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Descriptif du lot
‘I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.’ – Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat possessed one of the most extraordinarily capricious minds of any artist of his generation. Shaped by the cultural scene of downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s (including jazz, early punk, street art, performance, and slam poetry), he nonetheless cast his net further afield in search of subjects and ideas for his paintings. These other interests included anatomy, astronomy, botany, history, exploration, colonialism, literature, music, poetry, art, and sport. Much like his hero Leonardo da Vinci, Basquiat used his canvases and drawings as a way of challenging and refining his ideas, and to determine his place as a Black man in a predominantly white world. These ideas play out in real time on the surface of his art; Ancient Scientist is one such painting.
This richly layered painting reveals itself slowly, as a considered examination of Basquiat’s various symbols, themes, motifs, and graphic devices begins to tell the story of a voracious, yet complex, artist. Like the archeological digs that fascinated him as a child, the layers of Basquiat’s painting can be ‘excavated’ to reveal many of the sources and subjects that influenced his short but prolific career. Oblique references to botany, travel, exploration, Basquiat’s own heritage, art history, ancient ethnography, and contemporary culture can viewed through a highly sophisticated visual vocabulary and an extraordinary range of mark-making techniques.
Ancient Scientist is dominated by a large field of dark black paint. On it Basquiat lays out a complex array of signs, symbols, and one of his iconic ‘heads’ in a cryptic network of cyphers. Commanding the composition, an impressive and imposing head gazes out of the picture plane. Constructed in Basquiat’s trademark style, the artist eschews traditional academic techniques in favor of raw and elemental applications of pigment and oilstick. Penetrating eyes are framed by prominent eyebrows, a broad nose is ‘carved’ out of yellow, white, and pink pigment, and a wide grin is constructed out of a progression of large teeth. The figure is further adorned by some dominant red headwear and a matching red tunic. This could be an art historical reference to Piero della Francesca’s famous fifteenth century portrait of the Duke of Urbino, a painting which the artist may have seen during his visits to Italy in the early 1980s. In the portrait, Federico da Montefeltro wears a red rimless hat known as a ducal mortier. This tall, flat-topped hat was a status symbol in the ducal courts of northern Italy, akin to the signature crown that Basquiat included in many of his most famous paintings. Depicting a black face in the manner of such an iconic Renaissance royal portrait may have been Basquiat’s way of inserting himself into an art historical narrative from which he otherwise felt excluded.
To the right of the head is another figure which suggests art historical references. Three circles are enclosed within the curved silhouette of a female body, a subject that has served as a central motif in art since the earliest civilizations. From the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf (circa 30,000 BCE, Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna) to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (circa 1484-1486, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), the fecund female figure has been staple of art history.
The nature of the black surface suggests that underneath lies collaged layers of paper applied directly to the surface of the canvas. This is borne out by the emergence along the lower edge of the painting of a series of collaged xeroxed drawings by the artist. This established technique can be found in many of the artist’s most celebrated paintings from this period including Glenn (1985) and Pink Devil (1984, The Broad, Los Angeles). The xeroxed sheets feature a series of botanical drawings, some depicting flowers and plants native to Hawaii and others indigenous to the regions of eastern and southern Africa. The ‘spikey’ plant with the red flower that occurs on the right of the drawings has been identified as red oleander (Nerium oleander), a plant which although beautiful is poisonous to both people and animals. Likewise on the opposite side of this passage of drawings, and partly obscured by pink paint, is a rendering of Solanum Sodomeum, the Devil’s Apple, a poisonous plant from the Nightshade family. Basquiat’s interest in the flora of Hawaii might have been sparked by a trip he made there in February 1984.
1984, the year Ancient Scientist was painted, was a year which saw Basquiat traverse the globe to escape what had become a high-pressure environment in New York; having become one of the most in-demand artist in the city, the attention often overwhelmed him. First in Los Angeles, and later in Hawaii, Basquiat would secrete himself away from the pressure of dealers, critics, patrons, and the assorted ‘hangers-on’ that wanted to be in circle. His girlfriend at the time, Paige Powell, remembered that Hawaii became a particularly special place for the artist, seduced by the colors, the fragrant air, and the fresh fruit—all depicted in the drawings of the present work.
Basquiat’s lifelong interest in science began at an early age. In September 1968, at the age of eight, the artist was hit by a car while playing in the street in Brooklyn and spent a prolonged period in hospital being treated for a broken arm and series of internal injuries. During his month-long stay, his mother gave him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy which he studied avidly. The artist’s subsequent fragmented and diagrammatic representations of the human body clearly have their roots in this influential medical text and demonstrate his ability to transform personal experiences into enduring artistic inspiration.
