“Untitled, 1981” is acclaimed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s intense reaction to the chaos and destruction of the 1981 attack on New York’s Twin Towers. A Brooklyn resident, Basquiat (1960 – 1988) was intimately familiar with the events of that fateful day. The work’s images of planes, an ambulance, a cannon and frenzied strokes of paint are evocative of the violence of the attack. The repetitive “T”s are thought to represent the Twin Towers, while the recurring letter “A” may be a reference to Alexis Adler, a girlfriend Basquiat lived with around 1981.

© Art.com