Artists & Works

STYLE: graffiti,
neo-expressionism,
East Village

At the age of 17, Jean-Michel Basquiat began scrawling slogans, poems, and symbols on various walls around New York City. His graffiti name was "SAMO," a persona he eventually killed off when he decided to begin making "serious" art. Because of his history as a graffitist and the myth that has grown up around him as a glamorous black artist who lived the fast life and died young, it is easy to overlook the fact that Basquiat's art owes as much to early twentieth century masters (notably Picasso) as it does to graffiti.

Basquiat also celebrated black knowledge and literacy and rejected/deconstructed racist stereotypes (such as Hollywood's frequent restriction of black roles to criminals, entertainers, or servants). Basquiat's work referred to black achievers such as Charlie Parker, Malcolm X, and many others, honoring their role as "warrior-angels," as Greg Tate calls them in his essay about Basquiat for the Whitney Museum retrospective catalog. Tate also says, "It is the inevitable course of black genius to be tortured by white fools," a sensibility to which Basquiat seemed keenly attuned. In Basquiat's paintings, words function as visual images as well as written language. Each bit of text is treated as both a stanza of music and as a visual form which must add content to its meaning. Composition and timing are used to make sounds and meanings resonate in the head, while Basquiat's "drawings" of words make us think about how words can look.

Basquiat's use of symbols and icons is related to the graffitist's identifying tag. Some symbols that Basquiat uses again and again include:
© The copyright sign, connoting stamp of approval, sign of authority, or ownership. Basquiat used this sign often, as well as the notary public seal, for similar reasons.
This sign comes from the "Hobo Signs," a series of signs and symbols that homeless people early in this century used to communicate with each other. Basquiat used many of the hobo signs, but mainly this one, which means, "you'll be cursed out."
The crown is Basquiat's symbol for himself as well as a symbol of respect and admiration for other figures he refer to in his work
This symbol—from the symbols for family life-means "man dies." Basquiat used it often.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Eric Jay, ARTnews, 9/84
"This Haitian-born artist's work operates on the level of childlike fancy and play. While there is a cagey, arts-professional reticence and style to them, his paintings achieve their effects through the use of private, quirky symbols...Basquiat paints these characters in bright carnival colors: yellow, silver, pink, red, blue and green. He respects his colors and knows their force, rather than forcing them together—he is a colorist rather than a color lover...Doodles embroider the figures, contributing to the lively sense of silliness. Basquiat insists on imposing his vocabulary of signs an d squiggles, but then he makes them either very easy to understand or superfluous. His paintings are offhand, disorderly and random, mixing rough and smooth, drawn and barely drawn, to create an impression of facility and ease. The painter clearly tries not to try, going slack instead of slick...a big smile substitutes for happiness."

NYTimes piece
"As part of the never-ending marketing effort, paintings by Basquiat and other hot young art stars are always being crated and shipped. They are flown to an exhibition in Europe, a dealer on the West Coast, a collector's home" NYTimes piece "In fact, neither he or the graffitist Keith Haring had ever "bombed"—spray painted—dormant subway cars in the train yards at night, a necessary rite of passage in the authentic graffiti subculture. More importantly, as the critics pointed out, Basquiat's paintings embodied more formal ties to the history of art. He may have grown up, like most kids, on a diet of comic books, but clearly he had also had a taste of Picasso."

Jeffrey Dietch, Art in America, 1980
"a knockout combination of de Kooning and subway scribbles."

Rene Ricard, ARTFORUM 1981
"If Cy Twombley and Jean Dubuffet had a baby and gave it up for adoption, it would be Jean Michel. The elegance of Twombley is there...and so is the brut of the young Dubuffet..."

Elizabeth Hess, Village Voice, 11/3/92
"Jean-Michel Basquiat would not have appreciated the fact that the art world is divided up into those who think he was a genius and those who think he was a fraud. "White supremacist" critics and curators—and there are many—refuse to give any living black painter his or her due. Nevertheless, basquiat was born with an artist gene (in Brooklyn); he made it all the way to Documenta, the prestigious German art fair, by the time he was 21 because he was already painting exceptional works of art...As the Reagan-Bush years wore on and racism became more rampant, opinion turned against basquiat and all the graffiti masters...He was dangerously good. basquiat was dismissed as a kind of opportunist party boy with a big ego. (name one famous male artist with a small one.)...His shocking OD death at the age of 27 was devastating. The Rude Boy had not yet secured his place in history...Right now I'd take students to see Basquiat before Matisse [Matisse and Basquiat retrospective held at same time in NYC in '92]. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that Basquiat is the better painter, but that he's the infinitely more relevant painter. Matisse may be the most socially disengaged artist we have ever seen in depth at the Modern; basquiat's work is saturated in the political culture of the moment (his own heritage is Haitian and Puerto Rican) and the search for the artist's self. While much of the work is abstract the overt subject is always racial identity...his paintings describe, over and over, the artist's anger. Basquiat was a great poet, with a rare ability to combine both pigment and text on one surface...Basquiat's poems often have a visual shape, as if they are dimensional...At their best, the artworks are layered with references to...the unpredictable. The artist's anxious hand is always moving. As many critics have suggested, the influence of Dubuffet and Twombly are obvious, along with the bravado of Picasso. But the mood is jazz. Basquiat, apparently, worked to music and television, which explains why his output is so unconnected to social realities. And disconnected too..."