Written by Hilary Dufour
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s political-poetical graffiti art sets him apart from the more severe high modernism of his time. The successful Brooklyn-born graffiti artist and poet was the son of a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother. This unique background separated him from the generally white art world, a fact which he acknowledged and integrated into his unique art.
1980s Contemporary Art
Basquiat was part of an emerging group of contemporary artists in the 1980s who were fed up with high modernism’s strict and rigid boundaries. This group of like minded artists wanted to reform the modern art world by creating recognizable images from contemporary life using early modernism’s expressionist style. Basquiat was concerned more with expressing feelings rather than the creation of realistic images and portrayals. This interest in the use of art to express rather than depict is implicit in his drawings from the early 1980s.
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| Thumbprint artists are inspired by Basquiat's dynamic work |
Hypnotic Words and Tags
Jean-Michel Basquiat enjoyed using his own experiences to address larger societal concerns. One way he addressed these concerns was through the integration of words into his paintings and graffiti art. Often, the same words were repeated over and over again “achieving an almost hypnotic effect.” Though, he was not the only artist at the time to use words in his paintings, he was one of the most successful in creating a “dynamic whole.” Before becoming a more established artist, as a teenager he would sign his graffiti art with “SAMO©,” standing for “same old” which supposedly came from a stoned conversation he had with his friend Al Diaz. This short and sardonic phrase appearing on the streets of Manhattan attracted the attention the New York media and helped Basquiat gain popularity.
An Outsider in the Gallery
His early success as a graffiti artist led him away from doing graffiti on the sides of buildings to selling paintings in Soho galleries. However, he stuck to his street art roots by often choosing to paint on “rough, handmade supports” that echoed his outsider and anti-high art mentality. He supported himself as a professional artist by the young age of 20 and amassed six acclaimed international shows in 1982. His popularity led him to co-create a show in the mid-1980s with the famous pop artist Andy Warhol, who was also an integral part of the revitalization of the New York art world.
Unfortunately, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career as a groundbreaking contemporary artist was short-lived due to a drug-overdose at the young age of 27. Art critics have appreciated his art for its “emotional depth, unique iconography, and formal strengths in color, composition, and drawing.”
At Thumbprint Gallery you can find many artists who follow elements of Basquiat’s style, such as artist and poet Kenny King whose work has primitive tones mixed with modern expressionism or Mike Maxwell whose recent work incorporated text, a common method in graffiti art.
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