Untitled
Basquiat, who grew up in Brooklyn the child of Puerto Rican and Haitian parents, rose to fame in the early 1980s as part of the street graffiti scene of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Known first by the tag name SAMO ("SAMe Old shit"), Basquiat was a skilled painter whose large-scale works and drawings combined clever wordplay in English, French, and Spanish with a panoply of signature images in bright colors. Here, in his characteristic all-caps hand, the artist inscribed stream-of-consciousness spills of words on slips of notepaper, assembling them with delicate drawings of animal skeletons.
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled
- Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, Brooklyn, New York 1960–1988 New York)
- Date: 1985
- Medium: Graphite, colored pencils, oilstick, acrylic, torn and pasted papers on paper
- Dimensions: 29 1/4 x 42 in. (74.3 x 106.7 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Gift of the Estate of the artist, 1992
- Object Number: 1992.368.1
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2022 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / All rights reserved. Used by permission
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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