Warrior

A fighter on a bare wooden board

Warrior shows a single figure filling a panel six feet tall: a fighter standing full-length, sword unsheathed and raised in his right hand, his eyes fixed on the viewer. The 2021 sale catalog describes the eyes as mismatched, one red and one a deep burnished orange, above a clenched grin of bared teeth, with green curls billowing behind the head. Behind him, Basquiat laid down loose patches of yellow and blue with gestural brushwork, with no perspective or spatial recession to separate figure from ground.

The method can be read in the paint. According to the catalog, Basquiat first marked out the silhouette, a square torso and long limbs, in spray paint and oilstick, then filled the body in with hurried layers of acrylic. Planes of black, white, flesh tones and silvery streaks resolve into bones, organs and muscles that seem visible through the skin.

The support matters as much as the paint. Warrior belongs to a small group of large paintings Basquiat made in 1981 and 1982 directly on wooden panels. He had obtained a dozen or so of these boards and painted on them without a base layer, so the rough grain of the wood shows through the color. Others in the group include La Hara (1981), Irony of Negro Policeman (1981) and Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face) (1982).

The pose recalls Renaissance portraits of court knights. Commentators point in particular to Vittore Carpaccio's Young Knight in a Landscape (1510), a full-length young knight on a canvas 218 by 151 centimeters, now in Madrid.

The painter at twenty-one

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn on December 22, 1960, to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother. He had no formal art training, but frequent boyhood visits with his mother to the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art made him well acquainted with Old Master painting. In 1968, at seven, he was hit by a car while playing in the street; during his hospital stay his mother gave him a copy of Gray's Anatomy, a book that marked his imagery for the rest of his life.

As a teenager in the late 1970s he spray-painted cryptic phrases signed SAMO on walls in lower Manhattan. By 1981 he had moved to painting and drawing on paper and found surfaces, and curator Diego Cortez included him in the 1981 group show New York/New Wave at MoMA PS1 in Queens. That September, a SoHo dealer invited him to join her gallery and gave him materials and a workspace in its basement.

Basquiat was 21 for nearly all of 1982, the year he painted Warrior. Looking back, he summed it up plainly: "I had some money, I made the best paintings ever." He built his own canon of Black heroes, from Yoruba warrior figures to jazz musicians and boxers, in part because so few faces like his looked back from museum walls. "The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings," he said in the mid-1980s. "I realised that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them."

He died of an accidental heroin overdose in Manhattan on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27.

1982: the year everything converged

Collectors and specialists single out 1982 as Basquiat's most important year. In March he had his first American solo show, at his dealer's gallery in New York. In June, at 21, he became the youngest artist ever to take part in Documenta in Kassel, Germany, where his work hung in the same exhibition as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. Solo shows followed in Los Angeles, in Zurich in September, and in the East Village in November.

His market took off at the same pace. A 1985 newspaper profile reported that his dealer sold his paintings so briskly that observers joked the paint was barely dry, and the 2021 sale essay repeats stories of collectors being taken down to the basement to buy canvases before they had dried. One specialist quoted in a 2018 survey of the year called 1982 the moment "when collectors started to acquire his work en masse."

Warrior was not part of the March 1982 show. It surfaced the following year, in Basquiat's exhibition in Tokyo in November and December 1983. Japan became an important place for him: a specialist quoted at the time of the 2021 sale said he traveled there six times in his life.

From Tokyo to Hong Kong

After its Tokyo debut, Warrior entered a long run of exhibitions: Paris in 1996, Coral Gables, Florida, in 1996-97, the Kunsthaus in Vienna in 1999, Museum Würth in Künzelsau, Germany, in 2001-02 as part of a show of a New York family collection's Basquiat holdings, and the Triennale in Milan in 2006-07. Its recorded provenance runs from a Paris dealer to a private collection in New York and then to a London gallery.

Its auction life began in the 2000s. It sold at auction in New York on November 9, 2005, for $1.8 million, then passed to a private collection in Milan. On June 21, 2007, it sold at auction in London for $5.6 million. On June 26, 2012, it sold again in London for £5.5 million with fees, reported as $8.7 million; press reports identified that buyer as the real estate developer and collector Aby Rosen.

Under its new owner it was shown in a New York gallery exhibition in 2013 and in the 2019 Basquiat exhibition that opened the Brant Foundation's East Village space in New York.

In February 2021 the painting was announced for a single-lot, live-streamed sale titled We Are All Warriors, to be held in Hong Kong on March 23 at 10 p.m. local time, just before a series of evening sales in London. It carried an estimate of HK$240 million to HK$320 million (about $31 million to $41 million) and a third-party guarantee.

Six minutes, three cities

The 2021 sale was a three-city affair. By one account the auctioneer stood at a rostrum in London; specialists took phone bids in Hong Kong and New York. At first it looked as if the painting might sell on a single bid of HK$240 million from a Hong Kong phone; then bidding crept up in HK$5 million steps between Hong Kong and New York. After about six minutes the hammer fell at HK$280 million, about $36 million, to a phone bidder in Hong Kong.