In addition, in the late 1970s he was living with his then girlfriend, Alexis Adler, in New York’s East Village, and – as she was training for a medical caree r– was able to copy diagrams of chemical compounds from her science textbooks. ‘This was a time before Jean had canvases to work with’, she recalls, ‘so he used whatever he could get his hands on and was constantly creating.’ (A. Adler, online [accessed: 8/30/2026])
During the course of his career, Basquiat produced a number of paintings that directly referenced this interest in science and the wider world around him. In addition to the present work, he painted Future Sciences Versus the Man (1982), with its references to ancient Egypt, the chemical element radium, and aeronautics, as well as Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, and its direct references to anatomy. In 1983 he painted what is probably his most searing commentary in the political nature of science and progress. In Untitled (Charles Darwin), Basquiat juxtaposes the legacy of evolutionary science with broader themes of marginality, connecting the work of Darwin with that of Thomas Huxley (an English biologist and leading advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution), and Gregor Mendel (the founder of the modern science of genetics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel to the subsequent commodification of Blackness and the manipulation of scientific discourse for socio-political ends. This interplay between science and art highlights how Basquiat critiques both racial and intellectual histories, revealing their entanglement in narratives of oppression and commodification.
Ancient Scientist stands as a compelling testament to Basquiat's remarkable ability to collapse disparate histories, cultures, and systems of knowledge into a single pictorial field. Here, science, botany, ethnography, art history, and personal identity converge in a work that reveals the extraordinary breadth of the artist's intellectual curiosity and the sophistication of his visual language. Rather than presenting knowledge as fixed or authoritative, Basquiat transforms it into a dynamic process of inquiry, layering imagery and meaning in ways that invite continual discovery. The painting's commanding central figure, enigmatic symbols, and evocative references to the natural and scientific worlds exemplify the artist's lifelong project of reclaiming, revising, and expanding historical narratives from which Black voices had too often been excluded. Ancient Scientist encapsulates the restless brilliance, cultural awareness, and profound originality that secured Basquiat's place among the most important artists of the twentieth century.
Jean-Michel Basquiat possessed one of the most extraordinarily capricious minds of any artist of his generation. Shaped by the cultural scene of downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s (including jazz, early punk, street art, performance, and slam poetry), he nonetheless cast his net further afield in search of subjects and ideas for his paintings. These other interests included anatomy, astronomy, botany, history, exploration, colonialism, literature, music, poetry, art, and sport. Much like his hero Leonardo da Vinci, Basquiat used his canvases and drawings as a way of challenging and refining his ideas, and to determine his place as a Black man in a predominantly white world. These ideas play out in real time on the surface of his art; Ancient Scientist is one such painting.
This richly layered painting reveals itself slowly, as a considered examination of Basquiat’s various symbols, themes, motifs, and graphic devices begins to tell the story of a voracious, yet complex, artist. Like the archeological digs that fascinated him as a child, the layers of Basquiat’s painting can be ‘excavated’ to reveal many of the sources and subjects that influenced his short but prolific career. Oblique references to botany, travel, exploration, Basquiat’s own heritage, art history, ancient ethnography, and contemporary culture can viewed through a highly sophisticated visual vocabulary and an extraordinary range of mark-making techniques.
Ancient Scientist is dominated by a large field of dark black paint. On it Basquiat lays out a complex array of signs, symbols, and one of his iconic ‘heads’ in a cryptic network of cyphers. Commanding the composition, an impressive and imposing head gazes out of the picture plane. Constructed in Basquiat’s trademark style, the artist eschews traditional academic techniques in favor of raw and elemental applications of pigment and oilstick. Penetrating eyes are framed by prominent eyebrows, a broad nose is ‘carved’ out of yellow, white, and pink pigment, and a wide grin is constructed out of a progression of large teeth. The figure is further adorned by some dominant red headwear and a matching red tunic. This could be an art historical reference to Piero della Francesca’s famous fifteenth century portrait of the Duke of Urbino, a painting which the artist may have seen during his visits to Italy in the early 1980s. In the portrait, Federico da Montefeltro wears a red rimless hat known as a ducal mortier. This tall, flat-topped hat was a status symbol in the ducal courts of northern Italy, akin to the signature crown that Basquiat included in many of his most famous paintings. Depicting a black face in the manner of such an iconic Renaissance royal portrait may have been Basquiat’s way of inserting himself into an art historical narrative from which he otherwise felt excluded.
