stronghold of the slave trade. The image blatantly references the racist foundations of our country as well as Basquiat's personal narrative growing up as a black artist under economic hardship. He was a homeless teen before blowing up into art superstardom.

On the top of the coin reads "e pluribus unum," or "out of many, one," yet the last word has been scratched out. The erasure of the "unum" could point out the lack of truth in the common mythology of the United States' unity, or it could extend to Basquiat's multidimensional aesthetic, which erases the possibility of a singular meaning in favor of endless multiplicity. Though the piece might look simpler than Basquiat's more universally known paintings, there are enough meanings, influences and visual styles to keep you wrapped up in the work for days.

"Monticello" heads to auction as part of the Urban Contemporary Art Sale, hosted by Digard Auctions and Mary McCarthy, on October 25 at the Hotel Drouot in Paris. The work is expected to go for around $1.2 million, which isn't that bad considering two Basquiat paintings just sold for $4.3 million and just under $5 million at Frieze in London.

When Jean Michael Basquiat went to africa

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the first American artist of African descent to achieve international stardom, often referenced Africa or the African diaspora in his work. Take, for example, 1983′s “The Nile” (a painting that featured nods to Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Nile and the Nuba in Sudan) and “Gold Griot” (1984). So recently when I found a copy of Phoebe Hoban’s biography Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art — first published in 1998 by Viking — around the house, I was curious to read about Basquait’s relationship with the continent. But I also wondered if Basquiat (born in Brooklyn, NY, and son of a Haitian immigrant father and Puerto Rican mother) ever visited there.

The book, despite its “national bestseller” status and reviews in high-brow, mainstream US media outlets (reviewed here, here and here) focuses more on the tawdry details of Basquiat’s life (sex, drugs, and more sex and drugs) and is written in a sensationalist style. Nevertheless, it does gives an adequate account of what the art world in 80s New York City was like (according to reviewers who should know), especially about “the condescension and subtle racism” of Basquiat’s patrons.

But back to my focus. Basquiat, it seems, only traveled to the African continent once: an August 1986 trip for a show the art dealer Bruno Bischofberger had organized at the French Cultural Institute in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d’Ivoire. Hogan spends a few pages describing the visit. “It was Basquiat’s first and last trip to Africa,” writes Hoban. Bischofberger apparently had warned Basquiat (who was accompanied by his girlfriend Jennifer Goode) “… not to be disappointed that there were paved streets and skyscrapers in Abidjan, not just people living in primitive huts.” Writes Hoban:

‘He [Basquait] was hoping that very unsophisticated African people would see his show,’ said Bischofberger. ‘But everyone was invited there by the government, and there were three or four of the most famous artists in the country, and people who had been trained in Paris. It was not the man in the street who got to see Jean-Michel’s work.’

Despite this, Basquiat “enjoyed” meeting local artists–Hoban, for affect, uses the term “indigenous.”

These artists, however, ”… turned out to be more influenced by Western art than he had anticipated.” Then writes Hoban,

After the show, the group took a car trip through the countryside, to a tribe (sic) in Korhogo. ‘Jean-Michel was smoking so much pot, I wasn’t sure the chauffeur would be able to stay on the road,’ says Bischofberger. His wife, YiYo, took a lot of pictures. ‘The only thing you saw of black people was their eyes in the evening,’ she recalls.

Later in the book Hoban briefly describes Basquiat’s friendship with an Ivorian artist Outtara [Hoban does not provide a first name] who he had met met on a trip to Paris. They had planned to visit Abidjan, the Ivorian capital, in August 1988. Traveling with Kevin Bray, “a young video director who had befriended Jean-Michel,” they would “… go to Outtara’s village for a ritual cleansing. Outtara had arranged with the local shamans (sic) to perform a ceremony that would cure him of his addiction.”

