Brooklyn’s own
Basquiat’s $110 million painting returns to the borough where he grew up and learned to be an artist
‘UNTITLED (1982)” is one of Brooklyn-born painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s greatest works — a vibrant, colorful and raw mixture of scribbly abstract expressionism and street art that fetched a jawdropping $110.5 million at auction in May. It was the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by an American artist. (Jerry and Emily Spiegel, whose estate sold the painting, paid $19,000 for it in 1984.)
And now, it’s getting its museum debut in the late artist’s native borough.
The painting’s new owner, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, has loaned “Untitled” to the Brooklyn Museum, where it is the only painting in the exhibition “One Basquiat.” The show also includes photos, videos and a couple of Basquiat’s personal belongings, including two of his junior-membership cards to the Brooklyn Museum. But it’s all in the service of highlighting this extraordinary, rare work — one of the artist’s first painted canvases, featuring a skull-like head with bared teeth against a brilliant blue background and covered in spraypainted graffiti-like scrawls. Basquiat, who early on signed his works as SAMO, died of a drug overdose in 1988 at age 27.
“There’s just a ferocity and a power to this particular painting,” says Eugenie Tsai, curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum. “It really is the moment that he goes from SAMO, the street artist, to the Jean-Michel Basquiat we now know.”
Basquiat was born in 1960 at Brooklyn Hospital, just 1 ½ miles away from the museum where he would spend so much time as a child. When he was 6, his mother, who noticed he had a passion for drawing, bought him his first junior membership.
“He would have seen the Egyptian collection, which is one of our strongest, and our African collection, and just developed his visual vocabulary,” says Tsai. “He was like a sponge: He absorbed things from all aspects of his life, whether it was in a museum or walking along the street.”
Basquiat attended an alternativeschool in Brooklyn Heights, where he developed his graffiti moniker SAMO. But starting in 1981, he began exploring with paint on canvas, combining his interest in pop art and abstract expressionism with the visual language of the street. The 6-by-5.7-foot “Untitled,” which he completed in 1982 when he was just 21, was only his second such work.
“It was a breakout year for him,” says Tsai. “He is going from writing kind of cryptic and witty aphorisms on abandoned buildings on the street under the name SAMO to making paintings on canvas and showing in big group shows and becoming part of the art world.”
Tsai tells The Post that “Untitled (1982)” is one of the most expensive contemporary artworks ever shown at the museum, and had to be handled delicately. “The monetary value of this certainly has insurance and security implications,” she says. Yet she says it was important for Maezawa, the painting’s current owner, to have young people see it and to have it at the museum that played such a vital role in Basquiat’s artistic journey.
“Basquiat was born and bred in Brooklyn,” says Tsai. “He went to school in Brooklyn, he went to the museum in Brooklyn. I think that Mr. Maezawa felt like he was bringing the painting back home.”
“One Basquiat” runs through March 11 at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn; 718-638-5000, BrooklynMuseum.org