Anti-Product Art Cards

Anti Product Baseball Card , circa 1979 Mixed media Ink, and color xerox mounted on cardboard Overall Size: 5.2 x 4.2 in. (13.21 x 10.67 cm.) ​Signed; And titled on verso. signed by Jean Michel Basquiat and Jennifer Stein verso

Early in his career, Jean-Michel Basquiat produced his ‘Anti-Product’ series of postcards, which he sold on the streets of New York City for $1 to $3 each. These cards were formed from Xerox prints of collages he created with paint, ink, found materials, and photographic portraits, which were mounted onto card stock and made to look like postcards.

As is demonstrated in ‘Anti-Product Baseball Card Product’, Basquiat’s cards represented the initial stages in his stylistic development. Referencing his influences such as Andy Warhol’s Pop prints and Robert Rauschenberg’s appropriation collages, Basquiat wittily interjected himself amongst these Modern art masters by literally plastering his own image on the cards.

Calling them ‘Anti-Product’ cards and passing them out to people in the art word, Basquiat found a way to advance his position and insert his alternative vision in the New York art scene. 

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These cards are extremely rare as most were given to friends and very few have survived. 

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