Basquiat
&
The Expression of Painted Ideas
Index Page
Introduction ........................................................ 1
“Royalty Heroism and the Streets” …...………… 2
Sources and influences ………………………….. 6
Expression ………………………………………… 11
Conclusion ………………………………………… 20
List of Images ……………………………………... 21
Bibliography ……………………………………….. 24
Introduction In order to explore the ideas expressed in Basquiat's paintings I will look carefully at a few of his works contextualizing and cross-comparing them with other artists work, expression and ideas. In the analysis I will try to show what I believe is the use of traditional painting vocabulary and to enhance four dimensions in his expression: colour, drawing, lettering and message. The artists chosen for the cross-comparison were Jean Dubuffet, Cy Towmbly, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jackson Pollock, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, and Velazquez. -“Royalty, Heroism and the Streets”
When interviewed Basquiat used to say his work was about “Royalty, Heroism and the Streets”. The first two are related with his heroes, usually black jazz musicians (fig 1 and 2) and black athletes such as pugilists and baseball players (fig 3). “The streets” stand for his experience as a homeless and graffiti artist.
Fig 1. Basquiat, Untitled (Sunny Side Up) 1983, Fig 2 . Jean Michel Basquiat , Discogralhy (two) , 1983
Fig 3. Basquiat, Jack Johnson , 1982 Jean Michel had a very troubled youth and ran away from home several times. For a few years he studied in a School for gifted children with integration problems. Finally he managed to run to New York . Forced to live in the streets for a long time he started working as a graffiti artist in the Soho under the name SAMO (from the English expression “samo samo”) (fig 4).
Fig 4. Basquiat, Samo's Graffiti , New York , 1979
Drugs and SAMO were his life but after some time he stopped doing graffiti. “SAMO died” according to Basquiat and the artist's bohemian life style continued with one big difference now: he painted on canvas and signed with his own name. In those works car accidents and the use of spray make the observer think about street art (fig 5). The dirty look of his work is also crucial to connect his work with the outside walls and floor. Fig 5. Basquiat, Untitled, 1980 Basquiat never studied art but he exhibited all over the world: Japan , Africa, Italy , France , Germany ( Kassel Documenta) and United States . First he became famous because of his work and then he was famous because he was a star hated by some and loved by others. Living an extremely unstable life he died in 1988 with a drug cocktail overdose, just as he predicted a few years before.
One can divide his 9 year career in three periods of three years each according to Richard Marshall (1997, p. 15): in the first one painterly gestures, imagery from the streets and skeletal figures dominate his canvas, in the next period his work shows a strong interest in black and Hispanic identity and finally in the last few years before his death he changes symbols and recurring subjects breaking with earlier imagery that he was becoming familiar and comfortable with.
Sources and influences
When Basquiat was a little boy he had an accident, because of that he stayed in the hospital for a long time and his mother gave him a book that would influence his work greatly in the future: Grays Anatomy . The interior of the human body is a repeated subject in Basquiat's work and even the way text is assembled with the image is not only cartoon like but very typical of anatomy books.
Fig 6. Basquiat, From Leonardo , 1983 Fig 7. Basquiat, Leg of a Dog , 1987 Fig 8. Leonardo Da Vinci, The Skeleton, 1510 – 11
However his anatomy references are not limited to recent books but also related with the renascence. Leonardo Da Vinci was the master he quoted the most: there are several drawings based on Leonardo's sketch books, and one of those is actually called From Leonardo (fig 6, 7 and 8 ).
Fig 9. Basquiat, Untitled (Mother Fig 10. Leonardo da Vinci,
and Child) , 1984 Madonna Litta , 1490-91
There are also interpretations and references to many other paintings from Da Vinci such as Mona Lisa, Madonna Litta (fig 9 and 10), riding with death (fig 11 and 12) and St. Jerome .
Fig 11. Leonardo Da Vinci, Allegorical Composition Fig 12. Basquiat, Riding with Death , 1988, 98 x 114 inches (248.9 x 289.6 cm)
Fig 13. Basquiat, Untitled , 1981 Fig 14. Cy Twombly, Appolo and
the Artist , 1975
Towmbly (fig 13 and 14) and Dubuffet were the first artists to be mentioned as influences in the artists work. His first works share Dubuffet's sensibility because they both seem to be inspired by the art of children and the art of the insane (Art Brut). A very good example of that is the View of Paris by Dubuffet and the untitled next to it by Basquiat (fig. 15 and 16).
