Wolf Sausage
Wolf Sausage
Signed Print
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Screenprint, 1982
Signed Print Edition of 50
H 56cm x W 76cm
Critical Review
Wolf Sausage is a 1984 screen print in colours from Jean-Michel Basquiat's Daros Suite series. The print is divided into a haphazard grid, much of which is covered by a layer of paint which obscures the sketches and text that lie beneath. The depiction of a token with the words ‘comics code’ brings the piece into parallel with a cartoon. The mantra-like saying which is written at the top of the image “in god we trust / in god we trust” and robotically repeated across the piece, clashes against the text reading ‘Liberty’ which surrounds it.
The image of a dog with a top hat, which appears to loom menacingly over much of the piece, recalls the humanisation of animals in a number of Basquiat works through adornment. In Trophy, a penguin dons a top hat. In Pez Dispenser, a dinosaur wears a majestic gold crown. This anthropomorphism is undercut by the title and images of meat in Wolf Sausage, thereby juxtaposing the aggrandising of animals with their use as food products. This kind of potent acknowledgement of society’s hypocrisy is emblematic of Hunter Drohojowska’s assertion that “Basquiat’s works are direct and furious reflections of a decadent, sadistic society”.
