Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Private Collection, London

Exhibition Catalogue, Marseilles, Musée Cantini, Jean-Michel Basquiat, une rétrospective, 1992, p. 85, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art and travelling, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1993, p. 175, illustration of another example in colour
Frankin Sirmans and Tony Shafrazi, Eds., Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York 1999, p.170, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Chiostro del Bramante, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Dipinti, 2002, p. 77, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Brooklyn Museum; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Basquiat, 2005-6, p. 118, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Copenhagen, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Warhol & Basquiat, 2011-12, p. 72, illustration of another example
in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals very thin and stable hairline stretching cracks to the overturn edges. There are two diagonal faint rub marks, one towards the centre of the top edge and one towards the centre of the left edge. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Although created in 1982-1983 at the early zenith of the artist's career, Basquiat's Tuxedo can be seen as a coda to his entire oeuvre, summarising in diagrammatic form the iconography that underpins his groundbreaking contribution to contemporary art. In this wall-sized canvas, the complex matrix of words, symbols and hieroglyphs contains the cypher to unlock meaning in his paintings. Like the hobo sign code that migratory workers used to navigate their way along the railroad, the various symbols and words inscribed in Tuxedo trace a journey through the thematic preoccupations of꧒ Basquiat's oeuvr✨e.

For more than any other artist of his generation, words formed a key component in Basquiat's visual lexicon and in his paintings he successfully married text and image to breathe new life into the medium. As Klaus Kertess observes: "He loved words for their sense, for their sound, for their look; he gave eyes, ears, mouth – and soul – to words". (Klaus Kertess, 'The Word' in Larry Warsh, Ed., Jean Michel Basquiat: The Notebooks, New York 1993, p. 17). Like Cy Twombly, Basquiat used text as a compositional device, mercurially transforming writing into drawing and giving it equal status. Highly personal, much of this idiosyncratic language derived from his disjointed street poetry with which he marked his trail around Lower Manhatten as the graffiti artist SAMO. But his mainstream success derived from the ease with which he absorbed imagery from the streets, the newspapers and TV, popular culture together with the spiritualism of his Haitian heritage, juxtaposing street wisdom with educated thought. The panoply of references is collected and mapped out in the present work, in which Basquiat reduces vast histories into their complex essence. Rather like one of Josef Beuys's blackboards that enshrine the vast substance of one of his performances, the white on black scrawl of Tuxedo contains in shorthand the entirety of Basquiat's thought pro🎐cess. A cursory glance reveals complex references to the various disciplines of anatomy, geography, cartography, dentistry, the Bible, chemistry, alchemy and the dictionary, all hierarchically arranged in tiers and linked together with directional arrows and surmounted by his trademark symbol: the three-pointed crown.🌃

In this dense matrix, half words, erased words, and revised phrases all contribute to the play between the conscious and the unconscious in the mid of the artist. As the artist says, "I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them more" (the artist interviewed by Robert Farris Thompson, March 1987, cited in Exhibition Catalogue, Basel, Beyeler Foundation, Basquiat, 2010, p. XXII). References to African American history abound, to Egypt, Tunisia, The Bronze Head of Benin held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as well as more general historical refere🎀nces to the Mayflower, Aztec civilisation, a sequence of Popes, the King of England and the auto-da-fé rituals of public penance used by the Spanish Inquisition. Juxtaposed with the greats of history are Basquiat's latter day heroes (and villains), like Malcolm X, Sugar Ray Robinson, Al Jolson, Mary Ann Wright, Henry Ford and Madonna, who he was dating at the time. Geographical locations from his ancestral home of Port au Prince in Haiti, to Tokyo and the Men's Shelter on Third Street vie with symbols of American cultural hegemony, like dollar bills, soda, Disney, popcorn and pork ribs.

Based on sixteen works on paper which are today housed between the Whitney Museum of American Art and prestigious private collections, Tuxedo is Basquiat's earliest use of the silkscreen, a technique which under the influence of Warhol became increasingly important in Basquiat's painting thereafter. Included in the recent retrospective of Basquiat's work at the Beyeler Foundation and travelling, Tuxedo rightly holds its place alongside Basquat's most important work🐭s.