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.