In the manner of Jean-Michel Basquiat
American, 1960–1988
Anatomy of a Hand Holding a Phone, 2026
Acrylic and oilstick on canvas
183 × 244 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.25.2
An arm stretches across the canvas, skinless, labelled like a textbook: radius, ulna, tendons, metacarpals, phalanges, and at the end of it the hand grips a phone. Around it, lists: grip, hold, take, keep; survive, create, destroy, repeat. Basquiat learned his anatomy from the copy of *Gray's Anatomy* his mother gave him in hospital when he was seven. This is what the hand is for now.
The brief
A diagram-like painting of a hand and forearm with bones and tendons labelled in scrawled marks, gripping a rectangle, red and blue on cream. Neo-expressionist painting in acrylic and oilstick, raw urgent figures with skull-like heads and exposed anatomy, scrawled crossed-out words and symbols, three-pointed crowns, arrows and lists, layered colour fields of yellow, red, blue and black on raw canvas, drips and smears, wooden stretcher bars visible at the edges. Museum photograph of the painting on rough canvas, flat even lighting, no frame, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
