American Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat - Essay Example

American Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat Introduction Biography Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on the 22nd of December 1960 in New York, USA. Basquiat had a unique mastery of art in quite a wide range of fields including music, painting, poem writing and graffiti. Just before his death in August 1988, he had become a distinguished primitivist and neo-expressionist painter. Jean-Michel Basquiat was an intelligent child; he could read and write by the age of four. He could speak English and Spanish with excellent command the age of eleven. His parents and teachers noticed his unique ability in art and nurtured it from such tender age. When he was seven years old, Basquiat was involved in an accident, where he was almost ran on by a car. As a result, he suffered some systemic injuries that made him to a surgical procedure where his spleen was extracted. Around this time, Basquiat’s parents separated and he was raised by his father. Due to their family’s financial strain, he dropped out of school at Grade 10 and began selling post cards and old shirts to take care of family needs. Art Works The Untitled Head (1984) Contrary to many of his later works, which had been completed relatively quickly, The Untitled (Head) was started and put aside for a few months, and was completed later in the year 1984. It is not clear why this happened but a number of analysts have alluded to the fact that Basquiat was hesitant to complete the painting because he became quite uncomfortable with the popularity he was gaining from his artistic works and the resultant unexpected image. Although the painting was exhibited in the artist’s debut presentation in New York as Untitled, when it became part of the collection of its current owners, a couple of months later, the text “Skull” had been assigned to the designation Untitled and has remained part of the painting hence forth through a multiplicity of exhibitions. This change of name signifies a misinterpretation of the painting that may be attributed to either the novelty of the artwork’s subject matter, the way of its presentation or both. Most certainly, the renaming was as a result of confusion between the work and the classical iconography of the Memento Mori, whereby a skull signifies death. However, the artist’s head, which has little or no precedent in contemporary art history, call for more careful consideration and analysis. Critical inspection shows that Basquiat’s head, contrary to a skull, is alive and conscious to environmental stimuli. As such, it stays conscious to our world while at the same time allowing us to deeply analyze its super-conscious recesses. Basquiat’s impression of a single huge head is a career milestone. The visual content of the work offers deep insight into most of the approaches of dichotomy the artist would resort to over the eighteen months that followed. The dominant color scheme in The Untitled (Head) is blue, which elicits a feeling of tranquility. It demonstrates the left lower and upper teeth, possibly explaining why many people have interpreted the work as a skull. This work also explicitly demonstrates facial features: eyes, the left ear, and the nose, hence this would qualify to be categorized as a symmetrical painting. There is also a hint of hair. Though the handling of these facial features could easily be pointed out as unrealistic, the features are neither misrepresented nor distorted. Rather, the manner in which they are portrayed clarifies the primary intention of the artist; to depict a crucially lively being in full possession of the mechanisms for communicating with environment. In other words, the artist also exposes invisible features of the head, such as the central nervous system and other neural pathways that interconnect the sense organs. This special focus on the sensory and cognitive capacity nullifies the interpretation of the head as a non-living skull. The most important aspect that this piece of work ultimately emphasizes on is the fluidity that exists between the external and the internal—the complicated, living processes connecting perceptive, auditory, olfactory, and cognitive abilities. The Untitled (Head) is a clear indication that the artist was intrigued by tremendous and awesome realities than meets the eye. Basquiat’s work appears to break the dichotomy that has continued to grow between the internal and the external, revealing and intuiting the cryptic aspects of the super-conscious mind. By doing so, the artist demonstrates great concern for emotional concepts advanced mostly by the Abstract Expressionists five decades earlier. Artists with such intellectual orientations, such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock made attempts to represent a society beyond what is identified only with carnal experience. Even though Basquiat was from a completely different social background, he was equally involved in the quest for basic truths. However, Basquiat never achieved this by means of abstraction, but through novel strategies for representation. In his pursuit of creative activities, the young artist discovered that his dreams would be realized through the ability to intermarry the physical form and the intangible aspects. Around the spring of 1983, the young painter embarked on a multiplicity of complex paintings utilizing themes and pictorial approaches generated over the eighteen months. Untitled (History of the Black People) (1983) According to Frohne (1999, p. 24), the Untitled (History of the Black People) depicted Egyptians as Africans and was quashing the poplar idea that Egypt is the origin of western civilization. Towards the center of the painting, Basquiat shows an Egyptian boat being rowed down River Nile by the Egyptian goddess in charge of the earth and vegetation. The right hand side of the panel of the painting had the words ‘Esclave, Slave, Esclave.’ Two of letters in the word ‘Nile’ appeared to cross out and Frohne suggests that the letters that appear to be erased could be a reflection of the acts of individuals who have conveniently ignored the fact that Egyptians were black and, therefore, were slaves. On the left hand side of the painting, there were two Nubian masks. Historically Nubians were darker in complexion, and were consequently considered to be slaves by the Egyptians. The remainder of the painting consisted of impressions of the slave trade, adjacent to paintings of the Egyptians in the earlier centuries. The sickle-shaped device in the center of the painting refers to the United States of America and the slave trade that thrived in the past. This is a direct depiction of the slavery that was practiced under the plantation system in the USA. The text ‘salt’ on the right side of the painting refers to the Atlantic Slave Trade, owing to the fact that salt was among the important commodities under trade at that time. Irony of Negro Policeman (1981) Irony of Negro Policeman (1981) is another of Basquiat’s renowned pieces. It is focused on demonstrating how African-Americans have long been under the control of a predominantly Caucasian society. Basquiat tried to illustrate how negligent African-Americans have become with the white systems of power, long after the Jim Crow regime had ended. Basquiat argued that the concept of ‘Negro policeman’ was absolutely ironic. It would seem to anyone that the Negro policeman should bend rules to favor his black friends, family and relatives, yet instead he was there to enforce the law enacted by the white society. The Negro policeman had dark skin color but covered his face in a white mask. The painting depicted the policeman as huge in order to demonstrate excessive use of power, but made the policemans body broken and fragmented (Brothers, 2001). The head cover of the Negro policeman looks like a cage, and illustrates the reservations of the African-Americans at the time, and the extent of the policeman’s dissatisfaction as a worker within white society. The utilization of space in the painting is quite fragmented but nevertheless serves to communicate the subject matter. Image of the Notary (1983) A strong indicator of how the Basquiat viewed himself at the climax of his career was the piece popularly known as the Image of the Notary. This is a rich collection of figurative imagery and other artistic resources materials together with an array of particular textual references to ancient mythology, systems of trade, history, culture and medicine. The Image of Notary is clear asymmetric in orientation, and it does not seem to stick to the rules of perspective. Rather than evoke emotions, the Image of Notary utilizes the narrative style to deliver ideas. The light and dark regions of the painting are clearly distinct. The dark portions likely represents the social negatives (justified by a skull and human skeleton), while the lighter portion signifies a gradual deviation from the vices. These images and writings are presented a consolidated network. The Image of Notary can be looked at as a sum of the artist’s interest in combining text and images. Additionally, the work is a strong pointer towards Basquiat’s slow and systematic development of pictorial surfaces, layer by layer. Analysis of his artworks and conclusion A number of artists are thought to have motivated (either directly or indirectly) Jean-Michel Basquiat in his artistic career. These include; Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Cy Twombly, among others. Most of his works focused on implicit dichotomies such as the rich versus the poor, corruption versus integrity, and segregation versus integration. His art was a complex of various forms artistic impressions, which would serve to pass across pertinent information. The art used a perfect combination of poetic devices, paintings and drawings, which were synergized in text and image. Basquiat was known for his rare ability to bridge the huge gap between history and the present. He could conveniently analyze historical information within the limelight of contemporary critique. The artist is also on record for having spoken loudly (through art) against faulty governance systems, racism and colonialism as can be seen in his art works. A hypothesis by Fred Hoffman holds that the motivating factor for Basquiat was his innate capacity to function as foreseer (Hoffman, 2005). Besides, going on with his work as a graffitist, Basquiat often included words into his painting works. Before the beginning of his profession as a painter, he made and sold postcards on streets, and grew popular as political–poetical graffiti painter under the identity of SAMO (for “same old shit”). At one time, he painted his girlfriends gown with the text ‘Little Shit Brown.’ He would frequently draw on random surfaces and objects, including other persons’ property. The synergy of various media is a salient feature of Basquiats art. His paintings were mostly covered with catchy words and all kinds of codes: text, logos, numbers, pictograms, free letters, maps and many other kinds of diagrams. The period between 1982 and 1985 was characterized by multi-surface paintings and individual canvases consisting of exposed stretch bars, the surface full of collage, text and imagery. The years 1984-85 were also the key period of the Basquiat–Warhol work collaborations. However, the Basquiat–Warhol partnership suffered immense criticism at this time. One of the main reference sources used by Basquiat during his career was the book Gray’s Anatomy. He was given this book by his mother when he was seven while nursing injuries in the hospital. The book greatly influenced his understanding of internal human anatomy. The most intriguing aspect in this book (according to him) was how image and text work together to convey information. Other important references were Brentje’s African Rock Art, Henry Dreyfuss’ Symbol Sourcebook and Da Vincis notebooks. Basquiat often made doodles as depicted by some of his later pieces; they were mostly colored pencil on paper with a loose, seemingly aimless, and dirty style just like his paintings. His artistic work, across all mediums, displayed an infantile fascination with the interest of creating. In conclusion, Jean-Michel Basquiat was an artist whose overall theme and perspective of the world can be seen in his selected four works namely; the Irony of Negro Policeman (1981), the Untitled (History of the Black People) (1983), The Untitled Head (1984), and the Image of the Notary (1983). In these art works, he utilized artistic elements to depict the themes he wanted. His mastery of art showed his artistic genius who could use art in an unprecedented style and whose work will be an inspiration in times to come. . References Brothers, T. (2001). Artists, Writers and Musicians: An Encyclopedia of People Who Changed the World. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Frohne, A. (1999). The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hoffman, F. (2005). Basquiat’s L.A.- How an ‘80s interlude became a catalyst for an artist’s evolution. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times. Randy, P.C. & Sparks, D.H. (2004). Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions. Philadelphia: Haworth Press. Read More