50 Cent Piece

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was an African-American artist who has become one of the most influential artists that arose in 1980s New York. Basquiat used his art as social commentary, focusing on topics including wealth and poverty, racial subjects, colonialism, culture, and history. “50 Cent Piece” is a screenprint based on Basquiat’s 1983 acrylic, charcoal, crayon, pastel and pencil on canvas painting he completed as part of the Daros Suite of Thirty-Two Drawings. The work reveals Basquiat’s ideas regarding the communion between society and currency. The overlapping text and image references industry, the federal reserve, as well as the US occupation of Haitiends and Noah’s Ark. Basquiat depicts Marcus Garvey as the central figure, who was a Jamaican activist known for organizing the first American Black nationaist movement in Harlem. “50 Cent Piece” is a posthumous release of an edition of 60 stamped by the Basquiat Estate and signed by Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, the artist’s sisters and administrators of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The work was printed at Brand X Editions, New York, and published by Flation Editions, 2019.