New York, New York

Basquiat filled this canvas with the raw energy of the city he called home. Words and letters scatter across the surface, some legible like "MILK" and others half formed or crossed out, mixed with a crown symbol that shows up again and again in his work. The crown was his signature mark, a way of naming himself and the people he admired as royalty, from jazz musicians to boxers. Look for it on the right side of the painting, sitting inside a dark doorway shape outlined in red.

The style here is exactly what made Basquiat famous in the early 1980s. He started out spraying poetic graffiti on Manhattan walls under the tag SAMO, then moved onto canvas and became a star of the New York art scene before his death at just 27. His paintings can feel messy and unfinished, full of drips, scratched out text, and rough shapes, but that was the point. He wanted the work to look immediate, like the streets and subways that shaped him. The scribbled letters, the smeared white paint, and the flashes of red and green all pull together into a portrait of a city that never quite sits still.