Profit I

A wild-eyed figure with arms thrown up dominates this large canvas, its ribcage exposed in slashes of red and its head crowned with what looks like a halo or spray of hair. Basquiat painted "Profit I" in 1982, during the year many consider his creative peak. The skeletal, almost primal figure feels part king and part victim, a recurring tension in his work between power and vulnerability. Around it, scrawled numbers, tally marks, and half-erased words float in the dark background like graffiti on a city wall.

Basquiat started out spray-painting cryptic poetry on Manhattan buildings under the name SAMO before he was out of his teens. That raw street energy never left his paintings, even after he became a gallery sensation. The scratchy lines, crossed-out text, and figures that look drawn by a child's hand are all deliberate, a rejection of polished technique in favor of something urgent and direct. He often left words visible precisely because he wanted you to try reading them, then think about what they mean.

The title itself carries a bite. Basquiat, a young Black artist navigating a mostly white art world that was suddenly eager to buy his work, thought a lot about money, worth, and who gets to profit. The triumphant yet tormented figure here reads differently once you sit with that idea. He died in 1988 at just twenty-seven, and paintings like this one now sell for staggering sums, an irony that would not have been lost on him.