A live with colour, gesture and texture against a stark matte-white background, Emblem is a test.mes nt to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat at its most commanding, and most subversive. Rich with implications whilst eluding specific meaning, the work brings together many of the key themes of Basquiat’s oeuvre: the signature human head and powerful use of words which hark back to Basquiat’s years as “street poet” in late 1970s New York. It is through the evocation of sparing and speculative motifs that Basquiat confronts themes both European and African, making reference not only to his multi-cultural identity as an artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, but also to the canon of Western art. Confident and mature after a highly successful year, the present work was created at the zenith of his career, having cemented his place as an acknowledged artistic prodigy. Further, a striking, rare aspect of this painting is the presence of Basquiat’s signature scrawled skull which reveals itself only under Ultraviolet light, on top of which the artist has painted the present imagery. Dominating this hidden image, the bulbous form of a skull that fluoresces under Ultraviolet light recalls works such as the artist's monumental UNTITLED work from 1982, the auction record for Basquiat set by Replica Shoes 's New York in 2017.

Executed in 1984, the present work was created after a run of exciting successes for Basquiat. Following his rapid rise to fame during the early part of the decade, the artist began to consolidate his success with the support of industry powerhouses such as Mary Boone and Andy Warhol, who would go on to become his friend and collaborator, providing inspiration and influence that united two figureheads of American art. In the year running up to the creation of the present work, Basquiat had exhibited in seventeen group shows, and four major solo shows across America, Europe, and Japan, as well as becoming the youngest artist ever to be included in the Whitney Biennial at only 22 years old. The creative confidence that this success instilled can be seen in the highly assured utlisation of paint and minimal yet striking artist language employed within Emblem. Basquiat’s newfound claritys of purpose and execution employed here materialises from the same vigor and immediacy emblematic of Basquiat’s emergence as street artist in the late 1970s in a new manifestation of style.

The composition of this work is centered upon two words written in Basquiat’s idiosyncratic capitalised oil stick scrawl: SCALO MERCI. Despite the artist being fluent in Spanish and English from the age of 11 - owing to his Haitian father, Puerto Rican mother, and New York upbringing – this textual reference translates as ‘Freight Yard’ from Italian. A reverberation of Basquiat’s pithy slogan SAMO written on the sides of New York subway trains, this phrase also hints at Basquiat’s t.mes spent in Italy, where he had exhibited in Modena, at the Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in 1981, and at the Galleria Civica del Commune in 1982. However, the inclusion of this phrase should not be taken as a specific or coherent token of a particular reference, nor as a symbol of particular meaning. Basquiat’s use of ephemeral phraseology is profoundly evocative of his encyclopedic relationship to his own artistic and spatial context, drawing upon various visual and historical stimuli. As prominent dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch has described it: “Basquiat’s canvases are aesthetic dropcloths that catch the leaks from a whirring mind. He vacuums up cultural fall-out and spits it out on the stretched canvas, disturbings ly transformed” (Jeffrey Deitch quoted in: Larry Warsh, Ed., Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Notebooks, New York 1993, p. 13).

However, if European influence can be inferred from the textual elements of this work, then the more graphic forms surely recall the strains of Haitian mythology, and his own Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage that were already central tenets of Basquiat’s oeuvre. Here, yellow, brilliant red and brown sharply contrast against the whiteness of the surrounding canvas. The central figure appears to be an elephant or a mammoth, cartoonishly executed with curly trunks and a little hat. Rooted in the artist’s childhood ambition to be a cartoon artist, Basquiat’s canvas is a world of playful slap-stick and phycological drama. Above it, two visage-like forms are delineated, one in yellow and one in a deep muddy brown. This head, with bared teeth and a flickering red eye, is fractured in the manner of a Picasso portrait. A recurring motif, heads seem to be influenced by such modernists’ taste for primitivism and the prevalence of TV and comics in 1970s/1980s America. These faces, with their eyes reduced to red pointed slits surrounded by a thin outline of white on their boarders, clearly imitate the tribal masks characteristic of Basquiat’s matrix of motifs and that frequently people so many of his most famous works.

To view this work, however, as a straightforward homage to traditional African visual culture would do a disservice to Basquiat’s constant repartee with the western artist cannon. The influence of Picasso, who Basquiat greatly admired and continually referenced in his own work, cannot be understated. In Emblem, the artist reappropriates and recontextualises the Western modernist obsession with traditional African objects and sculpture, using Picasso, who famously incorporated African mask imagery in such seminal works as Les Demoiselles d’Avgingon from 1907, as a cross-temporal, cross-textual sounding board. In leaving vast swathes of the canvas blank, and the overt utilisation of phallic shapes and the use of text in an abstract manner, the present work is in dynamic dialogue with the artist tradition that Basquiat had resoundingly established himself a part of.

