"What drew Basquiat almost obsessively to the depiction of the human head was his fascination with the face as a passageway from exterior physical presence into the hidden realities of man’s psychological and mental realms. They not only peer out as if seeing, but also invite the viewer to penetrate within."
Charged with electric verve, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s silhouette of the skull fixes the viewer with its ruby gaze in No Hay Crimen © from 1983, epitomizing the vigorous drawing practice at the core of the legendary artist’s oeuvre. Atop his talismanic symbol, Basquiat scribbles in capital letters, “NO HAY CRIMEN © (DE CLASSE),” or “There is no crime (of class),” maintaining the enigmatic yet biting sociopolitical critique and the shorthand copyright symbol from his foundational street art origins. Furthermore, the skull-like visage in the present work is paradigmatic of Basquiat’s most iconic and t.mes less motif: utterly mesmerizing in its passionate intensity, the inner soul of the man appears to burst forth from his portrait in undulating red and yellow striations. Enduring as both idiosyncratic self-portraits and symbolic icons, the singular figure revealed in works such as No Hay Crimen © prevails as a key conceptual anchor for Basquiat throughout his career, appearing in and dominating the majority of his best-known masterworks. No Hay Crimen © bears an exceptional provenance that attests to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s expansive legacy on art history: first acquired by artist Richard Hambleton, Basquiat’s contemporary in the vanguard of the 1980s New York City art scene who is today recognized as the “Godfather of Street Art,” the present work has since belonged to esteemed gallerist John Cheim, who designed and edited Basquiat: Drawings, the first published book of Basquiat’s drawings coinciding with an acclaimed exhibition he curated at Robert Miller Gallery in November 1990.
In No Hay Crimen ©, furious strokes of umber, ochre and cadmium red oil stick congregate against an off-white background to form a disembodied human head. The scorching gaze, bared teeth and fiercely delineated head seen in the present work express a degree of emotional intensity that evidences Basquiat’s astute observations in the psycho-spiritual states of being, an association further heightened by his tactile, stunningly immediate handling of oil stick. "What drew Basquiat almost obsessively to the depiction of the human head was his fascination with the face as a passageway from exterior physical presence into the hidden realities of man’s psychological and mental realms,” writes Fred Hoffmann. “They not only peer out as if seeing, but also invite the viewer to penetrate within." (Exh. Cat., New York, Acquavella Galleries, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing: Works from the Schorr Family collects ion, 2014, p. 74).
Glaring outwards with the skull’s bloodshot eyes, No Hay Crimen © breaks down the dichotomy between the external and internal, revealing the cacophonous innermost aspects of psychic life with intense dynamism. As Basquiat transitioned from street to studio, the skull served as one of his most resilient pictorial throughlines. In its unfiltered grit and guttural symbolism, the skull captured the vibrance of urban life with thrilling authenticity, simultaneously memorializing his past as a celebrated member of Manhattan’s street art vanguard and his remarkable future as contemporary art’s dazzling prodigy. Absorbings , warping and reshaping the myriad dissonant influences of the Downtown New York, Basquiat forged an extraordinarily lucid and intelligent pictorial vernacular that, while entirely his own, typified the language of the sidewalks and walls of the city with searing candor.
Above the cranial visage, Basquiat abandons none of the vehemence behind his marks as he scrawls the Spanish title of the present work in his own unmistakable handwriting: NO HAY CRIMEN [DE CLASSE]. Translating to “There is No Crime [Of Class],” this ambiguous inscription recalls Basquiat’s renegade sociopolitical musings as SAMO, his street art alter-ego of the late 1970s under which he roamed the streets of New York and emblazoned his moniker upon the abandoned walls of the city. Like personal hieroglyphs, the text reveals Basquiat’s complex worldview that encompasses the hard-hitting social concerns of class struggle and racial discrimination; not least within art itself. Regarding Basquiat’s works on paper such as No Hay Crimen ©, curator Robert Storr writes, “His earliest images on paper show the same authoritative handwriting of his pseudonymous street tags… Heads, often skulls, chant his words. Or rather inhale and exhale them through gritted teeth, as if sucking in the variously dense or diffuse atmosphere they create” (Robert Storr in Exh. Cat., New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Jean Michel Basquiat: Drawings, 1981–1988, 1990, n.p.).
“His earliest images on paper show the same authoritative handwriting of his pseudonymous street tags… Heads, often skulls, chant his words. Or rather inhale and exhale them through gritted teeth, as if sucking in the variously dense or diffuse atmosphere they create."
As Basquiat’s most iconographically potent symbol, the head engages two-dimensional space in No Hay Crimen © with explosive depth and electrifies the pictorial surface with the compulsive intensity at the heart of the artist’s practice. Visual and emotive force are fused as Basquiat renders a physiognomic figure that is raw and aggressive, a cacophonous melee of color and gesture held together by the unwavering confidence of the artist’s line. Jubilantly demonstrative of the radical creative pinnacle of Basquiat’s career, No Hay Crimen © is the product of a calamitously brilliant artist defined by explosive talent and impregnable ferocity. As Basquiat engages the viewer with the striking gaze of his skull, the snarling face demands recognition of Basquiat’s instinctive and lauded abilities as one of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century, and it is the indescribable and ever-present relevance of Basquiat’s mode of creation and mark on art history that prompted Glenn O’Brien to reflect: “He was the once-in-a-lifet.mes real deal: artist as prophet” (Glenn O’Brien, “Greatest Hits,” in Exh. Cat., Art Gallery of Ontario, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the t.mes , 2015, p. 180).
