Object #1: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Ankle, 1982.
Oilstick, Xerox paper collage, and acrylic.
Yale University Art Gallery, Charles B. Benenson, B.A. 1933, Collection
Imagine a last, defiant scrawl by an urban physiologist at Pompeii, just before the world turned to ash. Then go to see the newly acquired Jean-Michel Basquiat painting “The Ankle” at the Yale University Art Gallery. One of the many surprises now on view within the rearranged third floor, these graffiti for the apocalypse flash across the wall with their catalogues of ear and ligament and maple leaves. “The ankle, the ankle” is inscribed like a duplicate chant beneath a dog and its negative – cartoon Furies – with their barely domesticated “woofs.” It is impossible not to once again mourn Basquiat’s death too soon, what with the evidence of this work alone. It is the kind of picture that, even at first sight, demands a return contract to read and reread its surface. And to see what transparent Andy Warhol may be facing it next time on the wall opposite.