The Chaotic Brilliance Of Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Genius of Jean-Michel Basquiat

In 2017, an untitled artwork depicting a sky-blue canvas ripped open by an enormous skull, teeth bared through visceral slashes of oil and spray paint, was auctioned off for over 110 million dollars. This masterpiece wasn’t the work of an old master, but of a 21-year-old black Brooklynite named Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of America’s most charismatic painters and currently its highest sold.

Early Life and Inspiration

Born in 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat spent his childhood making art and mischief in Boerum Hill. He never attended art school, instead, he learned by wandering through New York galleries and listening to the music his father played at home. He drew inspiration from unexpected places, scribbling his own versions of cartoons, comic books, and biblical scenes on scrap paper from his father’s office. However, it was a medical encyclopedia, “Grey’s Anatomy,” brought to his hospital bed by his mother after he was hit by a car, that arguably exerted the most powerful influence on Basquiat. It ignited a lifelong fascination with anatomy that manifested in the skulls, sinew, and guts of his later work, which frequently explores both the power and vulnerability of marginalized bodies.

Entry into the Art World

By 17, Basquiat launched his first foray into the art world with his friend Al Diaz. They spray-painted cryptic statements and symbols all over Lower Manhattan, signed with the mysterious moniker SAMO. These humorous, profound, and rebellious declarations were strategically scattered throughout Soho’s art scene. After revealing himself as the artist, Basquiat leveraged SAMO’s success to enter the scene himself, selling postcards, playing clubs with his avant-garde band, and boldly seeking out his heroes. By 21, he’d turned to painting full-time.

Artistic Process and Themes

Basquiat’s process was a sort of calculated improvisation. Like Beat writers who composed their work by shredding and reassembling scraps of writing, Basquiat used similar cut-up techniques to remix his materials. When he couldn’t afford canvases, he fashioned them out of discarded wood he found on the street. He used oil sticks, crayons, spray paint, and pencils and pulled quotes from the menus, comic books, and textbooks he kept open on the studio floor. He often worked on multiple projects at once, pulling in splintered anatomy, reimagined historical scenes, and skulls transplanted from classical still lives. Basquiat repurposed both present-day experiences and art history into an inventive visual language.

Despite his increasingly mainstream audience, Basquiat insisted on depicting challenging themes of identity and oppression. Marginalized figures take center stage, such as prisoners, cooks, and janitors. His obsession with bodies, history, and representation can be found in works evoking the Atlantic slave trade and African history, as well as pieces focusing on contemporary race relations.

Legacy and Influence

In less than a decade, Basquiat made thousands of paintings and drawings, along with sculptures, fragments of poetry, and music. His output accelerated alongside his meteoric rise to fame, but his life and work were cut tragically short when he died from a drug overdose at the age of 27. After his death, Basquiat’s work only increased in value, but the energy and flair of his pieces have impacted much more than their financial worth. Today, his influence swirls around us in music, poetry, fashion, and film, and his art retains the power to shock, inspire, and get under our skin.