Rome Pays Off, from Portfolio II, is a vivid example of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ability to fuse raw visual language with sharp social and economic critique. Dominated by a saturated orange ground, the composition combines schematic drawings, fragmented text, and emblematic imagery that read like notes hastily scrawled on a wall or ledger.

Words such as “MARKET VALUE,” “ESTIMATED VALUE,” and “GRAFT” appear alongside a crude graph, evoking systems of power, corruption, and speculative economics. These references are counterbalanced by Basquiat’s recurring iconography: a crowned head that signals authority, survival, and self-mythologizing, and a skeletal, mask-like figure rendered in stark black and white, suggestive of both mortality and commodification. The phrase “ROME PAYS OFF” functions as a cynical mantra, hinting at empires, institutions, and the transactional nature of success—historical, cultural, and financial.

The work’s apparent immediacy masks its sophistication. Basquiat draws on the visual language of street graffiti, diagrams, and children’s drawings, yet deploys them with deliberate intelligence, forcing the viewer to confront how value is assigned—whether to money, power, or human life. As part of Portfolio II, Rome Pays Off encapsulates Basquiat’s enduring relevance: an unfiltered meditation on ambition, exploitation, and the uneasy intersection between art, history, and the market. For more information or to buy Jean-Michel Basquiat's