But a few days later Basquiat was found dead in his apartment. Hoban–prone to drama (and what one reviewer described as her “Hollywood rendition of black culture”)–writes about how Outtara (already in Abidjan) received the news of Basquiat’s death. Some of reads like 19th century anthropology:

Outtara … at first though the news of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s death was a hoax, that Basquiat had staged a cynical ‘publicity stunt.’ When the news registered, he informed the shamans (sic) who who were waiting to cure Basquiat, ‘They did the ceremony for the dead,’ says Outtara. ‘It takes place at night, and involves an animal sacrifice. It’s related to voodoo. They wore masks, and prayed and did mystic dances around the fire all night long.’ As Gerard Basquiat [his father] was claiming his son’s body in the city morque, the African magic men were releasing his spirit in an ancient rite.

Basquiat died in New York City on August 12, 1988.

* This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on Leo Africanus, a previous incarnation of this blog.

Men’s Fashion Flash: Jay-Z’s Heat Vs. Hawks Game BassQuiat Snap Cap

Beyonce always gets the shine, but Jay-Z can pull together a few pieces! He recently took in the Miami Heat vs. Atlanta Hawks game with Lady Bey in a black v-neck and khakis, accented by Air Jordan 1 “Brooklyn Zoo” sneakers and a $100 IamRonBass BassQuiat SnapCap:

Basquiat

"To whites every black holds a potential knife behind the back, and to every black the white is concealing a whip." -- René Ricard, "The Radiant Child," 1984

Do you remember the moment in your childhood when you woke up to the dangers and injustices of the adult world? In the life Jean-Michel Basquiat, an American artist of Haitian/Puerto-Rican descent, that moment -- in which he glimpsed the hidden knives and whips -- stretched from his troubled early teens until his death at the age of 27 in 1988. Money, fame and drugs never dimmed the visions of racial injustice and historical abuses of power that both haunted him and fueled his imagination. Jean's sustained adolescent rage became the engine of his bracingly original art.

Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1988:Photograph by Dmitri Kasterine. Website: www.kasterine.com. Collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

To cope, and to assert his individualism, Basquiat developed an aesthetic parallel universe with its own impenetrable language of words, signs and symbols. In the words of Marc Mayer, the Director of the National Gallery of Canada, Basquiat "speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador." An auto-didact whose work parodies and subverts education and history, Jean-Michel Basquiat was the greatest outsider artist of the 20th Century.

Since his death, the art market has increasingly anointed him as one of its greatest insiders. Thousands of artists, would-be-artists, and poseurs have tried to emulate his trenchant precocity, and the results have been predictably lame. Basquiat's prickly intelligence is hard to match, and the esoteric poesia of his finest works is impossible to imitate. 
 

Jean-Michel Basquiat. In Italian, 1983. Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas with wooden supports and five smaller canvases painted with ink marker. Two panels: 88 1/2 x 80 inches overall (224.8 x 203.2 cm). © The Estate of Jean-­Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever.

At Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street in New York, an exhibition of over fifty works includes Basquiat's "In Italian," a quasi-religious diptych which displays an inflamed, contrarian and ultimately indecipherable commentary. It is worth commenting that this vital painting is now 30 years old: three years older than Basquiat was when he died of a drug overdose.

The title of the work offers viewers a suggestion -- that the painting is "In Italian" -- but there are several languages required to "read" the image. Basquiat often included words in his paintings and "In Italian" does have a single Italian word -- "SANGUE" (blood) -- which has been crossed out and replaced by its Latin counterpart: "SANGRE." There are also phrases and words in English, a mangled Italian name -- is it Paulo? -- and one word each in Spanish (AGUA) and Dutch (HOEK). So, inquiring visitors to Gagosian Gallery might start by asking: "Why the reference to Italian?"

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013

Italy and Italians played a major role in Jean's short career. The Italian Neo-Expressionist painter Sandro Chia was an early advocate for Basquiat's work, and helped introduced Jean to a dealer who had recently moved from Rome to SoHo: Annina Nosei. Basquiat later became friendly with artists Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, and his first one-man show -- "Paintings by SAMO" -- was held at the Emilio Mazzoli Gallery in Modena in May of 1981. Basquiat, who did not keep track of how many works he gave to Mazzoli, later told friends that the dealer had gotten a "bulk deal" and had ripped him off. On his second trip to Italy some years later Basquiat was detained by Italian customs officials before his departure, as the much wiser artist was carrying roughly $100k in cash, a sum they couldn't believe a young black visitor had earned simply by selling paintings.