With fees, the total came to HK$323.6 million, about $41.9 million. The seller, the American collector who had bought it in 2012, made a profit of about $30 million in under nine years. The buyer was later described as an Asian collector.

The result set a record for a Western artwork sold at auction in Asia, beating the HK$214 million ($27.7 million) paid in Hong Kong the previous October for an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter. One art press report noted a caveat: although the painting was sold in Hong Kong dollars, the auctioneer was in London, so the work was only notionally sold in Asia.

How to recognize Warrior

The painting is upright, 72 by 48 inches, on wood rather than canvas, and is signed and dated on the back. A single figure fills it, sword held high, against yellow and blue patches. The two eyes are different colors, the teeth are bared, and green hair streams behind the head.

Several details carry meaning. Commentators tie the sword-wielding figure to Ogun, the warrior deity of the Yoruba people of West Africa, whose beliefs crossed to the Caribbean through the transatlantic slave trade. Some see a crown of thorns on the head, which would cast the artist as a martyr in an overwhelmingly white art world. The visible internal organs look like a distorted diagram from Gray's Anatomy. The long thin toes have been compared to Congolese nkisi nkondi figures, into which long nails were hammered.

Published descriptions differ slightly. The sale catalog gives 183 by 122 centimeters and lists acrylic, oilstick and spray paint; a widely used online reference rounds the size to 180 by 120 centimeters and lists only acrylic and oilstick.

The numbers

Medium

Acrylic, oilstick and spray paint on wood panel

Dimensions

72 x 48 in. (183 x 122 cm)

Catalogue raisonné

Illustrated in the 2000 Paris catalogue raisonné, vol. 2, pp. 100-101 and 289, no. 4; also in the 1996 Marshall and Prat volumes

Current owner

Private collection (the 2021 buyer was described as an Asian collector)

Timeline

1. Dec 22, 1960

   Jean-Michel Basquiat is born in Brooklyn, New York.

2. 1968

   At seven, he is hit by a car; in the hospital his mother gives him a copy of Gray's Anatomy.

3. Sep 1981

   A SoHo dealer invites him to join her gallery and gives him a basement studio.

4. Mar 1982

   First American solo exhibition, in New York.

5. 1982

   Basquiat paints Warrior on a wooden panel in the basement studio.

6. Jun 1982

   At 21, he becomes the youngest artist ever to take part in Documenta in Kassel.

7. Nov 1983

   Warrior is exhibited for the first time, in Tokyo (November-December 1983).

8. Aug 12, 1988

   Basquiat dies in Manhattan at 27.

9. Apr 1996

   Shown in a Basquiat exhibition in Paris (April-June 1996).

10. Feb 1999

    Shown at the Kunsthaus in Vienna (February-April 1999).

11. Sep 2001

    Shown at Museum Würth, Künzelsau, in an exhibition of Basquiats from a New York private collection.

12. Nov 9, 2005

    Sells at auction in New York for $1.8 million.

13. Sep 2006

    Shown at the Triennale in Milan (September 2006-January 2007).

14. Jun 21, 2007

    Sells at auction in London for $5.6 million.

15. Jun 26, 2012

    Sells at auction in London for £5.5 million with fees, reported as $8.7 million.

16. Mar 2019

    Included in the Basquiat exhibition that opens the Brant Foundation's East Village space in New York.

17. Feb 12, 2021

    Announced for a single-lot sale in Hong Kong with an estimate of HK$240-320 million.

18. Mar 23, 2021

    Sells for HK$323.6 million (about $41.9 million), a record for a Western artwork at auction in Asia.

The world in 1982

• Jan 30, 1982

  Elk Cloner, written by 15-year-old Rich Skrenta, is found; it is described as the first computer virus and spreads among Apple II computers by floppy disk.

• Apr 2, 1982

  Argentine forces take the Falkland Islands, beginning the Falklands War; Argentine forces in Stanley surrender on June 14.

• Jun 11, 1982

  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial opens in the United States.

• Jun 12, 1982

  A nuclear disarmament rally draws 750,000 people to Central Park in New York.

• Aug 17, 1982

  The first compact discs are produced in Germany.

• Nov 29, 1982

  Michael Jackson releases Thriller in the United States.

• Dec 26, 1982

  Time magazine gives its Man of the Year title to the computer, the first time it goes to a non-human.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Warrior is number 15 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (15 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• By one account, the record 'Asian' sale of Warrior was run by an auctioneer standing in London; the currency and the winning bidder were in Hong Kong.
• The painting's price rose from $1.8 million in 2005 to about $41.9 million in 2021.
• The record Warrior broke belonged to a Gerhard Richter abstract that sold in Hong Kong in October 2020 for HK$214 million. Richter and Basquiat had both shown at Documenta in 1982.
• Basquiat painted Warrior straight onto bare wood, with no ground layer, so the grain of the board shows through the paint.
• The warrior's two eyes are different colors: one red, one burnished orange.
• The 2021 sale was a single-lot auction titled We Are All Warriors.
• Basquiat's lifelong fascination with anatomy began when his mother gave him Gray's Anatomy as a seven-year-old recovering from a car accident.