Michel Basquiat King Brand
Condition reports and provenance available upon request
About This Work
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s **“Michel Basquiat King Brand”** channels the artist’s signature fusion of graffiti energy, art-historical citation, and razor-sharp social critique. Executed with his characteristically raw mark-making—urgent line, scumbled paint, and staccato text—the work operates like a visual manifesto, where words and symbols collide to build meaning through rhythm and fragmentation. Basquiat’s recurring “king” motif functions as both self-coronation and cultural reclamation, asserting Black authorship and visibility within a canon that long excluded it. By collapsing street vernacular and high-art iconography into a single charged surface, the piece crystallises Basquiat’s enduring relevance: a critique of branding, power, and identity that remains acutely contemporary.
About the Artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat ( BAH-skee-AH(T), French: [ʒɑ̃ miʃɛl baskja]; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongsi...
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Contemporary Art • Hampstead, London
Established 1976 • 50 years of excellence in contemporary art • Professional authentication and provenance research