Executed in 1983 and part of a rare and monumental screen print edition by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Back of the Neck is replete with the artist’s hallmark iconography. One of only a handful of editioned screenprints produced by the artist in his lifet.mes , Back of the Neck brims with the dazzling graphic force of Basquiat’s obsession with anatomical imagery. In harmony with each other, ardent bodily sketches, the three-pointed crown, the copyright symbol and Basquiat’s idiosyncratic handwriting are here emblazoned across a monumental picture plane. Utterly epitomising Basquiat’s iconography, a work from the very same edition is housed in the permanent collects ion of The Brooklyn Museum, New York, while another example was included in the Guggenheim’s landmark exhibition Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story in 2019.

In 1968, when he was just seven years old, Basquiat was involved in a car accident in Brooklyn. The accident resulted in a broken arm and splenectomy that necessitated a period of rehabilitation in hospital. As a distraction to keep the young Basquiat entertained during monotonous hours of bed rest, his mother gave him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy by Henry Gray. Basquiat studied this medical journal with an intense voracity and applied many of the anatomical diagrams to memory. This event marked a decisive moment in Basquiat’s legend and gives creative origin to the intricate fragmental details of the human body that are found littered across the artist’s oeuvre.

In Back of the Neck the annotated limbs at once evoke this foundational childhood event whilst also drawing allusions to Leonardo da Vinci’s Study of Arms and other sketches of the anatomy. The gallerist and publisher Fred Hoffman, who worked closely with Basquiat from 1982 to 1984, and who assisted in the production of many of Basquiat’s silkscreen editions, including Back of the Neck, remarked on the artist’s admiration for Leonardo: “[Basquiat is] drawn to Leonardo da Vinci's investigative studies of the human being – from anatomical to physiological, from birth to death. In the work of Leonardo, Basquiat found a viable means of educating himself about human form and function” (F. Hoffman, 'From Leonardo', Exh. Cat., New York, Acquavella Galleries, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing, 2014, p. 124). Utilising both Leonardo’s sketches and texts as sources for physiological education, Basquiat further “identified a kindred spirit able to transform scientific truth into artistic vision”; to quote Hoffman again: “Leonardo's seemingly compulsive investigation of human anatomy and physiology would become a lifelong passion for Basquiat” (Ibid.).

Redolent with taut energy, Back of the Neck depicts flayed limbs that twist and contort around a brittle spine and exposed ribcage stripped to sinew and raised to expose the delicate hollow of an armpit. The words ‘BACK OF THE NECK’ thus indicates both the work’s title and an intensely vulnerable part of the body, only visible when the head is bowed. The copyright symbol present next to ‘SPINE’ harks back to the artist’s street-art graffiti tag ‘SAMO©’, whilst ‘BRACCO’, circled with intent, is perhaps a misspelling of the Italian word for arm – braccio.

Printed over an abyssal black ground, the pictorial lexicon present in Back of the Neck is underlined by the graphic contrast of black and white tones, between which a lusciously articulated golden crown presides. Despite his meteoric ascension from graffiti street artist to New York art world icon in the early 1980s, as a young man Basquiat faced a great deal of racial discrimination. In his recent monograph on the artist, Fred Hoffman suggests that Basquiat’s “reversal” technique, present in works such as this, might be considered a symbolic acknowledgement of racism. This might be Basquiat’s way of “reversing the norm”, Hoffman suggests – a way to turn racism on its head (F. Hoffman, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York 2017, p. 95). He writes: “Much like a sorcerer seeks to turn lead into gold, the young artist... sought to radically transform the content and meaning of image and text. By reversing the information conveyed in these drawings, Basquiat demonstrated to both himself and the world that he possessed the capacity, through one simple act, to turn a world dominated by white into one where black dominates” (Ibid.). Basquiat’s remarkable pictorial language simultaneously reveals a man who was greatly troubled by the vast disparity between his desire to succeed on his own terms, and the stifling prejudices of the established art world; all of which, as a black artist in the American 1980s, he was painfully aware.

Vulnerable and exposed, Back of the Neck is an expressive composition charged with movement, memory and aspiration; an x-ray figure torn, cleaved, and laid out for all to see. Alluding to the artist’s astronomical rise to fame and success in the 1980s, this work presents an experience of the human body in pieces – a fragmented form that is visceral yet unapologetic. Having risen to the elite of an art world dominated by white faces and voices, the present work forcefully communicates the pre-eminence of Basquiat’s own empowered and crucially important artistic voice.