Basquiat’s drawing on page 95, Untitled (HONER / H), is one of two works from Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails related directly to music and musicians.  Befitting a gift to Gun, a musician who also tended bar, this work is a reference to the celebrated instrument company founded in Germany in 1857.   Hohner manufactured a variety of instruments over the years ranging from guitars to keyboards, but the company is renowned for their harmonicas and accordions, which have played a key part in the development of blues, jazz and folk music.  Untitled (HONER / H) is thus directly related to Basquiat’s musical heroes as well as symbolic of the creative life and work of African-American musicians. 

Other works featuring the word include a painting with multiple Xerox collage, Untitled, 1985 (a gift to historian and scholar Dr. Robert Ferris Thompson), that features “HOHNER” drawn horizontally below a Black musician playing what appears to be a chromatic accordion, and also written vertically down the face of the accordion. This figure appears to be the same one that dominates Basquiat’s large-scale triptych, Zydeco, 1984. 

Janis Gardner Cecil