Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Olympic, from the Daros Suite, is a tightly orchestrated yet deliberately chaotic composition that captures the artist’s critical engagement with competition, commodification, and spectacle. Arranged in a grid-like structure of episodic panels, the work reads as a fractured narrative—part storyboard, part advertising collage—through which Basquiat dissects systems of value, branding, and power.

Throughout the surface, Basquiat layers crude figures, symbols, and aggressively scrawled text. References to “SOAP,” repeated phrases such as “TRICK BLACK SOAP,” price notations, and crossed-out words evoke the language of commerce and marketing, undermining the idealized notion of fair play suggested by the title. Faces appear masked, distorted, or dissected, while hands clutch tools or objects that hint at labor, survival, and control rather than victory or glory.

Color is used strategically rather than decoratively. Acidic blues, reds, yellows, and blacks punctuate the pale ground, separating visual zones while maintaining a sense of agitation and instability. Basquiat’s recurring crown motif surfaces subtly, asserting authority and resilience within a framework that otherwise suggests exploitation and manipulation. The grid structure itself becomes ironic: instead of order, it delivers fragmentation, reinforcing the idea that modern systems—sport included—are built on uneven power dynamics.

In Olympic, Basquiat transforms the concept of competition into a metaphor for broader social struggle. The screen print preserves the immediacy of his hand while sharpening the graphic clarity of each panel, resulting in a work that is incisive, restless, and unresolved—an uncompromising reflection on how ideals are packaged, sold, and ultimately contested. For more information on Jean-Michel Basquiat's Olympic for sale, contact our New York and London galleries using the form below.