Graffiti Artists of the Pioneering Period of Street Arts.(JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT)

Jean Michel Basquiat

-born in BROOKLYN, New York
-begins drawing cartoon which sparks off the start of a life of making his own pictures

Jean is considered an exceptional creative talent by any standard.
Instead of focusing on visual arts like most graffiti artists, he mixed poetic social dialog into his artwork.

His works include graffiti influenced naive, expressionist paintings, often including text and images from popular culture.

The thing about his work is that he has themes for his art works.

Themes of his art works

Heritage
Visual Poetry
Artistic Process
Heroes
Justice and Equality
Cultural identity

HERITAGE
This monumental painting explores Basquiat's own heritage and connects the history of the United States with that of the ancient world. The complex words and images here provide some insight into his heritage. The themes of history, and blackness, occur throughout this work.

The Nile
1983. Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas mounted on wood supports. Collection Enrico Navarra

"I'd say my mother gave me all the primary things. The art came from her." — Jean-Michel Basquiat

VISUAL POETRY
Jimmy Best...1981. Spray paint and oil paintstick on metal panel. Collection Tsong-Zung Chang

Basquiat did not consider his graffiti to be art, yet he also said that he used words like brushstrokes.His style of writing was different from other graffiti writers of the time. He used a straightforward kind of printed line, easily read by a passerby, yet elegant in its unique way of marking the vertical and horizontal lines.

ARTISTIC PROCESS

Notary
1983. Acrylic, oil paintstick and paper collage on canvas mounted on wood supports. Schorr Family Collection; on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

Basquiat uses ideas, words, colours, and images from lots of differenet sources and brought them together like a collage of things he found in his life. He incorporate all these into his artwork by using figures, words, crossed-out words, symbols and design.

HEROES

"Since I was seventeen, I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix.... I had a romantic feeling of how people had become famous." — Jean-Michel Basquiat

CPRKR
1982. Acrylic, oil paintstick and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports. Collection of Donald Baechler, New York

He includes his respect for his heroes, marking them as members of a royal family by drawing crown in his artwork.

JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

"I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life." — Jean-Michel Basquiat

At barely twenty years of age, Basquiat began to draw on his own life experiences to talk about larger human concerns.


Per Capita
1981. Acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas. The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut

CULTURAL IDENTITY
Gold Griot
1984. Acrylic and oil paintstick on wood. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat


X-Ray Vision:
Basquiat's paintings seem to have a unique X-ray vision that captures both the internal and external human being, as if to say that there is more here than meets the eye.

The transparency of this griot figure shows how Basquiat paints and writes from multiple viewpoints or perspectives. He allows us to look inside of things, or read something in another language, and connect different cultures and histories.