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Lot Essay
‘Basquiat’s great strength is his ability to merge his absorption of imagery from the streets, the newspapers, and TV with the spiritualism of his Haitian heritage, injecting both into a marvellously intuitive understanding of the language of modern painting.’ – Jefrey Deitch
Drawn in 1983, and held in the same private collection since that year, Jean- Michel Basquiat’s Standard Saw is a play of visual and verbal signifiers. Through pictograms, symbols and text, Basquiat amalgamated art’s history, science and his own biography, to produce his own pictorial poetics. Within this vibrant and highly personal iconography, tools came to signify both genius and hard work. In Standard Saw, a horizontal handsaw fills the centre of the paper, its blade a richly textured deep green. In the bottom corner, a small diagram details how to use the saw: ‘thrust forward then inhale to pull back’. Some of the text is crossed out in blue, a technique Basquiat repeatedly relied upon: ‘I scratch out and erase but never so much that they don’t know what was there. My version of pentimento’ (J. Basquiat quoted in Basquiat, Fondation Beyeler, 2010, p. XIII). Basquiat drew enthusiastically and obsessively since he was a child, and few artists have invested more in their works on paper. Art historian Fred Homan writes, ‘In many ways, Basquiat felt most at ease when working on paper…In his inquisitiveness Basquiat was also quite restless. And he was young! The point is that for someone as driven as he was, working on paper enabled him to create while equally fulfilling his need to explore’ (F. Homann, Jean Michel Basquiat: Drawing, exh cat., Acquavella, 2014, p. 34). Basquiat voraciously consumed the world around him, and his prolific graphic output corroborates this mania. Considering the usual density of Basquiat’s compositions, Standard Saw instead presents a calmer, more intimate experience for the viewer, a balance of bold oil stick, illustrative text, and the pause of white paper.
Drawn in 1983, and held in the same private collection since that year, Jean- Michel Basquiat’s Standard Saw is a play of visual and verbal signifiers. Through pictograms, symbols and text, Basquiat amalgamated art’s history, science and his own biography, to produce his own pictorial poetics. Within this vibrant and highly personal iconography, tools came to signify both genius and hard work. In Standard Saw, a horizontal handsaw fills the centre of the paper, its blade a richly textured deep green. In the bottom corner, a small diagram details how to use the saw: ‘thrust forward then inhale to pull back’. Some of the text is crossed out in blue, a technique Basquiat repeatedly relied upon: ‘I scratch out and erase but never so much that they don’t know what was there. My version of pentimento’ (J. Basquiat quoted in Basquiat, Fondation Beyeler, 2010, p. XIII). Basquiat drew enthusiastically and obsessively since he was a child, and few artists have invested more in their works on paper. Art historian Fred Homan writes, ‘In many ways, Basquiat felt most at ease when working on paper…In his inquisitiveness Basquiat was also quite restless. And he was young! The point is that for someone as driven as he was, working on paper enabled him to create while equally fulfilling his need to explore’ (F. Homann, Jean Michel Basquiat: Drawing, exh cat., Acquavella, 2014, p. 34). Basquiat voraciously consumed the world around him, and his prolific graphic output corroborates this mania. Considering the usual density of Basquiat’s compositions, Standard Saw instead presents a calmer, more intimate experience for the viewer, a balance of bold oil stick, illustrative text, and the pause of white paper.