Jean Michel Basquiat Monograph
Monograph Display and describing the works of Jean Michel Basquait
Monograph Display and describing the works of Jean Michel Basquait
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<strong>Monograph</strong> displaying and<br />
describing the work of<br />
<strong>Jean</strong> <strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong><br />
RA A<br />
CH<br />
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DI<br />
NT<br />
ILD<br />
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BIOGRAPHY 3<br />
EARLY YEARS 5<br />
SYNOPSIS 5<br />
ARTWORK 8<br />
Scull 11<br />
Notary 12<br />
Untitled 1982 15<br />
Arm and Hammer II 1985 17<br />
Fexible 1982 18<br />
Untitled History of the Black People 21<br />
KEY IDEAS 22<br />
PERSONAL PROBLEMS 22<br />
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BIOGRAPHY<br />
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SYNOPSIS<br />
<strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong> was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New<br />
York. He first attracted attention for his graffiti under the name “SAMO”<br />
in New York City. He sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork<br />
on the streets before his painting career took off. He collaborated with<br />
Andy Warhol in the mid-1980s, which resulted in a show of their work.<br />
<strong>Basquiat</strong> died on August 12, 1988, in New York City.<br />
EARLY YEARS<br />
Artist <strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong> was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December<br />
22, 1960. With a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s<br />
diverse cultural heritage was one of his many sources of inspiration.<br />
A self-taught artist, <strong>Basquiat</strong> began drawing at an early age on sheets<br />
of paper his father, an accountant, brought home from the office. As he<br />
delved deeper into his creative side, his mother strongly encouraged to<br />
pursue artistic talents.<br />
<strong>Basquiat</strong> first attracted attention for his graffiti in New York City in the late<br />
1970s, under the name “SAMO.” Working with a close friend, he tagged<br />
subway trains and Manhattan buildings with cryptic aphorisms.<br />
In 1977, <strong>Basquiat</strong> quit high school a year before he was slated to graduate.<br />
To make ends meet, he sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork<br />
on the streets of his native New York.<br />
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COMMERCIAL SUCCESS<br />
His rise coincided with the emergence of a new art movement, Noe-Expressionism,<br />
ushering in a wave of new, young and experimental artists<br />
that included Julian Schnabel and Susan Rothenberg.<br />
In the mid 1980s, <strong>Basquiat</strong> collaborated with famed pop artist Andy Warhol,<br />
which resulted in a show of their work that featured a series of corporate<br />
logos and cartoon characters.<br />
On his own, <strong>Basquiat</strong> continued to exhibit around the country and the<br />
world. In 1986, he traveled to Africa for a show in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.<br />
That same year, the 25-year-old exhibited nearly 60 paintings at the Kestner-Gesellschaft<br />
Gallery in Hanover, Germany—becoming the youngest<br />
artist to ever showcase his work there.<br />
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I am not a black artist<br />
I am an artist<br />
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Scull (1981) Acrylic and crayon on canvas- Private Collection<br />
SKULL<br />
An example of <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s early canvas-based work, Untitled (Skull)<br />
features a patchwork skull that seems the pictorial equivalent of<br />
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein - a sum of incongruent parts. Suspended<br />
before a New York City subway map-like background, the skull<br />
is at once a contemporary graffitist’s riff on a long Western tradition<br />
of self portraiture and the “signature piece” of some anonymous,<br />
streetwise miscreant. <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s recent past as a gritty curbside<br />
peddler, virtually homeless floater, and occasional nightclub interloper<br />
are all equally stamped into this troubled three-quarter profile,<br />
making for a world-weary icon of the displaced Puerto-Rican<br />
and Haitian immigrant <strong>Basquiat</strong> forever seemed to remain even<br />
while successfully navigating the newly gentrified streets that were<br />
1980s SoHo.<br />
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NOTARY<br />
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Notary (1983) Acrylic and crayon on canvas- Private Collection<br />
A key work that serves as an example of <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s<br />
combinatory style is Notary, which he finished in March<br />
1983. The piece consists of a complex layering of images<br />
and symbols from Greek mythology, Roman history,<br />
and African tribal culture, among others. In the center<br />
of the painting is a black male torso, that includes<br />
both the black flesh and facial features and the internal<br />
workings, such as the neurological wiring in the head,<br />
the spine and several organs. The depiction is similar to<br />
that in Untitled (Head), only that in Notary the combination<br />
with other stylistic means adds to the immense<br />
complexity of the painting.<br />
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Acrylic and oil paint stick on canvas - The Estate of <strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong><br />
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UNTITLED 1982<br />
Like a page pulled cleanly from a daily artist's journal, this untitled canvas<br />
features <strong>Basquiat</strong>'s personal iconography, some reminiscent of that of<br />
Paul Klee. Boldy appropriating images commonly associated with African<br />
art - a skull, a bone, an arrow - <strong>Basquiat</strong> modernizes them with his<br />
Noe-Expressionist style of thickly applied paint, rapidly rendered subjects,<br />
and scrawled linear characters, all of which float loosely across the<br />
pictorial field, as though hallucinatory. A white skull juts from the center<br />
of the ebony composition, vividly recalling a revered painter's tradition of<br />
