Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Francesco Clemente's Horizontal Painting (1984) is one of only fifteen paintings produced in their celebrated three-way collaboration. Conceived by Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger, the project borrowed the Surrealist game of exquisite corpse: each artist worked without seeing what the others had contributed. Clemente's early departure limited the series to fifteen canvases, making each one exceptionally rare.

Spread across a vivid green ground, the 42¼-by-101½-inch canvas layers three distinct visual languages. Warhol silkscreened runway models from a 1982 Azzedine Alaïa fashion show, printed sideways across the surface. Basquiat added oilstick marks — consumer product lists, a Ferris wheel diagram, the word "BABOON," and crossed-out text across two apparent sessions. Clemente contributed the wide-eyed figure in the upper left, pressing a cloth to his face and looking directly at the viewer — a gesture tied to his preoccupation with identity and self-erasure.

The painting has been in the same private collection for nearly thirty years and appeared at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin in 2023–24. "There was no dictation," Clemente recalled, "everyone started freely and then had the surprise of seeing what the others had done. It was beautiful." Horizontal Painting remains an encounter between three careers that could not be staged again.