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013

The main character of "In Italian" -- a blue headed figure on the right panel -- seems to stand for some kind of Christ as he might have appeared in a Baroque painting. After all, the phrase "CROWN OF THORNS" is printed above his cranium, with "THORNS" crossed out. The words SANGRE (Spanish for blood) and CORPUS© (Latin for body) are among other words and markings that appear on the figure's body, seemingly added up by a yellow cross that might be a plus sign which turns them into some sort of equation. Christ-like figures with floating crowns of thorns and African features make notable appearances in other Basquiat works.

In the left panel, the carefully labeled "DIAGRAM OF THE HEART PUMPING BLOOD" might be a reference to the "Sacred Heart," a symbolic representation of Christ's love for humanity, and also an emblem for many Roman Catholic institutions. It should be mentioned that although Jean did attend a Catholic high school -- where religious images must have made an impression -- he used religious imagery in a free-wheeling and personal way, hybridizing and personalizing European and African forms and rites.

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013 A Baroque image of the "Sacred Heart"

Those familiar with Basquiat's life story will also recognize that the heart diagram was likely recalled from Jean's early study of the book "Gray's Anatomy," which he read with morbid curiosity while recovering from being struck by a car when he was very young. And as it turns out, the "Christ" figure actually began as a portrait of Basquiat's friend and studio assistant Stephen Torton, who later recalled that Jean added the "CROWN OF THORNS" inscription after the two of them fought over a woman. One of the interesting aspects of "In Italian" is that it is, to some degree, a collaboration. Stephen Torton made its distinctive criss-crossed stretcher bars, and a graffiti artist known as "A1" made the group of small attached canvases that Basquiat biographer Eric Fretz says are like the small panels often found on the "predella" (platform) of an altarpiece.

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013 The predella of Duccio's "Maesta" Altarpiece, (1308-11)

Added to this Voudou/Catholic mix of esoterica are two images of Washington quarters, both dated 1951. Is it possible that the year 1951 refers to the beginnings of the American Civil Rights movement? It was, after all, the year that the father of an 8-year-old African-American sued the Kansas State School Board so that his daughter could attend an all-white school. That may or may not be the case, but in the left panel of "In Italian" LIBERTY is suspiciously crossed out and "IN GOD WE TRUST" is reduced to a sarcastic scrawl. Also, George Washington's right eye stares directly at the viewer, giving gallery-goers the creepymirada fuerte(strong glance) found in many Picasso portraits. The quarter on the right panel has been succinctly de-valued with the text "TEN CENTS." A forever de-contextualized date range -- 1594-1752 -- floats above.

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013 A 1951 Washington Quarter A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013

Despite the rich multiplicity of themes suggested by the words, dates and images of "In Italian," any effort to bring order to them is ultimately be doomed to frustration. Basquiat was a cultural and aesthetic channel-surfer whose sources are astonishingly diverse and disparate. His texts and images multiply uncertainty, and only Jean might have been able to tell us why he included the word "TEETH" four times, or whether the manic, Pinnochio-nosed green head on the right panel is meant to represent the apostle PAULO (Paul).

A detail of Jean-Michel Basquiat's "In Italian." © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, ARS, New York 2013

Puzzling out Jean's meanings is an engaging game, but "In Italian" was never meant to be translated. Jean's best works manage to pull off a balancing act: they mix references, cultures and images with conviction, but elude coherence. Does "In Italian" have things to say about racism? Very likely, yes. Does it subvert religion, culture and language to make a personal moralistic statement? Probably. Can it be assigned a fixed message? No.

The best way to understand "In Italian" is to keep in mind what Basquiat once said about his art in general: "It's about 80 percent anger."

