?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
A-ONE (ANTHONY CLARK) Untitled.
Spray paint and acrylic on canvas, circa 1995. 953x1030 mm; 37½x40½ inches.
Provenance: Purchased from Gloria J. Gordon, the artist's aunt, by the current owner, private collection, New Jersey.
Clark, known as A-One (1964-2001) was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Mitchel Houses in the South Bronx. He was the son of Janette Gordon Clark and the grandson of Mannie Clark Sr., head caddy at the Mayfair Golf Course in Sanford, Florida in the late 1950s. He began painting at the age of six, and writing graffiti on subway cars during the mid-1970s. A-One joined Rammellzee's (1960-2010) graffiti crew Tag Master Killers, which also consisted of Delta2, Kool Koor, and Toxic. Each member designed their own style for arming letters based on Rammellzee's theory of Gothic Futurism, which describes graffiti as the weaponization of letters in a battle to reclaim language from a "diseased culture" of social control. In the early 1980s, they were among the graffiti artists bringing original art and music from the Bronx and Queens to the downtown art scene. In 1982, A-One, Toxic, and Kool Koor participated in the group show "Camouflaged Panzerism" at Fashion Moda in South Bronx.
A-One was a friend and collaborator of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Basquiat became his mentor and guided him toward art gallery representation. A-One is the subject of two of Basquiat's paintings: Portrait of A-One A.K.A. King,1982, and Anthony Clark, 1985.
