Untitled (To Be Titled) - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Archival giclée
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Description
A 1982 work by Jean-Michel Basquiat featuring a dense, expressive arrangement of text, symbols, and gestural marks on a white ground.
Jean-Michel Basquiat produced this work in 1982, a period often considered the most productive and critically recognised phase of his career. The composition functions as a dense field of signs, text, and gestural marks. Basquiat employs a vocabulary of symbols that draw from diverse sources, including anatomy, comic books, and commercial advertising. The surface is treated with a raw, immediate quality, where oilstick lines intersect with patches of acrylic and spray paint.
Textual elements are scattered across the canvas, functioning as both visual components and linguistic fragments. Phrases such as 'Mouth Tested for Aesthetics' and 'Any Broken Coil' appear alongside references to popular culture, including the character Hawkman. These inscriptions are not intended to form a coherent narrative. Instead, they operate as a stream of consciousness, reflecting the urban environment of New York City during the early 1980s. The artist uses a combination of deliberate, heavy black strokes and lighter, more spontaneous marks to create a sense of visual tension.
Basquiat often utilised a white or off-white ground to allow his marks to float, creating a sense of depth that contrasts with the flatness of the canvas. The inclusion of crossed-out words and repeated numbers suggests an interest in the process of erasure and the accumulation of information. This work demonstrates his ability to synthesise high art traditions with the visual language of the street. The arrangement of figures and text avoids a traditional centre, forcing the viewer to scan the entire surface to process the information. By integrating these disparate elements, Basquiat creates a visual record of his surroundings, capturing the energy and fragmentation of his era.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Untitled (To Be Titled) - Jean-Michel Basquiat
Artist Biography
Jean Michel Basquiat
He had no formal art training. He dropped out of school at seventeen and slept on park benches and friends' floors. He sold hand-painted postcards and t-shirts. He gate-crashed a restaurant where the critic Henry Geldzahler was eating with Andy Warhol and handed them a postcard. Warhol bought one. The art world opened.
By twenty-one he was showing in galleries. By twenty-two he was the youngest artist ever invited to Documenta in Kassel. The paintings are dense, layered, furious: text fragments, anatomical drawings, crown symbols, crossed-out words, references to Black history, jazz, boxing, anatomy textbooks, and street signage. They look unplanned but they are not. The crossed-out words are deliberate. He wanted you to read them, then register the erasure.
He and Warhol collaborated on a series of paintings in 1984 and 1985. The relationship was complicated by the art market's tendency to treat Basquiat as Warhol's protege rather than his peer, and by the fact that Warhol, older and more established, got better reviews for the joint work. Basquiat pulled away.
He died of a heroin overdose in 1988, at twenty-seven. His paintings now sell for over 100 million dollars. He would have found that both satisfying and absurd.
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