Jean-Michel Basquiat found inspiration in a loud cacophony of references and source material. His working practice, sitting on the studio floor, reading books while watching the television and simultaneously playing records, assimilated and equalised a vast array of ideas and images into a personal iconography. ‘Untitled’ (1982), one of Basquiat’s largest portraits on paper (of which there few), characteristically combines many of these references. 

Although not in the strictest sense a self-portrait, the drawing is, like many of Basquiat’s paintings, intensely autobiographical. Born in 1960, in New York, to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat developed a bespoke iconography throughout his short career. Motifs such as the crown, bared teeth, the letter ‘A’ and the © copyright sign, belonged to the iconographic vocabulary Basquiat used to explore African American identity. Of all his motifs, it is perhaps the ‘disembodied head’, seen here, that singularly epitomises Basquiat’s ability to express racial injustice.

From a young age, Basquiat’s mother had chaperoned him to natural history museums, a habit he continued into adulthood due to his interest in the evolution of Anthropology and Primitivism, particularly concerning African American identity formation. Through the disembodied head, Basquiat alludes to the modernist appropriation of African masks, which he employs a metaphor for the oppression of people of colour in North America. Simultaneously, the isolated head, animated in style, echoes the appearance of a human skull. Although naïve and inaccurate, Basquiat’s attention to anatomical detail is notable. As a boy, Basquiat had studied a copy of ‘Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical’ (1858), commonly known as ‘Gray’s Anatomy’, given to him by his mother. Additionally, Basquiat frequently referenced anatomical drawings from his edition of ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ (1966). 

Other trademark motifs emerge from the automatic scribble atop the head. There is a hint of the letter ‘A’ on the right-hand side, and on the left one might discern a small circular gesture, familiar to a copyright symbol. Throughout his career, Basquiat was intensely preoccupied with fame and commercial success and, enamoured by Andy Warhol, set out to surpass him in renown.