Estate of the artist
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in November 1994

Paris, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Peintures, April - June 1996
New York, C&M Arts, Naked Since 1950, October - December 2001, cat. no. 26
New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, The Other Side, May - July 2006, p. 83, illustrated in color

Thomas McEvilley, "Royal Slumming: Jean-Michel Basquiat Here Below," Artforum, November 1991, pg. 95
Kyoichi Tsuzuki, "Jean-Michel Basquiat." Art Random, 1992
Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat , Paris 1996, 2nd ed., vol. II, cat. no 9, p. 62, illustrated in color
Tony Shafrazi, Jeffrey Deitch, Richard D. Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1999, p. 83, illustrated in color
Richard Marshall and Jean-Louis Prat, Jean-Michel Basquiat , Paris 2000, 3rd ed., vol. I, p. 69, illustrated in color and vol. II, cat. no 9, p. 86, illustrated in color

This painting is in excellent condition. For further information, a condition report has been prepared by Terrence Mahon, Painting Conservator, New York City. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 to receive this report. The canvas is framed in a silver rubbed black painted wood strip frame with a small float.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Untitled from 1981 is an early and extraordinarily authoritative work addressing the artist's formative concerns of race, identity and mortality.  These issues lay at the conflicted depths of Jean-Michel Basquiat's own consciousness, which inspired some of his most potent autobiographical work, including the present work.  Dating from his earliest formal years as an artist, having secured a studio space in the basement of Annina Nosei's New York gallery in the same year, this painting impresses with its raw execution and powerfully defiant subject. As a vehicle for the many tributaries of thought that inform Basquiat's aesthetic process, Untitled stands as one of the most engaging and comb🐼ative warrior-figure paintings of his early yea♍rs.

Confronting the viewer is a physical and violent figure, crudely delineated and boldly portrayed, with both arms thrust in upheaval. The figure appears provoked and on the imminent attack, as the raised right foot and arrows near the gloved right hand suggest. This black combatant, depicted as part ❀skeleton with a mask-like face, seems unable to speak, truly emblematic of the struggles of a black man in a white society. Basquiat further draws upon his ancestry and art historical knowledge of and interest in primitive African sculpture with the prominence of the genitals in red oilstick. Great blocks of paint, in orange, blue, and black and white, infuse an implosion of energy and anger in the composition that cannot be overloo♛ked, as an almost carnal and raw sentiment sweeps across the canvas, highlighted by the blood-red legs over a white skeletal support.

Born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a Haitian father and a New York Puerto Rican mother, from an early age Basquiat's mixed heritage instilled in him the mentality of an outsider and with it a concurrent rebellious freedom. He grew up multilingua﷽l and remembered as a child being taken by his mother on visits to the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. From these early beginnings, Basquiat was a self-taught artist who used his vast visual and cultural knowledge to create a fresh and entirely unique iconography.

A prolific draftsman, Basquiat littered his studio with sketches and notebooks.  Seemingly trying to exorcise the demons within, Basquiat made numerous frantic and explosively expressive drawings of warrior-figures.  These drawings, particularly those from 1980 - 1982 were used and reused as constant reference material.  The raw spontaneity captured in these drawings was a visual resource for Basquiat's works on canvas.  His freshly urban and totally unique brand of intellectualized primitivism was informed by a full spectrum of art historical and cultural sources, including Leonardo da Vinci, graffiti an🍰d cave art, Cy Twombly, Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, the religious and cultural influences from his Haitian/Puerto Rican family and the gritty urban environment of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.

In his observations of art history, Basquiat recalled rarely, if ever, seeing any depictions of black people in paintings. It is no surprise then, as a black artist functioning in a white dominated art world, that he championed black figures from Egyptian times up to this century, and honed a voice for inequality as well as a creative vision that served as a means of self discovery. Untitled shares many of the attributes one finds in works openly designated as self-portraits or autobiographical. There is a sense of the artist's own inner conflict here, referenced particularly by his typical thorny and barbed crown or halo. ꦇThe issues of race and status addressed throughout his oeuvre are inherently present in this compelling image. Emotionally charged, it provides an authentic commentary on how Basquiat perceived many of the pertinent issues within American contemporary society.