Jean Michel Basquait's art is more based on portraying feeling and emotion rather than having a specific meaning behind his art, although he does have some very meaningful artwork. His style of art is very different and is a style of art that is specific to him. It is something that can be seen in a lot of his popular pieces and is an aspect of his art that is specific to him. He has a very unique style of artwork that is reflective of him as a person. His upbringing and the life that he lived had a big influence on his art.Most other artist came to these conclusion based off of his piece titled "Untitled (Boxer)", this piece of art portrays power because of the way the character in this piece has his arms up in victory. So the main meaning …show more content…
The large body of the character in this painting is very significant. Just that detail alone shows that Basquait wanted to portrait strength through this painting. This painting was sold at auction for 13.5 million dollars in 2008. It had been held as part of the private collection of Lars Ulrich, the drummer for the heavy metal band Metallica, who decided to sell this painting along with Basquiat’s other masterpiece Profit I in order to raise funds to build a house for his family.He viewed himself as tough since he grew up on the streets and was homeless for years. Basquait once said he thought that he was going to be a bum the rest of his life, and by going through all that he did it made him a stronger person. “He was a street kid, true, a teen runaway who had slept on benches in Tompkins Square Park, but he was also a handsome privileged boy from a Park Slope brownstone who had gone to private school, followed by a stint at City-As-School, a destination for gifted children. Though he didn’t have a formal art education, he and his mother Matilde had been visiting museums since he was a toddler.” (Laing). Maybe …show more content…
Basquait had a timeless form of painting, his works are being sold for millions today.He has a lot of artwork that may be hard to understand at first but show how he was feeling. It is important that Basquait had a different style of art because it helped him stand out from other artists. Basquait once said "I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.", and that can still be said about his art today, that it is somewhat messy. But it is what makes his artwork stand out and be specific to him. This also made his artwork be able to portray feeling and emotion rather than have a specific meaning behind it.Basquait also has other piece's that does portray a specific message, such as his piece titled "Irony of the Negro Policeman". In this piece his message is meant to critique black police officers in that time. He wanted to show how African-Americans were controlled by the white majority in America. He felt that in his time African Americans were under the control of the police system. He also felt that an African American policeman was working to enslave his fellow African American citizens. The meaning behind this painting was important for that time.Basquait's style of painting was different than a lot of artist and you can tell what emotions he was
The art represented more than just sculpture. The art represented the social issue of racism by not having “black art” in a “white museum”. History shows us that black or African-American people have had a hard time fitting into this society because of the older days were black people were considered to be inferior to the “white
... painted in an Idealistic way with the portrait of King Francis I by shifting the proportions and making his shoulders broader than normal. Filling out the frame of the painting, the king’s head and neck look too small on the full body, conveying the idea of manliness and strength. Both artists strived to paint the portraits in a realistic way, but distorted the subject and lighting to heighten the feeling of power that both portraits present.
“Painting is a way to examine the world in ways denied me by the United States justice system, a way to travel beyond the walls and bars of the penitentiary. Through my paints I can be with my People—in touch with my culture, tradition, and spirit. I can watch little children in regalia, dancing and smiling; see my elders in prayer; behold the intense glow in a warrior’s eye. As I work the canvas, I am a free man.” – Leonard Peltier
“A picture is a poem without words” – Horace, the purpose of art is to reveal the sensations of life but also allows humans to express their emotions and views on certain aspects. Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Neo-Expressionist painter throughout the 1980’s who was known for his style. He was an African American artist and musician that was part of the SAMO. The SAMO was a graffiti group that wrote epigrams. While growing up, one of Basquiat's inspirations that encouraged him to paint was his diverse cultural heritage.
I found out that he is not only an artist, but an author as well. He uses his artistic ability to express his political views. The painting below is about a man struggling with life and the depths of despair falls to his knees asking for an audience with God. He left his country due to one night, solider bombarded into his home and ransacked everything in the middle night for no reasons (King, 2001). It’s a country run by dictatorship, fear, killing and extremist (King, 2001). Like other artist, he uses his art to express the pain that many of his people endure brought upon by those in his own culture. So, oppression does not have to come from others outside your race or other ethnicity, but your own as well.
Georges Seurat used the pointillism approach and the use of color to make his painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, be as lifelike as possible. Seurat worked two years on this painting, preparing it woth at least twenty drawings and forty color sketched. In these preliminary drawings he analyzed, in detail every color relationship and every aspect of pictorial space. La Grande Jatte was like an experiment that involved perspective depth, the broad landscape planes of color and light, and the way shadows were used. Everything tends to come back to the surface of the picture, to emphasize and reiterate the two dimensional plane of which it was painted on. Also important worth mentioning is the way Seurat used and created the figures in the painting.
Many classic books of literature of the French Enlightenment era comes from the famous author Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as his pen name, Voltaire.The French author was born on November 21st, 1694 and died May 30th, 1778 in the city of Paris. He started school at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand at the age of 10 and graduated in 1711 with a motive of being a writer. However, Voltaire’s father did not agree with his choice of study and wanted Voltaire to study law. He went back to school to study law for another two years after his graduation. Voltaire was sent to The Hague, Netherlands in order to act as a secretary to the French ambassador at the time. During his visit, he became infatuated with Catherine Olympe de Noyer. Due to his love affair, Voltaire was discharged from the Dutch country to France “disinherited, and threatened with exile to the New World.” (Stanley 67). A few years later, Voltaire was accused of writing two satiric poems against the French regime because of his reputation in writing and was imprisoned at the Bastille from 1717 to 1718. During the time spent inside the prison, Voltaire wrote the tragedy called the Oedipe. After being released, Voltaire adopted the new of De Voltaire due to the commonness of the original name. His father died in 1722 and was released from his control. Voltaire also met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, the same year in Brussels, Belgium. From 1726 to 1728, Voltaire was sentenced to another term in the Bastille and exiled to England due to an encounter with “his growing squadron of enemies and spearheaded Chevalier de Rohan” (Stanley 67). He met the author by the name of Jonathan Swift during his exile. Voltaire was able to re-enter France in 1729, and p...