Fig 15. Dubuffet, View of Pari –The life of Pleasure , 1944 Fig 16. Basquiat, Untitled, 1981
Fig 17. Jackson Pollock, The She Wolf , 1943 Fig 18. Basquiat, Part Wolf , 1982
But beside these artists there are others such as Pollock. Basquiat shared interests, with his work from the 1940's, in earlier cultures and mythological totemic references, see She Wolf (fig 17) and Part Wolf (fig 18).
Fig 19 Basquiat, Piano Lesson (for Chiara), 1983
Basquiat's influences and references are so wide one would have to go through contemporary artists, comic books (fig 19), primitive drawings (fig. 20, 21, 22 and 23) and renascence masters just to mention the main ones.
Fig 20. Boat of the Nile valley, Egypt Fig 21. Basquiat, Untitled(History of Black People),
1983
Fig 22. Corpse of king with animal mask, Rhodesia Fig 23. Basquiat, Prayer, 1986
To understand his work it is crucial to be aware of the research the artist carried out through museum visits and art books is crucial . This statement is supported by most books about Basquiat since the influences mentioned in this section are present in most of them.
Expression
To describe Basquiat's expression words like careless, intuitive and impulsive are often used. Chance is apparently present in drippings, doodles and scratches done without control at first sight. The artist once said his work was “80% anger”… Well, one of the goals of this essay is to ask about the other 20%.
Fig 24. Edgar Degas, Woman Drying her Neck Fig 25. Basquiat, Woman Drying Her
Back by Edgar , 1983
In order to start looking at randomness and chance of his expression the best thing to do is to take an example. When we look at Woman drying her neck by Edgar © (fig 24) one could think most marks of the drawing come from chaos but when we compare it with the drawing by Degas (fig 25) we may have a surprise when we analyse the left arm of the nude. If apparent chance is intentional in this drawing what else could be done with a specific purpose?
The questions Basquiat's expressive drawings explore are also attached with the media he uses. The repetition of subjects was initially done with colour fotocopies but from there he moved to silk screen print. The fact that he knew Andy Warhol and Rauschenberg's screen prints legitimated this media art historically (Marshall, 1997, p. 21) but he was never interested on using it in the same way they did.
Fig 26. Basquiat, Untitled , 1984 Fig 27. Basquiat, Untitled, 1984
Acrylic, oil paintstick and silkscreen on canvas, 88x77 inch (223.5 x 195.6 cm)
The kangaroo woman is a good example of how he used that media to transfer small drawings and sketches to big canvas (fig. 26, 27 and 28). The purpose and the way these images are assembled and displayed are subliminally questioning the observer's awareness because they work as meaningful units (visual words) present across the artists career (fig. 29, 22 and 23), and not like Warhol's image repetition side by side.
Fig 28. Basquiat, Untitled, 1983 Fig 29. Basquiat, Untitled
(Famous Moon King), 1984
The lettering is one of the most interesting dimensions in Jean Michel's expression. When he was a little boy besides English he learned Spanish, French and Italian, which he used later on in his paintings. Words are chosen carefully and assembled creating an atmosphere of written enigma, anatomical science, subtitles and comic lettering. The way these paintings contain words makes the observer question language either because they are not understood or because the observer goes through a research to get the most understanding out of it.
Some of his written messages come from the graffiti tradition in social critic. Most of those comments aim to criticize the art world such as: “©”, “not for sale” and “TM”. All these question the receptor of the message about ownership, art market and what is originality.
Fig 30. Basquiat, Notary , 1983, 71 x 158 inches (180.3 x 401.4 cm)
In the artist´s paintings one can also find words like “Ideal” and “Notary” with several levels of meaning. “Ideal” for example stands for: “I deal art”, “I deal drugs” (Marshall, 1993, p. 26) as well as its usual meaning. Notary (fig 30), besides other interpretations, could stand for “Not art” (Marshall, 1993, p. 16) and subsequently “anti-art”. This concept was very dear to Duchamp but the relation between these apparently extremely different artists is very interesting.
Fig 31.Marcel Duchamp, Nude Fig 32. Basquiat, Photographer ,
Descending Staircase , 1912 1983
Even though Duchamp could call Basquiat's work “retinal art” they have some common ground. Not only the way they assemble every day concepts was similar because neither of them worried about the status of what they used to make art, but also their notes are very alike because they both appeal to the irrational strength of words. Just to give an example of a resemblance between Basquiat and Duchamp we can look at two works from each of them (fig. 31, 32, 33 and 34) approaching similar subjects.
