Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a painter and a graffiti artist. His work is mostly composed of graffiti, paintings on canvas and other mixed media compositions. Basquiat seemed interesting because, even though he did not live a long time, his life seemed to be filled with drama. His works seem interesting because they have a story behind them and they are supposed to be very political.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, NY. Basquiat's mother, Matilde, was Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard Jean-Baptiste, was Haitian. When he was young, Basquiat was encouraged by his mom to expresses himself with his artwork. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti buildings in lower Manhattan with the signature of "SAMO" or "SAMO shit" which meant "same ol' shit". In 1978, in his junior year, Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School and left home. He moved into the city and survived by selling T-shirts and postcards on the street. By 1979, Basquiat gained popularity in Manhattan. This was due to his appearances on вЂ?TV Party’, which was a live public-access cable show. In the late 1970s, Basquiat formed a band called Gray, with Vincent Gallo. Basquiat worked with Gallo again in a film Downtown 81 which featured some of Gray's recordings. He also appeared Rapture’s music video, which was a single by Blondie, another American Rock band. Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980. He participated in The Times Square Show with many other artist in a multi-artist exhibition. In 1981, Rene Ricard helped to begin Basquiat's international career with an article he published in “Artforum” magazine. During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his works around New York as well as in different countries around the world. By 1982, Basquiat was becoming a part of what would soon be called the Neo-expressionist movement. He started dating an aspiring performer named Madonna in the fall of 1982. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he worked with a lot, eventually becoming close friends. By 1984, many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his drug use and increasingly strange behavior. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit that had started from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York's underground. On February 10, 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. As Basquiat's international success grew, his works were exhibited across Europe. Unfortunately, his success did not last. Basquiat died in his studio apartment in 1988 from a mixture of heroin and cocaine. He was only 27. (Wikipedia)

The piece that I am going to critique is called the Mona Lisa. Basquiat painted it in 1983 with acrylic paints and oil sticks on a canvas. The lines in Basquiat’s Mona Lisa vary in length and width. There are some thick, long lines and there seems to be some short, fine lines. The space is taken up my Mona Lisa’s humanoid form. The colors range from a vibrant orange of the background, to the back or the letters and Lisa’s dress, to the pink in the right-hand background corner. I think the orange and the black balance each other nicely in the sense that they do not seem to overwhelm or dominate the picture. Your eye does not really focus on one object in the piece so it travels around the picture, sort of taking everything in. The repetition of the number 1 in the painting gives it the appearance of a US dollar bill, which was most likely Basquiat’s