Photograph by Gianfranco Gorgoni © Maya Gorgoni ART © ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK
"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."
Profoundly haunting and bursting with ferocious raw intensity, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Made in Japan II, executed in 1982, is a compelling test.mes nt to his gestural and hyper-individualized mastery of expressionistic portraiture. Fixing the viewer with the ferocious gaze, the vibrant yellow of a skull and jaw extend outward from a layered neon jaw contour, which burst from the crown of a sculptural, more figurative male head. A paradigmatic example of the artist's most iconic motif, the skull-like visage of the present work is utterly mesmerizing in its passionate intensity as if the inner soul of the man bursts forth from his portrait. The three-dimensional sculptural elements of the canvas itself enhance the dynamic vivacity of the composition. The deeply harrowing face demands recognition of Basquiat's instinctive abilities as one of the greatest draught.mes n of the Twentieth Century. In its searing and totemic rendering of a portrait, a Greco-Roman sculpture, an allegory of universally understood angst, Made in Japan II numbers among a seminal group of intensely worked and re-worked portrayals of skeletal craniums that the young artist created at the start of 1982, as he began his extraordinary ascent to the highest echelons of Contemporary art. The sister painting to the present work is Made in Japan I; together, they speak to the influence Japan had on the artist. Within this rarified corpus, the present work is remarkable for its large size, electrifying use of color, and compositional complexity; Made in Japan II dates to a critical moment within Basquiat's career when the young, as-yet-unknown artist burst onto the larger art scene.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Art © 2021 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
In September 2019, The Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo opened "Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made in Japan," the two paintings Made in Japan I and Made in Japan II were installed alongside each other in this exhibition. This exhibition was the first opportunity to see a comprehensive exhibition of Basquiat's art in the country. More significantly, it offered insight into how language and commercial images can shape notions of cultural identity, especially in the context of Japan. This exhibition cemented and paid homage to Basquiat's appreciation of and admiration for Japan. Both paintings speak to Basquiat's admiration of Japan and the influence that Japan had on him. Similar to New York, Tokyo in the 1980s enjoyed rapid economic growth, which spurred on its art market. As Japan approached the height of its go-go period, Tokyo's culture would soon become synonymous with sleek technologies, lightning-speed information, and cutting-edge fashion. During this t.mes , Basquiat often visited Japan, having held six solo exhibitions and ten group exhibitions in the country.
Image © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY
Art © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Right: Guido Reni, Ecce Homo, c. 1639-40. Louvre Museum, Paris
As a test.mes nt to the importance of the 1982 head studies, the present work was included in the collects ion of Kenzō Takada and, later, Enrico Navarra, the artist's gallerist and editor of the celebrated monograph on Basquiat. Rendered with ferocious angst, the strident strokes of Basquiat's preferred oil stick resolve to reveal a figure that, by sheer painterly force alone, utterly refutes the two dimensionalities of the canvas, becoming sculptural. The construction of the stretcher gives the present work a volumetric presence, which recalls Basquiat's earliest works, in which he often used materials he found on the streets as canvas and stretcher, such as doors or other household objects.
Rising wraithlike before us, the single head of Made in Japan II recalls scholar Fred Hofmann's description of the 1982 heads: "These figures are unsettling, leaving the viewer with the feeling that they exist in another realm. Peering out into our space, they are oracles conveying a message from another dimension." (Fred Hoffman, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York 2017, p. 79) The anatomical central skull-like form speaks to Basquiat's fascination with the human anatomy, particularly the jaw rendered in white oil stick, brilliantly exemplifies Basquiat's interest in human form. The cross-hatching of the brain in the back of the skull highlights the present work's conceptual and emotional intensity.
"start with the head. (He painted them obsessively). The Hair was a focal point… the dreadlocks, Basquiat's own version of a crown… Next, the eyes. There was that look… People said his eyes could eat through your face, see right through you, zap you like the x-ray vision of his comic book heroes."
Private collects ion
© Raffaello Bencini/Bridgeman Images
The haunting and unique rendering of the skull-like head represents a pivotal moment within the young artist's developing practice. Concentrated against the deep purple and black of the canvas, the marblelike figurative head beautifully juxtaposes the frantic gestural lines of the skull jaws. Over the next six years, the single skull-like head of Made in Japan II would prevail as the artist's primary motif and key conceptual anchor, appearing in and dominating the majority of his best-known masterworks. In its scorching gaze, bared teeth, and fiercely evocative mournful expression, the floating head of the present work expresses an immediate and arresting fury. Brilliantly formulated in the artist's intuitive and innovative psyche and then translated onto the handmade structured canvas, the sheer visual power of Made in Japan II reveals the impassioned, almost compulsive intensity of Basquiat's greatest masterpieces.