I'd say the other 20 percent is about mystery.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT February 7 - April 6, 2013 Gagosian Gallery 555 West 24th Street New York, NY 10011

The Radant Child

King of Art BASQUIAT

           BASQUIAT BOI

Redefined Culture

AN ARTIST INSPIRED BY BASQUIAT

Traver Dodorye is a young artist on the rise of success who is inspired by Jean Michel Basquiat

Basquiat's Ex-Girlfriend Reveals Major Trove of Unseen Works

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Indie Pix Films

A young Jean-Michel Basquiat

by Rachel Corbett

Published: March 27, 2013

Before Jean-Michel Basquiat could afford studios and canvases, he painted all over his apartments — on walls, doors, refrigerators, and any other bare surface he could find. In 1979, the still unknown artist began transforming his girlfriend Alexis Adler’s East Village home into just such a living installation, covering one wall in a glyph-like mural that reads “Olive Oyl,” painting crowns and “Famous Negro Athletes” on a door, and the word “Milk" on a radiator. Although the couple broke up a year later, and Basquiat died in 1988, Adler, now an embryologist at New York University, bought the apartment they once shared and never painted over his work.

Obviously that turned out to be a wise decision — as was storing his notebooks, postcards, painted clothes, photographs, and drawings on yellow legal paper. Thirty years later, Adler has now begun to assemble a team of advisors to help sort through the material in preparation for a book on the collection and, in all likelihood, an exhibition and sale. “Part of the issue has been that I am a working biologist who has raised two kids on my own and have not had time or energy to deal with it,” Adler said. “Now is the time, however.”

 

That’s an understatement given Basquiat’s current superstardom. Thousands of attendees visit the 24th Street Gagosian Gallery each day to see thesurvey of Basquiat paintings that opened last month. In November, bidders topped out his auction record at $26.4 million. And, next year, an exhibition of Basquiat’s notebooks is scheduled to open at Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne.

Adler has enlisted Basquiat’s former assistant,Stephen Torton, to represent her in future sales, and she already has interest from filmmaker Sara Driver and art critic Luc Sante, a college friend of Adler’s who's a good candidate to write an essay for the upcoming book. Fine Art Restoration's Lisa Rosen is refurbishing and removing the wall, and former Gracie Mansiongallery director Sur Rodney Sur has catalogued the 65 or so items in the collection.

“The thing that’s most interesting is the material she has to support the actual artwork,” Sur said. Apart from the paintings and drawings, Adler has a script for a play Basquiat wrote and some 50 rolls of 35mm film documenting the artist at work, modeling his painted clothes, and just going about everyday life (back when he still sported a shaved head). “A lot of the signage he used in his work over and over again, this was when he was developing it. The idea that it’s all together in one place makes it even more important.”

For instance, Sur credits Basquiat’s sometime depiction of scientific formulas and compounds to his time with Adler, who was a biology student in those days. He said Basquiat was fascinated by her textbooks and copied much of the imagery.

Adler has not confirmed any plans for a sale yet, but the endeavor would have interesting results. For one thing, the market for Basquiat's archival material remains largely untested. “Auctions typically like blue-chip work, not ephemera,” said art advisor Wendy Cromwell. While Christie’shas had success selling off a trove of minor works from the Andy Warhol Foundation, that collection bears the estate’s stamp of approval. The Basquiat Authentication Committeeendorsed six of Adler's paintings and drawings before disbanding last year.

Private sales, however, seem to be opening up to certain kinds of nontraditional works from the era, like Keith Haring’s subway drawings, which were once impossible to authenticate but have been popping up on the market more frequently in recent times. Three years ago, a 1984 Basquiat door, also painted with crowns, sold at Phillips for a hefty $1.8 million.

Educational institutions present another viable opportunity for the collection. “I would think theSmithsonian would be all over this kind of thing, the archives of American art, where you would want a repository of photographs documenting the work,” said Cromwell.

This early work, after all, is most likely to attract serious Basquiat fans and scholars who are interested in the artist’s evolution. “When he was partnered with Alexis they were just a couple; no one then knew that Basquiat would become what he became. That's why this work is so important,” said Sur. “We tend to get trapped in what we know of his art production and think of everything as an extension to that model, which it’s not. These were very important explorative times for him, although his signature style was already formed.”

Regardless, Adler is in no hurry. She says she is financially secure and has already waited 30 years, after all. “I just want to show it,” she said. Her two children are now grown and she has a boyfriend who lives uptown, which means that these days her cats are the main witnesses to the mural. “And that’s a damn shame,” she said, “because it’s a beautiful piece of art.”

An artist inspired heavily by Basquiat

A Brief update on Traver Dodorye recent work. Stay tuned.....................