Basquiat's Crown: What the Three Points Mean, and How to Hang Street Art at Home
Basquiat's three-pointed crown was a coronation for jazz musicians, boxers and writers — and it became the most collected motif in contemporary art after a 1982 canvas sold for $110.5 million in 2017. Here is the history, and exactly how to size, frame and place a street art print at home.
Basquiat's three-pointed crown is a coronation. He placed it on the heads of the Black men he considered royalty — jazz musicians, prizefighters, writers — and on himself, awarding a title that art history had withheld. He used it from roughly 1981 until his death in August 1988, frequently beside his © symbol, so the crown reads simultaneously as laurel and trademark.
The reason it now hangs in more homes than any other contemporary motif is blunt arithmetic: on 18 May 2017, Sotheby's New York sold an untitled 1982 Basquiat skull painting for $110.5 million to Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa — the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist. An image that expensive becomes common cultural property in reproduction.
Three points, not five: what the crown actually means
The crown is deliberately crude. Three points, drawn in one unbroken gesture, usually in oilstick over acrylic — nothing like the five-arch heraldic crown of European monarchy. That crudeness is the argument: this is a title conferred by the artist, not inherited.
The recipients are named in the paintings themselves. Charles the First (1982) crowns Charlie Parker. Sugar Ray Robinson (1982) and St. Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes (1982) crown boxers; Cassius Clay (1982) crowns the young Muhammad Ali. Jack Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach recur across the same period.
Most young kings get their heads cut off — Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charles the First
That line, painted into the canvas, is the whole thesis in eight words. Parker died at 34, Basquiat at 27. The crown is never uncomplicated triumph.
The anatomical vocabulary that runs beneath the crowns has a specific origin: hit by a car in Brooklyn aged seven, Basquiat had his spleen removed, and his mother Matilde gave him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to read in hospital. The skeletons, exposed ribcages and labelled organs come from that book, not from art school — he never attended one.
SAMO©: Lower Manhattan, 1976–1980
Basquiat met Al Diaz at City-As-School, an alternative public high school in Manhattan. Between roughly 1976 and 1978 the two wrote SAMO© — short for "same old shit" — across SoHo, TriBeCa and the Lower East Side, concentrating on doorways and walls within walking distance of the galleries they wanted to reach.
SAMO© was not graffiti in the train-writing sense. There were no wildstyle letters and no tag repetition. There were epigrams: aphorisms about religion, gentrification and the art trade, written in block capitals with a copyright mark attached. The Village Voice paid the pair $100 for a piece on SAMO in December 1978. The partnership dissolved shortly after, and "SAMO IS DEAD" began appearing on SoHo walls.
Worth stating plainly, because it is constantly got wrong: Basquiat never painted a subway car. His street practice was textual, and it was staged for an audience of dealers.
From the street to Documenta in four years
The pivot happened fast. The Times Square Show of June 1980, organised by the artists' group Colab in a disused massage parlour on Seventh Avenue, put street artists and gallery artists in the same rooms. In February 1981, Diego Cortez's New York/New Wave at PS1 hung around twenty Basquiat works and the collectors arrived.
René Ricard's essay "The Radiant Child" appeared in Artforum in December 1981 and effectively wrote the myth. Annina Nosei gave Basquiat his first New York solo show in March 1982, having installed him in her gallery basement to work. That June he showed at Documenta 7 in Kassel, aged 21 — the youngest artist in the exhibition. He was the youngest in the 1983 Whitney Biennial at 22.
Dealers filed him under neo-expressionism, alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Anselm Kiefer: large, fast, figurative painting made in conscious revolt against the cool minimalism and conceptualism of the 1970s. Basquiat fitted the label commercially and resisted it in every other way.
Warhol: the collaboration that cost him
Basquiat first encountered Andy Warhol around 1979, selling him a hand-painted postcard in a Manhattan restaurant. The proper introduction came in October 1982 via the Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger, who then engineered a collaboration.
Between 1984 and 1985 the two produced roughly 160 canvases together — Warhol laying down logos and headlines, Basquiat painting over them. Their joint show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in September 1985 was advertised with a photograph of both men in boxing gloves. The reviews were hostile, the show sold poorly, and the friendship cooled.
Warhol died in February 1987 after gallbladder surgery. Basquiat died on 12 August 1988, aged 27, at 57 Great Jones Street — a building he rented from Warhol.
The $110.5 million painting
The 2017 record is worth knowing in detail, because it is the single fact that moved street art from subculture to blue chip. The work was Untitled (1982), a skull head in acrylic, spray paint and oilstick, 183.2 × 173 cm. Bidding ran about ten minutes. Maezawa, founder of the retail platform Zozotown, paid $110.5 million including premium.
The sellers were the estate of Jerry and Emily Spiegel, who had bought the painting in 1984 for $19,000. Maezawa had already paid $57.3 million at Christie's in May 2016 for a different 1982 Basquiat. Alongside the American record, the 2017 price set a record for any work created after 1980.
Keith Haring and the other half of the story
Keith Haring (1958–1990) did the thing Basquiat never did: he worked in the subway. From 1980 to 1985 he drew in white chalk on the matte black paper that covered expired advertising panels, producing thousands of drawings and collecting multiple arrests along the way.
Haring's decision in April 1986 to open the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street — selling his radiant baby and barking dog on badges, T-shirts and posters at pocket-money prices — is the direct ancestor of the modern street art print market. He argued that accessibility was the point, and took criticism for it. He died of AIDS-related complications in February 1990, aged 31.
The train writers came in through their own door: Fashion Moda in the South Bronx from 1978, and Patti Astor's Fun Gallery in the East Village from 1981, which showed Lee Quiñones, Futura 2000, Fab 5 Freddy and Rammellzee. Blondie's 1981 video for "Rapture" has Basquiat behind the turntables and Quiñones and Fab 5 Freddy painting — the crossover captured in four minutes.
