Jean-Michel Basquiat - Self-portrait

Author: Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)
Title: Self-portrait (1986)
Dimensions: 30 x 40 cm
Fine art offset print made on thick 250g, high quality paper. Displays a vivid and sharp image quality.
Copyright: Jean-Michel Basquiat, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2016. It was available at the MACBA expo.
Printed in Spain.

The three works in the MACBA collection were created between 1982 and 1986 and are filled with totemic and archaic Voodoo imagery, tributes to heroes of African-American culture, including jazz musicians, and other references to American popular culture. The vivid lines, intense brushstrokes, black silhouettes and extreme facial expressions suggest connections to German Neo-Expressionism and to referential painters such as Willem de Kooning.

The self-portrait recurs throughout Basquiat’s work, as in this 1986 painting that projects a fragmented and multiple reality. The figure at the center of the canvas, with a head larger than the rest of the body, is reminiscent of children’s drawings. The drips of paint, the spontaneity of the brushstrokes, and their multiple directions allude directly to the artist’s process of moving through the illusory space of the canvas. This painting recalls the artist’s early works, when he began drawing in New York in the 1970s with Al Diaz as SAMO © (Same Old Shit), while simultaneously referencing his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage. It also references Basquiat’s knowledge of avant-garde artists such as Pablo Picasso. From a pictorial point of view, it is richer and denser than most of the artist's works, with a sharp contrast between the soft and pastel tones of the background and the aggressiveness of the figure, with its powerful darkness, electrified hair, bared teeth and open arms.

In his work, Basquiat often referenced the music and musicians he admired, as in King Zulu (1986), a painting of three great American jazz trumpeters: Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931), Bunk Johnson (1879–1949), and Howard McGhee (1918–1987). The canvas also features a central face inspired by Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), featured as the King of the Zulus in the 1949 New Orleans Carnival Parade. Armstrong, also a trumpeter, explained his participation in the parade: "The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club was located in the neighborhood where I grew up… And no place I've ever been could take away the thought… that someday I'll be the King of the Zulus… I won it in 1949… Wow." Basquiat places his King Zulu at the center of the canvas, while the musicians are immersed in a blue space that evokes the lyrical sound of the blues.
Finally, Sterno (1985) presents an aggressive and apocalyptic vision of alcohol abuse. The presence of a gin bottle in the center of the canvas is associated with a can of Sterno (also known as canned heat), an alcohol-based fuel created in the 1920s and used to heat food products, but also notorious for its abuse as an alcohol substitute. Basquiat reinforces the apocalyptic message with the can saying “Drink Sterno” and a foregrounded image of a monster with a double mouth, wolf teeth, and horns. The dark and reddish tones add to the intensity of this nihilistic evocation of the dangers of alcohol abuse.

This work will be securely packaged and shipped to you insured.