Piscine Versus the Best Hotels (or Various Loin)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.A study in the evocative power of irresolution and fluidity, Basquiat’s Piscine Versus the Best Hotels was created out of disparate materials, all treated with calculated irreverence. With its exposed stretcher bars, irregular joints, and hastily attached photocopies, the work appears to be falling apart at the seams. It also has the look of a page ripped from a sketchbook. Diverse ideas collide haphazardly on its surface. Images and words were recorded only to be edited immediately thereafter. At the lower right, for instance, are ten canvases of identical size; each one tests a different iteration of the same composition: a headless female torso and the word "Venus."
Artwork Details
- Title: Piscine Versus the Best Hotels (or Various Loin)
- Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, Brooklyn, New York 1960–1988 New York)
- Date: 1982
- Medium: Acrylic, oil paint stick, photocopies, and painted paper on paper and multiple canvas panels
- Dimensions: 62 1/4 × 82 3/4 in. (158.1 × 210.2 cm)
Framed: 66 7/8 in. × 87 in. × 5 1/2 in. (169.9 × 221 × 14 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Schorr Family Collection
- Rights and Reproduction: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat Photograph Acquavella Galleries, New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art