Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Untitled (Wolf), 1984. Softcover book with crayon drawing. 11 x 9 inches (27.9 x 22.9 ...

Description

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)
Untitled (Wolf), 1984
Softcover book with crayon drawing
11 x 9 inches (27.9 x 22.9 cm) (cover)
11 x 18-1/4 inches (drawing on full spread)
Signed and inscribed on cover page: JMB 777-1881

PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Martin S. Blinder, New York, acquired from the above, May 5, 1984;
Demetrios Pachoumi, New York, acquired from the above, 1996;
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above.

NOTE:
This lot is accompanied by a letter of provenance from Martin S. Blinder, founder of Martin Lawrence Galleries, dated October 28, 1996.

A demonstration of both his instantly recognizable visual style and boundless intellectual passion, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (Wolf) marries his past and future work in a composition laden with socio-political commentary.

Familiar elements pulled from his visual arsenal provide a sense of continuity throughout the artist's body of work. In the present drawing, the set of teeth expresses Basquiat's enduring interest in anatomical drawing, borne from a period of hospitalization in his youth when he was left with nothing for entertainment but his own mind and a copy of Grey's Anatomy provided by his mother.

The primary figure of the wolf also draws from several notable works in Basquiat's oeuvre, firmly establishing itself in his symbolic repertoire. Wolf Sausage (1976), an early work executed at just sixteen years old, features the very same wolf, complete with top hat. Its appearance in the present sketch (1984) reveals the resurgence of this motif in the artist's mind; Basquiat painted his monumental Peter and the Wolf the following year. Typical of his teenage work, often lambasting corporate greed, Wolf Sausage presents no little pigs, but rather a factory-like brick house spewing forth rancid smoke, a conflagration of negative economic and environmental effects of capitalism overseen by the menacing wolf.

A lifelong critic of systems of abuse and exploitation of both man and nature, Basquiat expresses this sentiment again in the present work with intellectual, succinct ferocity. Incorporating his typical use of charged words and phrases, he articulates a powerful statement of support for American workers and condemns their abuse. "Circa 1933" and "free labor union" reference the New Deal-era National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which guaranteed laborers the right to collective bargaining, while simultaneously rendering employers unable to prevent their workers from doing so. By Basquiat's time, however, the power and reach of organized labor was in sharp decline, having begun in the early 1970s and reaching its nadir amidst the anti-union sentiment of the Reagan administration. Basquiat's pointed, violent exclusion of the essential word "free," conveys what he and many labor-rights activists saw as an egregious demotion, a "free labor union" reduced to simply a class of laborers whose unity sprang only from a distinct lack of freedom.

As remarkable as the subtext itself are the circumstances under which it was produced. This piece of fully developed commentary was executed in a matter of moments. While those close to him were familiar with Basquiat's short bursts of inspiration, working under what Keith Haring called an "atmosphere of obsessive production," the creation of this sketch came as a surprise to its original owner, Martin "Marty" Blinder, co-founder of Martin Lawrence Galleries.

Conversing with Basquiat at the opening of his solo exhibition at Mary Boone-Werner Gallery on May 5, 1984, Blinder found the famously volatile artist to be in good spirits, and the two bonded over a mutual admiration for Andy Warhol. When asked simply for an autograph, Basquiat instead produced this small testament to his own relentlessly active mind. Conjured so quickly as to be almost automatic, the present work depicts no human figures, and yet is a portrait of the artist, of a man whose convictions lived at the forefront of his mind, a man always thinking, always ready to promote change through his work.


More information about Basquiat, Jean-Michel Artist.



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