This triptych is formed by three skate decks made of 7 ply grade A Canadian maple wood.
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Six Fifty (1982) powerfully distills the symbolic universe and raw energy that define Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic language. In this piece, the artist uses a loaded iconography—lightning bolts, bones, swords, arrows, crowns—that serves as a kind of visual alphabet through which he explores themes of identity, violence, power, and cultural heritage.
With his gestural and spontaneous style, Basquiat turns the canvas into a field of tension between chaos and control, between the urgency of the street and the depth of critical thought. Like much of his work, this piece does not seek a single interpretation but instead opens multiple layers of meaning through graphic elements that seem to arise directly from the urban subconscious.
Six Fifty is not just a visual representation—it is a visceral statement, a fragment of the noise and pulse of 1980s New York, where Basquiat emerged as a radical voice in contemporary art. His ability to combine the immediacy of graffiti with historical, anatomical, and cultural references is fully evident here.
