Screenprint, 2024
107 x 214 cm
Edition of 60
Stamped and signed by Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, the
artist’s sisters and administrators of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Odours of Punt, based on an artwork created in 1983, is an
outstanding painterly example of the artist’s work incorporating
his signature Xerox collage technique with paint and oilstick
layering and overpainting.
The title refers to an ancient African kingdom,
Punt, known as a producer and exporter of
gold and aromatic resins to Egypt, which also
connects to text in the work, archetypal in its
enigmatic mix of popular culture and historical
references.
Equal parts poet and painter, Basquiat challenged the art world
binary of high and low, merging European and “primitive”
through a neo-expressionist, painterly style that is nearly
impossible to categorize. Recent exhibitions include Boom For
Real at the Barbican Centre in London (2017; traveled to the
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2018), Jean-Michel Basquiat at
the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2018; traveled to the Brant
Foundation in New York in 2019), King Pleasure at the StarrettLehigh Building in New York (2022; traveled to the Grand LA
in Los Angeles in 2023), Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music at
the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022; traveled to the Paris
Philharmonic in 2023), and Basquiat. The Modena Paintings at the
Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2023).
