Formal analysis of Jean-Michel BasquiatJean-Michel Basquiat moved from his city origins to the international art gallery circuit. Basquiat became a celebrated, and arguably the most commercially exploited, American painter in the celebrated art movement of Neo-Expressionism. His work is an example of how American artists have once again managed to introduce the human aspect into their work after the enormous achievement of minimalism and conceptualism. This essay is therefore about how Basquiat skillfully and intentionally brought together in his work a horde of contrasting customs, practices, and styles to create a kind of visual college. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The works of former graffiti sprayer Jean-Michel Basquiat have penetrated the global art scene with unparalleled speed. His work attracted the attention of major art dealers such as Bruno Bischofberger, Mary Boone and Anina Nosei. His work also captivated a wide audience that ranged from vagrants to high society. Today his paintings are compared to ancient tribal drawings and kindergarten doodles. The comparisons are intended to show the works' raw innocence and tone of legitimacy. All in all, there is nothing juvenile about the communicative power of Basquiat's work. His paintings express themes as diverse as drug abuse, bigotry, jazz, capitalism and mortality. Issues of racial and socioeconomic inequality and the degradation of life seem to be pervasive in all of his paintings. Each of his paintings has an immediate message despite their impulsive composition. Through his paintings, society is benefited by seeing the beauty and urban decay, along with the unfair social practices that hide within society. In Basquiat's painting “Untitled”, the atmosphere is that of darkness. It comes in black, white and dark blue, which makes it striking at first glance. The minimalist design depicts a prisoner, two men in uniform who are assumed to be police officers due to their hats and badge. The painting expresses racial undertones, as demonstrated by the direct contrast between the prisoners and the police men. A common symbol in Basquiat's work, “The Halo” is also visible in the art. The symbol is used by Basquite in his works to portray black characters. In his painting “Untitled” the symbol is used to indicate the prisoner's state of martyrdom. A longtime director of the Lugano Museum of Modern Art writes in a preface to Basquiat to appreciate his use of darkness to indicate discrimination and confusion in the existing generation. (Chiappini,11). Furthermore, Basquiat indicated the geographical context of the scene which is typically an urban environment. Most likely, he did not witness the urban scene of New York during his lifetime. He is also known to have once been the subject of discrimination and racial profiling, having complained several times about not being able to hail a cab in New York because of his race. It is therefore clear that Untitled is a painting about police discrimination and the mistreatment of blacks in the city. Basquiat's paintings are vividly permeated with sarcasm which at the same time enriches his art in the most confusing way. He employs the use of images of animals and beasts in his paintings. The explicit images present in some of his paintings are crude and almost offensive to the senses of human beings. An example is the breast, which projects animal imagery towards a completely new paradigm. His pictorial allusions to Twain's Southern area and cotton context imply a reference to slavery beforecivil war. Luciano Caprile writes in “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Word and the Image” about the extraordinary narrative element present in Basquiat's work. It indicates that the paintings extrapolate from the myths and rites of origin and put them on display, as images of desecration and existential statement. (Caprile, 118) Basquiat's paintings were invariably linked to the market booms of the 1980s and, like his colleagues, he elaborated on the artist's intuition as superstar, making recurring appearances in published periodicals. His art appears in high fashion streetwear and luxury knitwear. This causes his celebrity status to continue to grow twenty-six years after his death. Documentaries and narrative films have been made about his life, and his paintings continue to top the market. (Vogel) His art auction records are written by a newspaper editor in the New York Times Magazine. Basquiat's work does not show a harsh disinterest in questions of institutional critique and minimalism. He doesn't have a total concern for them, unlike minimalist artworks. There is a broad representation of culture in his work. His interest is in Gray's anatomy and African history. His approach was also to draw on all layers of contemporary New York City culture. Based on world history, combining all interests in his artwork is a way to create a highly personal brand of painting. In the chronological framework of painting, Basquiat's project is similar to other projects, with notable exception in the use of collage; a technique Basquiat worked with when he was struggling to get his name out there. Jean-Michel uses paint and his work is hand-painted, intrinsically personal and emotional. The kind of work he did could only have been made by him. His work examines not just the collected rubbish and remnants of society, but rather a life and an individual made of salvageable rubbish and chaos. Some of Basquiat's paintings are emotional and psychologically evocative. They contain a lot of darkness and suffering on a much more personal or spiritual level. The suffering reflected in his paintings can be linked to an ethnic disposition or inferiority. It could also be the reflection of a lifestyle made up of self-fulfilling prophecies that come true in an almost spiteful way. His works also particularly illustrate the condition in which one lives and dies faster. It is known that Basquiat was a frequent drug user who had developed a habit of using cocaine and heroin. He often combined the two drugs to increase his body's reaction. In “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” Andy Warhol, who was a close friend of Basquiat, writes how his friend would go in and paint in slow motion, leaving many blank spaces. Andy Warhol explains how Basquiat bent over to tie his shoelaces and remained in that position for five minutes. (Taka, 109) Despite assuring family and friends that he would stop using drugs, he died at the age of twenty-seven due to an overdose. One of his paintings is probably a reference to the drug problem in the cities. There is a significant relationship between the images he uses and the context of the drug. When you critically analyze his paintings, the result will be in relation to how drugs transform man into beasts. Critics raised against Basquiant's works indicate that the symbols he used were not satisfactory in all his paintings. For example, Basquiant was once quoted as saying that he wrote gold on all things and thereafter made money. (Taka,137) The last painting Jean-Michel made was about death resulting from drug abuse. One could conclude that Jean-Michel prophesied his death but at the same time call it a coincidence.