Bidspirit auction | JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), ATTRIBUTED TO,

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), ATTRIBUTED TO, ACRYLIC AND OILSTICK ON WOOD PANELS - JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988), ATTRIBUTED TO, ACRYLIC AND OILSTICK ON WOOD PANELS Dimensions: Image size: 45.7 x 166.4 cm. All measured values are approximate. Signature: Jean-Michel Basquiat Description: An expansive horizontal composition combining fragmented portraiture, handwritten words, anatomical references, animal imagery, repeated symbols, and broad fields of saturated color across a multi-panel surface. The composition unfolds through passages of orange, red, black, white, blue, pink, cream, and brown, with abrupt shifts between densely worked areas and more open expanses of color. At left, a roughly articulated male head appears among handwritten phrases including ”UNDISCOVERED GENIUS OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA, ” while adjacent sections contain additional heads, linear figures, blocks of pigment, and partially obscured inscriptions. The center is anchored by a black rectangular field repeatedly inscribed with ”MISSISSIPPI, ” surrounded by gestural marks, animal forms, skeletal imagery, and overlapping strokes of white, black, red, and green. Toward the right, another mask-like head with exposed teeth is accompanied by repeated references to ”MARK TWAIN, ” additional words and abbreviated phrases, and isolated graphic marks extending across a warm orange ground. The panoramic format encourages the eye to move laterally through successive clusters of imagery, while repetition, erasure, overpainting, and abrupt changes in scale create a deliberately unstable visual rhythm. The fusion of language and image, raw portraiture, repeated words, diagrammatic forms, expressive line, layered pigment, and culturally charged textual fragments reflects the visual language closely associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat's neo-expressionist practice, in which history, race, literature, anatomy, identity, and urban experience frequently intersect within densely constructed pictorial surfaces. The reverse bears large markings reading ”1983” and ”BASQUIAT.”