Fig 33. Marcel Duchamp, Fig 34. Basquiat, Mone Lisa , 1983
L.H.O.O.Q. , 1919
Colour is extreme in Jean Michel's work either because it is intense and bright (almost tropical) or because it is dark. The expressionist use of colour to give another layer to his works is remarkable. The overlaying and composition with several colours gives authenticity, structure and strength to almost all of his works.
The three dimensions of his work just mentioned before can be put together in order to achieve the fourth and most important one: message. When one captures the importance of the drawing, lettering and colour in Basquiat's canvas something beyond the art market, the media and the beauty emerges. The eye becomes just a doorway to the intimate world of meaning of each painting. In some of them the idea is quite simple such as: antiracist statements, art word critics, social worries, etc… But in other woks the doubt concerning artistic quotations, resonance with past imagery, originality and identity is inevitable (fig. 35 and 36).
Fig 35. Francis Bacon, 1953 Fig 36. Baquiat, Black Pope, 1986
Another very good example is an untitled by Basquiat, 1984 (fig 27). No one will ever be able to state if this work is linked with the Velazquez painting “Las meninas” (fig 37) but resemblance combined with doubt make it extremely interesting (fig 38).
Fig 37. Velazquez, Las Meninas , 1656-57
Fig 38. Photoshop manipulated image
Conclusion:
To finish this essay one could try to classify Basquiat but considering all the dimensions of his expression and the subjects of his works we may conclude labeling him is not easy at all. The fact that he used a wide art vocabulary, starting with the painting tradition of ancient civilizations and ending up in the XX th century, allows me to qualify Basquiat as a fine artist who used painting as a medium but nothing more specific than that. Jean Michel had a complex and amazing life however that shouldn't prevent us from seeing the extremely interesting and mysterious artist behind the icon some people identify with the genius.
List of Images
Cover:
Basquiat, Untitled, 1984
Acrylic, oil paintstick and silkscreen on canvas,
88x77 inch (223.5 x 195.6 cm)
Robert Miller Gallery , New York
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
2. Galerie Bruno Bishofberger, Zurich
Marshall, Jean Michele Basquiat
1983, 66 x 60 inches (167.6 x 152.4 cm)
3. Private collection, Barcelona
Charta Editions, Baquiat
5. Galerie Sho Contemporary Art, Tokyo
8. Martin Clayton,
Leonardo Da Vinci, The Divine and the Grotesque
9. Robert Miller Editions, Basquiat Drawings
10. Hermitage, St. Petersburg
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/vinci/p-vinci22.htm
11. Chist Church College , Oxford
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
12. Collection of Francesco Pellizzi
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
13. Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
14. Private collection
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
15. Private collection
Marshall, Jean Micel Basquiat
16. Collection of Larry Warsh
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
86 x 104 inches (218.4 x 264.2 cm)
17. The Museum of Modern Art , New York
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
18. Private collection
Marshall, Jean Michele Basquiat
19. Private collention
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
20. Egypt
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
21. Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
22. Rhodesia
Marshall, Jean Michele Basquiat
23. Galerie Enrico Navarra
http://www.repubblica.it/gallerie/online/cultura_scienze/basquiat/6.html
25. Basquiat Drawings , Robert Miller Editions
26. Basquiat Drawings , Robert Miller Editions
27. Robert Miller Gallery , New York
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
28. www.ikonltd.com/ basquiat/
29. Robert Miller Gallery , New York
Marshall, Jean Michele Basquiat
30. The Schorr Family Collection
Marshall, Jean Michel Basquiat
31. Philadelphia Museum of Art
Gloria Moure, Marcel Duchamp
32. Collection Andra, Switzerland
Basquiat . Charta Editions
33. Private collection, Paris
Gloria Moure, Marcel Duchamp
34. Jose Nesa, Geneva
Leonhard Emmerling, Basquiat , Tashen
35. Study after Velazquez of Pope Innocent X
36. Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Basquiat , Charta Editions
37. Museo del Prado, Madrid
http://www.mystudios.com/art/bar/velazquez/velazquez-las-meninas.html
38. PhotoShop manipulated image
Bibliography
- Marshall , R (1997) Jean Michel Basquiat Witney Museum of American Art
- Cheim, J (1990) Basquiat Drawings Robert Miller Gallery New York
- Emmerling, L (2003) Basquiat Tashen
- Carotti E (1999) Basquiat Edizioni Charta
- Clayton M (2002) Leonardo Da Vinci The Divine and the Grotesque
Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd
6. Moure G (1988) Marcel Duchamp Thames and Hudson Ltd