Which walls take street art
Neutral, textured, quiet. Chalk white, off-white, warm grey and greige all work. Bare brick and unpainted wood work particularly well, because they contribute texture without contributing colour.
What defeats it is a wall that is already talking: patterned wallpaper, a strong accent colour, or a busy paint finish. Basquiat's palette is cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cobalt blue and dense black over a scrubbed ground. It needs a background that shuts up.
On brick, leave a generous margin — a single print centred in three metres of exposed brick looks stranded. On a deep charcoal or near-black wall, only hang a piece with a pale ground; black on black kills the drawing entirely.
Size: this is where most people get it wrong
Graffiti-derived work is gestural. The relationship between the line and the human arm that made it is the content, so shrinking it destroys it. At A4 (21 × 29.7 cm), a three-pointed crown reads as a doodle on a fridge.
Buy large. 50 × 70 cm (€45) is the floor; 24 × 36 in (€59) is the right answer for a main wall. Full pricing across all 14 formats sits on the size and price table in the shop.
| Wall situation | Size to buy | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Above a 200–220 cm sofa | 24 × 36 in, single | €59 |
| Above a sofa, as a pair | 50 × 70 cm ×2 | €45 each |
| Chimney breast or alcove | 50 × 70 cm | €45 |
| Narrow hallway | A2, 42 × 59.4 cm | €35 |
| Desk shelf, leaning | A3, 29.7 × 42 cm | €25 |
Hang the centre of the image 145–150 cm from the floor, the standard museum eye line. Above a sofa, put the bottom edge 20–25 cm above the top of the sofa back — go higher and the print floats away from the furniture. For a pair, keep the gap between frames to 5–8 cm so they read as one block.
Framing: thin black, or nothing
A black frame with a 15–20 mm profile is the correct default. It echoes the drawn black line in the work and disappears against a white wall. Unframed also works — clip frames and magnetic wooden hangers suit street art better than they suit anything else, and the raw paper edge is honest to the source.
Three things to avoid. A wide cream mount — a 6 cm border turns a graffiti print into a Victorian etching. Gold, ornate or moulded frames, which read as ironic and land as confused. Heavy rustic oak with a live edge, which drags the piece towards farmhouse.
If you want a mount, keep it to 3–4 cm. VORAROSA prints on 250 gsm museum matte with pigment inks through a 12-colour Giclée process, which matters here specifically: oilstick and spray paint have a flat, chalky surface, and a glossy stock would fake a sheen the original never had. Matte also holds dense black without bronzing. Every size maps to standard off-the-shelf frames; frames are not included.
What not to hang beside it
Do not build a gallery wall of eight small prints around it. Street art is a soloist, not a chorus member.
Do not put two loud pieces on the same wall. One shouter per room is the rule — a large Pop Art screenprint next to a Basquiat-adjacent crown produces noise, not dialogue.
Do not mix it with classical reproductions from the Fine Art collection on the same sightline; a Botticelli and a spray-painted crown sharing a wall reads as fancy dress. Keep them in different rooms, where the contrast becomes a house style rather than a collision.
What genuinely works alongside it is structure. Bauhaus geometry — 35 designs built on primary colour and hard grid — answers the chaos instead of competing with it. Restrained typographic prints do the same, provided the words are not motivational.
Finally, keep it out of six hours of direct south-facing sun. Pigment inks are archival; no paper is immortal.
The practicalities
Every print is produced on demand in 2–4 working days at the production facility nearest the buyer, then travels 3–10 days with tracking. Large formats ship in a rigid tube, small ones flat. Shipping is free to the United States, €5 to the EU and UK, and €9 to the rest of the world — details on the shipping page.
Because nothing is printed before it is ordered, change-of-mind returns are not accepted. If a print arrives damaged, send a photograph within 14 days and it is replaced free.
If you buy one thing from the 33 street art designs: a 50 × 70 cm print, thin black frame, white wall, hung alone. That is the arrangement the work was built for.
Frequently asked
What does Basquiat's three-pointed crown mean?
It is a coronation. Basquiat used the crown from around 1981 to elevate Black figures he regarded as royalty — jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, boxers such as Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis, and writers — as well as himself. The three crude points and the accompanying © symbol frame the title as something the artist confers rather than something inherited.
How much did the most expensive Basquiat sell for?
An untitled 1982 skull painting sold at Sotheby's New York on 18 May 2017 for $110.5 million to Yusaku Maezawa. It set the auction record for an American artist and for any artwork made after 1980. The sellers had bought it in 1984 for $19,000.
What size should a street art poster be?
Large. Graffiti-derived work is gestural, so shrinking it destroys the relationship between line and hand that carries the meaning. Treat 50 × 70 cm (€45) as the minimum and 24 × 36 in (€59) as the right size for a main wall; anything at A4 reads as a doodle.
How should I frame a graffiti art print?
Use a thin black frame with a 15–20 mm profile, or no frame at all — clip frames and magnetic wooden hangers suit street art well. Avoid wide cream mounts, gold or ornate mouldings, and heavy rustic oak. If you want a mount, keep it to 3–4 cm.
Did Basquiat paint New York subway trains?
No. His street work as SAMO©, made with Al Diaz between roughly 1976 and 1978, was textual — aphorisms in block capitals sprayed on doorways and walls around SoHo and the Lower East Side. Keith Haring worked in the subway system from 1980 to 1985, drawing in white chalk on blank advertising panels.
Shop the prints
Every VORAROSA design is printed on demand on 250gsm museum-quality matte paper, in 14 sizes from A4 to 24×36 inches.