Jean-Michel Basquiat - SAMO

Lot 14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
American (1960-1988)
SAMO
mixed media on tarp

57 x 31 inches

Provenance:
from the estate of Vincent Strautmanis

SoHo, July 1979. Edvins Strautmanis, an abstract expressionist painter of the New York school, has hung a large, plastic tarp to protect the rest of his familys apartment from flecks of paint flying off the giant canvases he energetically paints on his studio floor. Fellow artists make frequent appearances at the family dinner table in their 4000 square foot loft, but its his young son, Vincent, who brings home an 18 year old Jean-Michel Basquiat to crash on the couch.

Imagine Basquiat as an outsider just out of high school, staying with friends and selling postcards to get by, brimming with vision and ambition that will soon catapult him to fantastic heights of artistry and celebrity.
Imagine him in the Strautmanis loft, looking at Edvins studio. Is he inspired? Jealous? Amused?

What we know is that, at some point, Basquiat tagged the tarp separating the studio and living space with his tag SAMO, in lurid orange yellow paint. The elder Strautmanis was reportedly furious, and replaced the tarp with a fresh one. His son, however, saved the portion of the tarp with the tag, along with a collage Basquiat gave him. That collage, entitled, He Was Crazy, was exhibited and sold at the Nahmad Gallery, and later featured in the documentary Radiant Child.

The tarp, along with several of Edvins paintings, is now being offered for auction as part of Vincent Strautmanis estate, through Capsule Auctions.

SAMO, a contraction of for Same Old Shit was a collaboration between Basquiat and high school friend Al Diaz. Their ubiquitous and often poetic tags covered SoHo and the Lower East Side starting in 1978, proclaiming SAMO as a faux-pharmaceutical cure for the spiritual and cultural ailments of Bohemian New Yorkers. SAMO AS AN EX-PRESSION/ OF SPIRITUAL LOVE called one. SAMO/ AS AN ALTER-/ NATIVE TO/ BULLSHIT/ FAKE HIPPY/ WHACK/ CHEER taunted another. As Basquiats focus turned to the art scene, he tagged many SoHo galleries, studios, and art schools, staking an early claim on the world he would later take by storm. SAMO AS AN/ ALTERNATIVE 2/ PLAYING ART/WITH THE RADICAL?/ CHIC SECT ON/ DADDY$ FUNDS/ 4U read one of these, skewering the ability of the rich to dally in the arts without struggling financially.

Omnipresent as the tags were, they were documented by photographer Henry Flynt, who exhibited the photos before he was even aware who was responsible for the graffiti itself. Local media outlets such as the Village Voice also pursued the artists behind the pseudonym, the mystery of their identities adding to their allure. As Basquiats personal ambition and desire for recognition grew, he used the project to bolster the beginnings of his own celebrity. Basquiat appeared alone as SAMO on public access television show TV Party, and at other nightlife events in the city. His friend Fab 5 Freddy noted of SAMO, The whole objective of graffiti is fame,like, Im gonna take control of that space, and people gonna know me. By 1980, Basquiat announced the end of the SAMO collaboration by writing SAMO IS DEAD all over SoHo. By 1981, he had had his first solo show, and was well on his way to conquering the New York and global art scenes. Three decades after his untimely death in 1988, he holds the record for highest price realized at auction by an American artist, $110.5 million for an untitled 1982 painting sold at Sothebys in 2017.
Condition Report: High-resolution photographs and condition reports are available by contacting the gallery at info@capsuleauctions.com.