Basquiat's Wild Imagination

An African-American graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat urbanized Neo-Expressionism in New York City using crayons and chalk as mediums, his child-like stick figures, cryptic messages, and pictographs to endorse his signature “SAMO.”  Basquiat website quotes him saying, “Believe it or not, I can actually draw,” which drew the attention of a broad audience during the mid-1980’s.  In addition, Pop artist Andy Warhol became a support to Basquiat’s artwork and together they created paintings that made Basquiat noticeable.  In collaboration, Basquiat and Warhol began a series of paintings, which Warhol starts the painting allowing Basquiat to layer the painting with lines and words.  Basquiat’s wild imagination of text and iconology, he demonstrated emotional and cultural battles in the African-American society, and through Western and Pop art history.

Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol

An example of Basquiat’s collaborations with Warhol, Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, which Christ’s image is the focal point of the motif.  This sculptural installation of acrylic paint and punching bags symbolize the negative criticism that both artists were dealing with at this time.  Warhol’s boxing sessions with Basquiat, which Basquiat was a fan of professional boxing, reveals a time when Basquiat painted a portrait of his dealer.  In The Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol says, “paintings we’re doing together are better when you can’t tell who did which parts,” which makes the installation almost seem as if it were painted by one artist, and even their struggles.

With Basquiat’s usage of words and symbolism, he creates four wooden panels into Grillo, Spanish for cricket, which is a photocopy collage of oils, acrylics, oilstick and nails on wood.  This painting references race, power and wealth, and human rights as a part of sugar plantations, combat, and colonization, which the skeletal figures are no exemption to the painting.  The Nkisi figures are represented to swear oath among their tribes.  The black-nailed crown figure in the Hemba culture (left) carries superstition of magic stored in their bodies.  For the Caribbean culture, the yellow-halo crown figure (right) portrays dominance in this culture by the torch and fist, which Basquiat is influenced by his Haitian/Puerto Rican parents’ roots.  In the term, griot, which means “poet and historian”, best describes his artwork.

Grillo, Jean-Michel Basquiat

In Basquiat earlier painting career, the “Untitled” paintings, includes Untitled (Head) or misinterpreted as (Skull), he quickly completes expressive characteristics of a large head and finishes it later because of unexpected image he created.  In Untitled (Head), it’s a representation of facial features, like X-ray vision, which looks the part of Abstract Expressionism era.  Through emotion, the artist frees themselves of memory, association, and nostalgia.  However, Skull is misinterpreted by the way the subject is portrayed inanimate from the artist intention.  It’s all through the relationship of emotion and the physical appearance that surfaces on canvas while the artist is painting.

Untitled (Skull), Jean-Michel Basquiat

In 1986, Basquiat’s became largely known later on in his career, showing his artwork in exhibitions and making front-page news.  When Andy Warhol died, Basquiat became isolated from the world and it affected his relationships.  Consequently, his depression from Warhol's death made his heroine addiction spiral out of control, and he died from an overdose on August 12, 1988 at the age of 27.  He truly was an artistic success during the time of Neo-Expressionism and he literally put his soul into his artwork.

Rosenquist's American Images

With James Rosenquist’s large billboards and fragmented montages, it’s hard for any spectator to overlook his works of art.  Some examples of his works consist of famous icons, like John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, to American society and Pop culture.  In addition, he captures Vietnam War in his artwork as well; awareness from what he saw during that time.  Since he doesn’t consider himself a Pop artist, with traditional comic strips and dots, instead he overlaps images with wild colors and a wide variety of mediums.

When Rosenquist started in Abstract Expressionism in the 1950’s, he later became part of the Pop Art culture with artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Claes Oldenburg.  During the early part of his career, creating huge billboards wasn’t considered art.  Once he brought down the billboards to small canvases, his work was noticeable to critics, spectators, and curators.  Throughout his artistic career, he went on to become one of the notable members of Pop Art.

 

 

In one of his best works, F-111, he expresses a sense of fear during the nuclear threats of the war.  The billboard is 10 feet high and 86 feet long and depicts a F-111 military aircraft, spanning the entire length, with 51 panels of overlapping images. He created this piece on canvas with aluminum and oils of a girl getting her hair done, cake, spaghetti, and a nuclear cloud. It was a sensation during the contemporary Pop Art era and went for $60,000 in 1965. Its location sits the front room of the Leo Castelli Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Rosenquist explained to American Visions: “I thought of this new war device that’s a defense economy item, supporting aircraft workers, each with two-and-a-half statistical children in Texas or New England or wherever. And I thought that being an artist was insignificant.”

Another political work of art, Campaign 1965, is painted and a lithograph, a print made from stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. In the lithograph, a saltshaker sprinkling a dove’s tail, and the wallpaper in the background is fruit salad of a military man’s chest that Rosenquist hoped to show peace from the war.  In addition, the Kleenex boxes represent consumer products and used combinations of airbrushing, wallpaper rollers, stencils, and color-separation process as a medium.  A publisher, Tatyana Grosman, founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, helped create this piece during Rosenquist’s 23 day stay at ULAE in New York.  Since Rosenquist opposed war and later was arrested for being a protestor, the public throwing tomatoes at it destroyed the painting.

Rosenquist grabs the American societies attention and his works made him a success in the Pop Art world.  Furthermore, he became a true American artist by documenting what he saw was important to American history.  The popular images he used in his large-scale artwork, he wanted the people of the states to realize what’s happening outside their window and to view art as a progression of actual events during the war and Pop Art era.