The Life of Basquiat - Essay Example

Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), the celebrated neo-expressionist and the first graffiti artist in New York, has influenced the contemporary art scenario, through his outstanding paintings. The career and life of this great artist represents the riddles of the art in the 1980s, and his insatiable hunger for fame, money, and recognition helped him achieve great appreciation in life. However, a close analysis of the life and career of this fabulous painter suggests how he became a prey to ultimate failure in life. "His life, its feverishness, his meteoric rise and early death all lend themselves fabulously to the mythmaking of Basquiat as the epitome of a nobly failed genius, the artist as exemplary outsider." (Emmerling and Basquiat, 7) Born in Brooklyn, Basquiat had a natural craving for art and his environment favored him in the development of his artistic career. Though there were trying situations from his early childhood onward, he managed to find the most appropriate ways to counter them and to be exact in his road to fame. He painted as an artist who never bothered of restrictions and he had nothing to lose. Basquiat fought against many distressing situations in his life and rose to attain recognition by the year 1980 through 'The Times Square Show'. He collaborated with many artists of his time, including art-writers, curators, and collectors, to form a group which later came to be called as the Neo-expressionist movement. Though the painter developed to be one of the most realized artists of his time, his friends were worried about his extreme drug consumption, unpredictable behavior etc. Before he died at his 27 due to mixed-drug toxicity, he had achieved significant recognition. For a complete understanding of the life and artistic works of Basquiat, it is pivotal to depend on the authentic bibliography on him. However, the value of the visual means along with the written word cannot be overlooked. In fact, the visual media has been able to offer a greater awareness of Basquiat's life. Therefore, though Basquiat has been memorialized through the biopic in 1996 by Julian Schnabel as well as the best selling biography of Basquiat by Phoebe Hoban in 1998, the former has a greater value to the audience as it offers a complete picture of the life of the artist through various aspects such as music and the sound effects, the effect of acting, and the other visual effects. This paper deals with a comparison between the reading and the film in order to suggest why the visual representation has a superior validity in understanding the life of Basquiat. Through his biography of Basquiat, Phoebe Hoban was able to create a true picture of the artist's life, but it was never a complete picture to the readers, as many often he failed to relate to the powerful emotion of the readers. Basquiat is represented as the most notorious artist who failed to accomplish his goals. Hoban presents the life of this great artist as cashed in on both fame and greed which were the characteristics of the 1980s. "Basquiat's life spanned an historic shift in the art world, from Pop to Neo-Expressionism, from hip to hype." (Hoban) To the biographer, graffiti was only the beginning for the painter and he soon involved with a New York scene which considered art as an element of the whole array of media. "'Artists were mixing up their media,' Phoebe Hoban suggests, and 'music film, painting and fashion were recombining in innovative ways' at the end of 1970s and early 1980s." (Thompson, 68) According to Hoban, Basquiat's stylistic qualities are part of established African-American aesthetic traditions. The biography of Basquiat suggests why the artist was able to accomplish as a great painter. Accordingly, his contemporary world as well as the subsequent periods failed to recognize the "qualities in Basquiat's paintings and to concentrate instead'on his celebrity lifestyle'" (Thompson, 69) Similarly, the art movement of the time also failed to achieve a significant impact on the scenario. The biography Basquiat by Hoban, though tried to illustrate the various aspect of his life, failed to assist the readers to have a clear picture of the artist - his works and life. On the other hand, the film 'Basquiat' directed by Julian Schnabel in 1996 achieved greater viability in the common man's awareness of the artist's life. This gives a more complete illustration of Basquiat as a postmodernist or neoexpressionist painter. The most important element of this film biography is that it chronicles the progression of the artist's life and represents his artistic life, romances, drug use, and death in 1988 at age 27. Thus, the film offers the audience a complete picture of the artist's life and the music, sound and visual effects make it greatly appealing. In contrast to the biography which gives general commentary about the life of Basquiat', the film provides a rounded picture of the artist's life. Therefore, the reading of the biography has a limited scope to the reader, whereas the audience at the biopic is given a more complete representation of his life and works, supported by several visual aids. The acting in particular helps one in realizing the character of the artist in its different aspects. The contributions of Basquiat are various and, according to Hoban, "Basquiat's brief life as an artist was a little bang that attracted its own temporary universe of powerful planets, whose orbits were in every way more constant than his own." (Hoban) A profound understanding of his artistic concerns helps one in realizing the true merit of his art. "Basquiat's mixed-media paintings went against the modernist aesthetic - quality, formal balance, purity in materials and technique. (Patton, 238) His subjects included various disciplines such as art history, autobiography, black history, politics and popular culture. These subjects included his popular culture as well as personal signs and symbols. In short, he has been a gifted painter of the Neo-expressionist movement. The visual representation of the life and works of Basquiat has a superior advantage to the written representation. This aspect points to the fact that the visual and performance arts need to be given the due recognition and the progress of these art forms needs to be given greater emphasis. Although the LAUSD as well as other school systems make some attempts on the development of the visual and performance arts, there is a need for greater progress in this respect. Works Cited Emmerling, Leonhard and Jean Michel Basquiat. Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988. Taschen. 2003. P 7. 16 Nov. 2008. . Thompson, Graham. American Culture in the 1980s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2007. P 68. Read More