To the right of the head is another figure which suggests art historical references. Three circles are enclosed within the curved silhouette of a female body, a subject that has served as a central motif in art since the earliest civilizations. From the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf (circa 30,000 BCE, Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna) to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (circa 1484-1486, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), the fecund female figure has been staple of art history.
The nature of the black surface suggests that underneath lies collaged layers of paper applied directly to the surface of the canvas. This is borne out by the emergence along the lower edge of the painting of a series of collaged xeroxed drawings by the artist. This established technique can be found in many of the artist’s most celebrated paintings from this period including Glenn (1985) and Pink Devil (1984, The Broad, Los Angeles). The xeroxed sheets feature a series of botanical drawings, some depicting flowers and plants native to Hawaii and others indigenous to the regions of eastern and southern Africa. The ‘spikey’ plant with the red flower that occurs on the right of the drawings has been identified as red oleander (Nerium oleander), a plant which although beautiful is poisonous to both people and animals. Likewise on the opposite side of this passage of drawings, and partly obscured by pink paint, is a rendering of Solanum Sodomeum, the Devil’s Apple, a poisonous plant from the Nightshade family. Basquiat’s interest in the flora of Hawaii might have been sparked by a trip he made there in February 1984.
1984, the year Ancient Scientist was painted, was a year which saw Basquiat traverse the globe to escape what had become a high-pressure environment in New York; having become one of the most in-demand artist in the city, the attention often overwhelmed him. First in Los Angeles, and later in Hawaii, Basquiat would secrete himself away from the pressure of dealers, critics, patrons, and the assorted ‘hangers-on’ that wanted to be in circle. His girlfriend at the time, Paige Powell, remembered that Hawaii became a particularly special place for the artist, seduced by the colors, the fragrant air, and the fresh fruit—all depicted in the drawings of the present work.
Basquiat’s lifelong interest in science began at an early age. In September 1968, at the age of eight, the artist was hit by a car while playing in the street in Brooklyn and spent a prolonged period in hospital being treated for a broken arm and series of internal injuries. During his month-long stay, his mother gave him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy which he studied avidly. The artist’s subsequent fragmented and diagrammatic representations of the human body clearly have their roots in this influential medical text and demonstrate his ability to transform personal experiences into enduring artistic inspiration.
In addition, in the late 1970s he was living with his then girlfriend, Alexis Adler, in New York’s East Village, and – as she was training for a medical caree r– was able to copy diagrams of chemical compounds from her science textbooks. ‘This was a time before Jean had canvases to work with’, she recalls, ‘so he used whatever he could get his hands on and was constantly creating.’ (A. Adler, online [accessed: 8/30/2026])
During the course of his career, Basquiat produced a number of paintings that directly referenced this interest in science and the wider world around him. In addition to the present work, he painted Future Sciences Versus the Man (1982), with its references to ancient Egypt, the chemical element radium, and aeronautics, as well as Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits, and its direct references to anatomy. In 1983 he painted what is probably his most searing commentary in the political nature of science and progress. In Untitled (Charles Darwin), Basquiat juxtaposes the legacy of evolutionary science with broader themes of marginality, connecting the work of Darwin with that of Thomas Huxley (an English biologist and leading advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution), and Gregor Mendel (the founder of the modern science of genetics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel to the subsequent commodification of Blackness and the manipulation of scientific discourse for socio-political ends. This interplay between science and art highlights how Basquiat critiques both racial and intellectual histories, revealing their entanglement in narratives of oppression and commodification.
Ancient Scientist stands as a compelling testament to Basquiat's remarkable ability to collapse disparate histories, cultures, and systems of knowledge into a single pictorial field. Here, science, botany, ethnography, art history, and personal identity converge in a work that reveals the extraordinary breadth of the artist's intellectual curiosity and the sophistication of his visual language. Rather than presenting knowledge as fixed or authoritative, Basquiat transforms it into a dynamic process of inquiry, layering imagery and meaning in ways that invite continual discovery. The painting's commanding central figure, enigmatic symbols, and evocative references to the natural and scientific worlds exemplify the artist's lifelong project of reclaiming, revising, and expanding historical narratives from which Black voices had too often been excluded. Ancient Scientist encapsulates the restless brilliance, cultural awareness, and profound originality that secured Basquiat's place among the most important artists of the twentieth century.