Jean-Michel Basquiat - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 17, 2013 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Nohra Haime Gallery, New York
    Phillips de Pury & Company, London, Contemporary Art Part II, November 16, 2007, lot 191
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Artist Biography

    Jean-Michel Basquiat

    American • 1960 - 1988

    One of the most famous American artists of all time, Jean-Michel Basquiat first gained notoriety as a subversive graffiti-artist and street poet in the late 1970s. Operating under the pseudonym SAMO, he emblazoned the abandoned walls of the city with his unique blend of enigmatic symbols, icons and aphorisms. A voracious autodidact, by 1980, at 22-years of age, Basquiat began to direct his extraordinary talent towards painting and drawing. His powerful works brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s New York underground scene and catapulted Basquiat on a dizzying meteoric ascent to international stardom that would only be put to a halt by his untimely death in 1988.

    Basquiat's iconoclastic oeuvre revolves around the human figure. Exploiting the creative potential of free association and past experience, he created deeply personal, often autobiographical, images by drawing liberally from such disparate fields as urban street culture, music, poetry, Christian iconography, African-American and Aztec cultural histories and a broad range of art historical sources.

    View More Works

149

Dog Shit in the Head of the Pope

1981
wax crayon on paper
13 7/8 x 10 7/8 in. (35.2 x 27.6 cm.)
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $50,000

Contact Specialist
Amanda Stoffel
Head of Sale
astoffel@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1261

Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York 17 May 2013 10am