06/26/2026
đź‘‘Basquiat at PAMM: Figures, Signs, Symbols.
Ten works from the Kenneth Griffin Collection, made 1982 to 1985.
What’s actually on the wall:
*Untitled* (Skull), 1982. Set Basquiat’s auction record at $110.5M when Maezawa bought it at Sotheby’s in 2017. Griffin was not the buyer at the time; Maezawa sold the painting to Griffin in 2024, reportedly for $200 million.
*Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump*, 1982. Griffin bought the painting from Peter Brant, a billionaire and leading Basquiat collector, in a sale completed in 2020.
*In Italian*, 1983. Before entering Griffin’s collection it belonged to Peter Brant, and before that, Andy Warhol, who received it from Basquiat in a trade.
*Untitled (Tenant)*, 1982. A portrait of a skeletal man throwing his arms up in discontent among burning city buildings.
*Pez Dispenser*, 1984. Reimagines the familiar candy dispenser through Basquiat’s playful and critical lens , a toy dinosaur wearing his crown.
*Untitled “Box”*, 1985. A rare sculptural work by an artist almost never associated with three dimensions.
Across the show: his crown motif doubles as a copyright symbol. His skulls work as self-portrait, ancestor, and memento mori, all at once.
In 1982 Basquiat moved into Larry Gagosian’s Venice Beach house and made over 100 paintings there in two years. Madonna, then unknown, was living there too while dating him. Gagosian once paid for her first-class flight home out of LAX, after things between them fell apart.