Is Michel Foucault a historian or not? At the beginning of the analysis on Foucault’s historical analysis, what should be acknowledged is that none of Foucault’s works refer to his previous ones and every work is based upon a new construction of theory and method which shakes the standard norms of history writing and put his methods under suspicion by some historians. On the other hand, many others favor his work; because of Foucault’s specific approach, Gutting calls him as an ‘intellectual artisan’ who was an expert of producing intellectual equivalents of material objects and especially three kinds of them which are history, theory and myth. (Gutting 1996, 3-6) Thomas Flynn answers this question by claiming that Foucault’s all major works are histories of a
Throughout the 1980’s, the graffiti scene was very familiar with the name “Basquiat.” Jean-Michel Basquiat is an American graffiti artist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. His artwork is mostly defined as neo-expressionism with a bit of primitivism. His medium was usually a combination of oils, acrylics and spray cans. One could look at Basquiat’s pieces and say they are as if a child scribbled on a canvas, but to me, there is more than that. I admire Basquiat not for what he is, but for what he is not. I believe it requires a lot of bravery to showcase your art that is less than perfect as in the social standards for fine art. Basquiat did just that and was still well respected for it. I feel as if he conquered in keeping his childhood creativity
The image located on page 997 by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players is an acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels. The artist colored this painting to make a tribute to two legendary African American musicians. This painting features bold colors, fractured figures, and graffiti to capture the dynamic rhythms of jazz and the excitement of New York. The painting is divided into three panels. On both of the end panels, the artist has painted the pictures of the musicians. Also, the painting demonstrates random words which probably has to do with the musicians work perhaps. The painting style is abstract expressionism and art brut which the artist took inspiration from Pablo Picasso. The artists used bold colors on the black background.
Giorgio Vasari’s book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects was written as a second edition in 1568. It is a collection of written accounts that Vasari thought were the best and most esteemed artists in the Renaissance, which specifically focuses on North Italian cities such as Florence and Milan. This primary source is a tool that gives the reader an understanding of the ways in which Italian Renaissance artists lived their lives. The Lives is also important because it is considered the first book to focus on art history. Barolsky states that Vasari’s Lives is “a foundational text in the history of art history” (Barolsky 33). Vasari, in many ways paved the way as an art historian for others in the future by writing
The colors that Basquiat uses in Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold) contrasts with each other as well as introduce a mood. The yellow and the gold are chosen to uplift the painting and bring in the feeling of brilliance but the spots of red that are hidden underneath suggests the idea of violence. The black figure is brought out with the help of the white lines to help define the features, however, it is the light blue underneath it all that balances out the variations in mood. The colors are unmixed and pure, but it is the violent brushwork that gives the painting some agency. How he handles his brush and how Basquiat applies his paint in his painterly style suggests confrontation. He paints viciously because this is how his mind works through the problems in this head. Yet his painting style also helps hold the picture together, from his violent strokes in the background to his planned outlines on the figure and the black lines in the background. This idea of how he paints, using the strokes to become part of the narrative while also being a technique to approach painting, is something that Basquiat picked up from the Abstract Expressionists, like Pollock, before him. By understanding which artists he looked at reveals how to read Basquiat’s painting because he learned how to appropriate their
They were living on couches, and sneaking onto trains to get from one part of the city to another. In Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, A documentary by Tamra Davis, an ex-girlfriend of Jean-Michel’s was quoted, “If you've decided to live a certain counterculture, subversive lifestyle, its very difficult to go home” (2010). Jean-Michel lived that counterculture lifestyle; he was a graffiti artist, spray painting New York under the name of SAMO. Jean-Michel never had a real job because he claimed that it felt humiliating to have someone order him around. When he became desperate for money, he made and sold postcards on the streets of New York (Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child). Neo-expressionism also operated largely outside of the state. However, as with most art, critics were quick to claim that the art was being produced and sold as a commodity and therefore was controlled by the market. But many chose to take the side that Irving Sandler did in his book Art of the Postmodern Era, “… genuine works of art had meanings which have nothing to do with commerce or politics and are unaffected by either” (Sandler, 225). This was the mindset that drove most Neo-expressionist artists. In all “genuine” art, there is an attempt to disturb the hegemony and make people see things
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Impressionist whose works included; Bathers at Asnieres, Circus, Eiffel Tower, Gray weather, and his most notable and largest piece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
This sculpture seems to epitomize the ideal male human form. All of the body parts seem perfectly proportioned and the muscles are beautifully defined as if the image were of an athlete. The image is youthful with a calm demeanor. The right missing forearm looks as if it used to be resting at his side, while the left elbow was probably at a 90 degree angle, with the hand holding something. The slight bend in the left leg gives the impression of movement, as if the image was frozen while walking. The counterpoised stance adds an air of nobility to the "man".