the memento mori - a reminder of the ephemeral nature of all life and the<br />
body's eventual, merciless degeneration. <strong>Basquiat</strong> demonstrates in one<br />
concise "study" how he is able to carry on an ancient practice of painting<br />
"still life", all the while suggesting, as does a great jazz musician, that the<br />
artist's work was relatively effortless, if not completely improvisatory.<br />
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Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas - Gallery Bruno Bischofberger AG
ARM AND HAMMER II 1985<br />
Typical of their collaboration, "Arm and Hammer II" demonstrates how<br />
<strong>Basquiat</strong> and Warhol would pass a work between them for their mutual<br />
intervention, like a game of chance happening, free association, and<br />
mutual inspiration. Warhol's characteristic employment of corporate logos<br />
and advertising copy as shorthand signs for the materialistic modern psyche<br />
is frequently overlaid by <strong>Basquiat</strong>'s only partially successful attempt<br />
to deface them, or otherwise "humanize" them, freehand, as though he<br />
were vainly railing his fist at a largely invisible and insidious monster.<br />
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FLEXIBLE 1982<br />
Artwork description & Analysis: Flexible features two of <strong>Basquiat</strong>'s most<br />
famous motifs: the griot and the venerable crown. A sole black figure,<br />
half cadaver, half living entity, stares "blindly" at the viewer, its arms<br />
creating a closed circuit, perhaps a reference to spiritualized energy.<br />
With few distinguishing characteristics, the subject takes on the visage<br />
of the Everyman. At the same time, this is not just any figure, but one of<br />
African ethnicity and proud heritage a clear reference to <strong>Basquiat</strong>'s own<br />
identity (note the diagrammatic rendering of the figure's lungs and abdomen,<br />
reminiscent of the young <strong>Basquiat</strong>'s fascination for Gray's Anatomy<br />
sketches). Given that the griot is traditionally a kind of wandering philosopher,<br />
street performer, and social commentator all in one, it is probable<br />
that <strong>Basquiat</strong> saw himself in this role within the New York art world, one<br />
that nurtured his artistic success but also swiftly exploited it for material<br />
profit.<br />
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Acrylic and oil paint stick on wood - The Estate of <strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong><br />
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Acrylic paint and oil paint stick on panel - The Estate of <strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong>
UNTITLED HISTORY OF THE<br />
BLACK PEOPLE 1983<br />
As though he were reconstructing an epic history, or precedent, for his<br />
own ancestors’ arrival on the American continent, this expansive work of<br />
the early 1980s compresses together the relationship of Egypt to Africa,<br />
with references to more local centers of African-American music and<br />
greater southern culture, such as Memphis, Tennessee. At the center of<br />
the painting, <strong>Basquiat</strong> depicts a yellow Egyptian boat being guided down<br />
the Nile River by the god Osiris. Rife with visual and textual references<br />
to African history, the painting tackles a heady subject with a deceptively<br />
naive style. <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s late-period works feature multi-panel paintings,<br />
in the tradition of Renaissance religious triptychs, and canvases with<br />
exposed stretcher bars. Often the surfaces of these pieces are virtually<br />
consumed by their own freight of dense writing, collage,<br />
and abstruse imagery.<br />
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KEY IDEAS<br />
• <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s work is one of the few examples of how an early 1980s American<br />
Punk, or graffiti-based and counter-cultural practice could become<br />
a fully recognized, critically embraced and popularly celebrated artistic<br />
phenomenon, indeed not unlike the rise of American Hip Hop during the<br />
same era.<br />
• Despite his work’s “unstudied” appearance, <strong>Basquiat</strong> very skillfully and<br />
purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions,<br />
practices, and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage, one deriving,<br />
in part, from his urban origins, and in another a more distant, African-Caribbean<br />
heritage.<br />
• For some critics, <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s swift rise to fame and equally swift and tragic<br />
death by drug overdose epitomizes and personifies the overly commercial,<br />
hyped up international art scene of the mid 1980s, a cultural<br />
phenomenon that for many observers was symptomatic of the largely<br />
artificial bubble economy of the era.<br />
• <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s work is an example of how American artists of the 1980s could<br />
reintroduce the human figure in their work after the wide success of Minimalism<br />
and Conceptual-ism, thus establishing a dialogue with the more<br />
distant tradition of 1950s Abstract Expressionism.<br />
PERSONAL PROBLEMS<br />
As his popularity soared, so did <strong>Basquiat</strong>’s personal problems. By the mid-<br />
1980s, friends became increasingly concerned by his excessive drug use.<br />
He became paranoid and isolated himself from the world around him for<br />
long stretches. Desperate to kick a heroin addiction, he left New York for<br />
Hawaii in 1988, returning a few months later and claiming to be sober.<br />
Sadly, he wasn’t. <strong>Basquiat</strong> died of a drug overdose on August 12, 1988,<br />
in New York City. He was 27 years old. Although his art career was brief,<br />
<strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong> has been credited with bringing the African-American<br />
and Latino experience in the elite art world.<br />
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THANKS FOR READING<br />
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Knock Out Punch, Andy Warhol & <strong>Jean</strong>-<strong>Michel</strong> <strong>Basquiat</strong> Studio, New York July 10, 1985<br />
Silver Print Silver Gelatin Print Signed, titled, dated, and numbered on verso<br />
Photograph by Michael Halsband<br />
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