Bird on Money
1981 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat
Bird on Money is a 1981 painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. It is a tribute to jazz musician Charlie Parker, who was nicknamed "Bird." The painting was acquired in 1981 and is housed in the Rubell Family Collection. In 2020, American rock band the Strokes used the artwork as the cover for their studio album The New Abnormal.
Analysis
Bird on Money was executed in 1981, the year in which he made the transition from a street artist to an established gallery artist. The painting is a tribute to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, a leading figure in the development of bebop. In 1985, Basquiat told The New York Times Magazine: "Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix… I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous." Basquiat, like Parker, struggled with heroin addiction. He also paid homage to Parker in the paintings Charles the First (1982) and CPRKR (1982).
Jazz music was a common theme in Basquiat's art and he often painted to jazz music. Basquiat referenced jazz musicians and recordings in over thirty of his paintings, including Discography I (1983), Horn Players (1983), Arm and Hammer II (1984), and King Zulu (1986).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bird on Money” is 1981 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bird, Money and painting, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1981 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107008127. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2020, 1985 and 1982.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Bird on Money” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.