This work seems to be Basquiat’s answer to Warhol’s Dollar Bill andMona Lisa paintings. Basquiat usually paints large fields of colour by applying broad brush strokes with acrylic paint, while drawing and writing in oil stick. This pattern applies to the orange top part of this painting. The portrait at centre, however, has hair, skin and parts of the bust filled-in with repeated oil stick lines. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa seems to grow into the dollar note at top, obscuring what would be the face of George Washington. Art and money are two different currencies, even different worlds, which can be converted only with difficulty. The uncompromising and urgent way the artist spent the money he made is legend. In this painting he lets us know that although he loved money his ultimate faith lay in art.
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