Ascent, from the Daros Suite by Jean-Michel Basquiat takes its saturated blue ground and fills it with one of the most philosophically loaded sets of references in his entire output. FLESH / SPIRIT appears twice, the pairing placed alongside PLOTINUS — the third-century Neoplatonist philosopher whose entire system was built on the soul's capacity to ascend from the material world toward the divine — and JOHN THE REVELATOR, the biblical visionary whose ascent produced the Book of Revelation. ECKARTSHAUSEN, the eighteenth-century German mystic who wrote about spiritual illumination. MYRRH, the sacred resin. KAMALAMITRA, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher. EL SOL. BABOON (DETAIL). NERO VS. The title itself appears twice, once marked as a trademark.

What Basquiat is assembling is not a survey of spiritual traditions but an argument about the conditions of elevation — who gets to ascend, through what means, and whether the concept itself is stable. Plotinus believed the soul's ascent was available to anyone capable of philosophical discipline; the history Basquiat absorbed suggested the opposite, that access to transcendence, like access to education, wealth, and recognition, had always been unevenly distributed. ASCENT©TM — the trademarking of the idea of rising — makes the point with the same economy he brought to ROME PAYS OFF or WHITEWASHING ACTION.

The blue ground is electric rather than serene, the density of marks and references creating a surface that feels pressurised rather than expansive. Basquiat made Ascent in 1982, in the same concentrated period that produced the other three works in the Daros Suite — a body of work that, taken together, represents his most sustained philosophical inquiry, the full range of his reading brought to bear on a set of questions about power, knowledge, and who gets to claim either.

For more information or to buy Ascent, from the Daros Suite by Jean-Michel Basquiat, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.