Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Portfolio II is a tightly focused body of work that brings together four compositions—Charles the First, Cabeza, Jawbone of an Ass, and Rome Pays Off—through a shared investigation of authorship, power, and the construction of value. Produced as a series of screenprints, the portfolio translates Basquiat’s painterly language into a more distilled and graphic form, sharpening the relationship between text, symbol, and figure while retaining the immediacy of his mark-making.
Across Portfolio II, Basquiat constructs a visual system in which language is unstable and meaning remains open. Words are written, crossed out, repeated, and repositioned, operating as both information and disruption. Historical reference, personal notation, and symbolic imagery are layered without hierarchy, creating compositions that resist linear reading. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, the works function as sites of accumulation, where ideas are continuously assembled and reworked.
Charles the First engages directly with the language of authority and its collapse. Referencing the execution of the English monarch, the work reframes kingship as something constructed and precarious, articulated through Basquiat’s recurring crown motif, fragmented text, and shifting symbolic registers. Authority is asserted, questioned, and destabilised within the same visual field.
In Cabeza, Basquiat reduces the composition to a single, confrontational head. The figure operates simultaneously as portrait, mask, and anatomical diagram, positioning identity as something both visible and constructed. The intensity of the image lies in its compression, where line, colour, and text converge into a concentrated expression of presence and instability.
Jawbone of an Ass introduces a different register, drawing on biblical reference while maintaining Basquiat’s characteristic fragmentation of language and image. The title invokes a narrative of improvised strength and resistance, though the work itself resists direct illustration. Instead, Basquiat presents a field in which symbols of force, survival, and conflict are dispersed and reconfigured, suggesting power as something contingent rather than absolute.
Rome Pays Off shifts the focus toward systems of exchange and historical continuity. Through references to “MARKET VALUE,” “GRAFT,” and economic notation, Basquiat aligns the legacy of empire with contemporary structures of speculation and control. The invocation of Rome functions not as a fixed historical reference, but as a framework through which cycles of ambition, dominance, and decline are examined.
Taken together, the works in Portfolio II operate both independently and as a unified statement. Each composition isolates a particular aspect of Basquiat’s broader concerns—authority, identity, resistance, and value—while contributing to a larger system in which these ideas intersect. The portfolio does not resolve these tensions; instead, it sustains them, presenting power and meaning as conditions that remain continually constructed, contested, and in flux.

Discover Jean-Michel Basquiat art for sale, or speak to our team about selling Jean-Michel Basquiat art.