Emblem typifies the artistic confidence that Jean-Michel Basquiat attained as his career progressed. In this work, the frenetic, chaotic energy associated with his earlier work is boldly deployed in a more painterly rarefied manner, with Basquiat seemingly relishing in the opportunity to encounter the titans of twentieth-century art history on his own bombastic terms.

鮮 明的色彩、用筆和質感，與背景的白色啞面頓成對比，這幅《象徵》體現了尚・米榭・巴斯基亞澎湃的感召力。本作包含豐富的隱喻，集合許多巴斯基亞作品常見的重要元素︰招牌人頭和鮮明的大字讓人回想起七十年代末的巴斯基亞，那時他仍是一位在紐約四處塗鴉的「街頭詩人」。他除了參考非裔美國人的文化身分，還引用西方藝術的經典作品，以精簡而耐人尋味的圖案指涉關於歐洲和非洲的議題。本作出自巴斯基亞藝術生涯的高峰，當時他經歷了意氣風發的一年後，作品更顯自信成熟，再證這位早熟天才的過人才藝。

本作出自1984年，在這之前的一年，巴斯基亞獲得連串重要的展出機會。他在八十年代初迅速冒起之際，結識了藝術界大腕瑪麗・布恩和安迪・沃荷，成為好友後更一起創作，他們互相激發的靈感和影響震撼美國藝壇，也讓巴斯基亞的事業更上層樓。就在創作本畫前一年，巴斯基亞已經先後在美國、英國、日本舉行了十七場聯展和四場重要個展，並且僅以廿二歲之齡，成為惠特尼雙年展最年輕的參展藝術家。他憑才華而成功的自信，在本作中化為確切的用色和言簡意賅的藝術語言。他在這幅作品展示新的創作意圖和技法，展現出與塗鴉作品一脈相承的活力，也象徵他以新畫風表達自己塗鴉藝術家的出身。

巴斯基亞用油畫棒在畫作中心寫出大階SCALO MERCI二字，字體別具一格。他自幼在紐約長大，父親是海地人，母親則來自波多黎各，十一歲已操流利法語、西班牙語和英語，但畫中詞語卻是意大利文，意謂「貨場」。這個詞語呼應他曾在紐約地鐵車身寫下的簡潔標語SAMO，也似是暗示他遊覽意大利的經歷，他曾於1981年和1982年到訪意大利，參與在摩德納的埃米利奧・馬佐利藝術畫廊和市立美術館（Galleria Civica del Commune）舉行的展覽。然而，他在畫作加入的這個詞語，既不是有特定指涉或連貫想法的象徵，也不代表有任何特殊意思。他汲取從所見所聞和歷史刺激而來的養分，展現在信手拈來的即興短語上，深刻體現他與創作和空間有著無所不包的關係。著名畫商兼策展人傑弗里・戴奇形容︰

如果從畫中的文字元素就看出本作受歐洲影響，那所描繪的物像則讓人想起巴斯基亞在作品中奉為圭臬的海地神話故事、非裔身分和非裔美國人的文化歷史。從此畫所見，黃色、亮紅、褐色與周圍的慘白形成強烈對比，中央人物以卡通風格繪畫，形似大象或長毛象，頭戴小帽子，獠牙向後彎曲。巴斯基亞渴望成為卡通畫家的童年夢想是他的創作基礎，每幅作品都展現充滿誇張喜劇的幻想世界，趣味盎然。象背上方描繪了一個人頭，但就以畢加索繪畫人像的方式將臉分成兩半，一黃一褐，呲牙咧嘴，眼發紅光。人頭是巴斯基亞反覆繪畫的主題，造型似受七八十年代風行美國的電視節目和漫畫所影響，也甚具現代主義畫家筆下的形象，他們崇尚原始主義。巴斯基亞的人臉顯然是模仿原始部落的面具，以白色幼線勾勒的紅眼睛瞇成細縫，極具藝術家的個人特色，並接連出現在他眾多知名作品中。

然而，直接以為本作是向傳統非洲視覺文化致意，就抹殺了巴斯基亞融合西方藝術經典的用心。巴斯基亞十分仰慕畢加索，其影子不斷出現在他的作品裡，可見畢翁對他的影響之大。在《象徵》一畫中，藝術家二度挪用西方現代主義對傳統非洲器物和雕塑的迷戀，而由於畢加索曾於其1907年的鉅作《亞維農的少女》融入非洲面具的形象，故巴斯基亞跨越時間文本借鑒畢加索，將這種對非洲藝術的痴迷重置於現代背景中。本作四周有大片留白，又公然描繪陽具形狀，加上艱澀抽象的文字，可見本作與巴斯基亞一向的創作堅持並無二致。

《象徵》展現了一種伴隨事業成就而來的自信；早年洶湧熾烈的情感在其獨特風格的疏導下，匯成了此畫中更趨成熟的內涵，可見巴斯基亞已懂得運用誇張的技巧包裝，來表達內心對與二十世紀藝壇巨擘切磋砥礪的興奮之情。