Jean-Michel Basquiat was a prominent American artist who was known for using text in his works. In my essay I will analyse one of his artworks and comment on the role that intertextuality has in his artwork. I chose to analyse his work called Undiscovered Genius of Mississippi Delta a work which Jean-Michel created in 1983 the year of his birthday.
Before I start on the art work and what intertextuality has to do with it I think it is important for me to give a little bit of background on Basquiat in order for you to understand his ideas and way of thinking in a better way. Jean-Michel was born on 22 December, 1960 in New York. His mother was Puerto Rican and his father Haitian-American therefore Basquiat’s sources of inspiration came from a very diverse heritage. Jean-Michel’s father was an accountant who brought home his work sheets and by drawing on
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He left high school early to sell sweatshirts and postcards with his artworks on. In 1980 after three years of hardship the fame train arrived for Basquiat. The public admired his style of infusing word, symbols, stick figures and animals. Basquiat’s fame came with a price. His friends became more and more worried about his excessive drug use and passed away on 12 Augustus, 1988 at the age of 27.
The work by Jean-Michel Basquiat Undiscovered Genius of Mississippi Delta was a very successful artwork therefore it was included in many of his most important traveling exhibitions. His work reflects on the hardships of African Americans and his point of view on it, Basquiat also comment on his rise to fame in the artwork. The work is spread across a horizontal band of five canvases. The left and central panels are fastened to the one next to it with unpainted door hinges at the top and bottom edges. If you look at the panels separately each of the canvases creates its own unique composition. Zooming out and looking at the entire artwork it resembles a
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the world’s greatest and most well-known artists, but when he was alive he considered himself to be a complete failure. It was not until after he died that Van Gogh’s paintings received the recognition they deserved. Today he is thought to be the second best Dutch artist, after Rembrandt. Born in 1853, he was one of the biggest artistic influences of the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh created a new era of art, he learned to use art to escape his mental illness, and he still continues to inspire artists over 100 years later.
The clearest vision of reality is often the most abstract. While the rise of science and progress suffocate the notion of an extrasensory experience within the reading of literature, the phenomena persist. Meanings are communicated, participating in a magnificent cosmic-cultural aura, penetrating a communication of meaning, intent, and scandalously--truth. There is a process of intertextuality occurring, a conversation between authors, texts themselves, and the readers who venture to interpret them. Richard Brautigan's imaginary novel, In Watermelon Sugar converses well with a poem written many years after his death, Tunnel Music by Mark Doty. This conversation appears to be about the collapse of our techno-egocentric society.
Basquiat was a creative, self-taught artist who thought outside of the box when it came to painting. Most of the pieces he made were a collaboration of different ideas and constructed them together into a collage. During the 1980’s, Basquiat’s art used the human figure to portray Minimalism and Conceptualism. His target market that was in many of his pieces was on suggestive dichotomies that focused on the lower class versus the higher class. Even though Basquiat's work was remarkable, he was criticized and faced some challenges during his journey because of the symbols and words that were used in his paintings.
Coming from a family greatly involved in art dealing, Vincent van Gogh was destined to have a place in the world of art. Van Gogh’s unique techniques and use of color, which clashed and differed greatly from the masters of the art world of his time, would eventually gain him the recognition as one of the founders of modern art. Van Gogh’s early life was heavily influenced by the role of his father who was a pastor and chose to follow in his footsteps. Although he abandoned the desire to become a pastor, van Gogh remained a spiritual being and was strong in faith. Plagued with a troubled mind and poor health, van Gogh’s life became filled with torment and isolation that would influence his career in later life as an artist. In his late twenties, van Gogh had decided that it was God’s divine plan for him to become a painter. His works would express through thoughtful composition and vibrant color, the emotions that he was unable to manifest in the real world. Van Gogh’s perception of reality and his technique would face harsh criticism and never receive full acceptance from his peers as a serious artist during his brief career. In a collection of correspondence entitled The Letters of a Post-Impressionist, Vincent confirmed these thoughts while writing to his brother Theo, “It irritates me to hear people say that I have no "technique." It is just possible that there is no trace of it, because I hold myself aloof from all painters” (27). His technique would later be marveled and revered by the art world. Vincent van Gogh’s legacy would thrive as it challenged the way the world envisioned modern art through his unique brush strokes and profound use of color as seen in his works The Sower and The Night Café. A brief look into...
Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous and well-documented artists of the twentieth century. Picasso, unlike most painters, is even more special because he did not confine himself to canvas, but also produced sculpture, poetry, and ceramics in profusion. Although much is known about this genius, there is still a lust after more knowledge concerning Picasso, his life and the creative forces that motivated him. This information can be obtained only through a careful study of the events that played out during his lifetime and the ways in which they manifested themselves in his creations (Penrose).
The Civil Rights Movement is usually seen as a social movement primarily throughout the Southern states during the 1950’s and throughout the 1960’s. However, the movement is taught by giving specific points, events, places, and people. The Civil Rights Movement in some regions such as the Mississippi Delta is not credited enough in history. The movement found crucial support inside of the Mississippi Delta due to its population being predominately African American. The Mississippi Delta played a key role not only in the movement, but in its development from encompassing Civil Rights activist, movements, tragic events, and more.
This piece is acrylic, oilstick, and spray paint on wood panel that is 186.1 centimeters in height and 125.1 centimeters in width. This piece features a human-like figure in the center that is mostly half red and half black. This figure has a gray head with one yellow eye and one light gray eye and above its head is a black halo. The background consists of patches of various colors such as light blue, black, dark red, light green, beige, turquoise, pink, and yellow. On the bottle left corner there is a figure drawn that looks like a fish and has a strip of mustard yellow painted through it. Also towards the bottom right of the artwork, there is some drawn on letters that almost look like words but are messily painted over with a desert sand color. This piece is my favorite because I find it aesthetically pleasing. There is a lot going on in this piece that makes looking at it genuinely interesting. The colors that Basquiat choses for the background go very well together and overall compliment the figure in the center. I like how incredibly expressive this piece is and it makes me want to buy a canvas and start painting that I desire. I also like how the human-like figure is drawn. One could see what looks like an outlined ribcage on the figure, which makes me believe that the head is actually a skull. Upon further research I learned that Basquiat was
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, located in the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of the most recognizable paintings of the 19th century, a painting made by Frenchman Georges Seurat. Finished in 1886, it has gained much of its recognition over the time of its completion; the pop culture of today has played a pivotal role into the popularity of it. An example of that is being apart in one of the most recognizable scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where one of the main characters is solely staring at the painting until he can’t even recognize the artwork. This painting also gets much attention because it was an early example of the style of pointillism, at the time; pointillism was becoming a new way of expressing one self with the new technique. It also brought upon about the way we saw paintings, and what we gained from the artwork as whole. In all this painting has become an icon in the art scene, due to the technique it used, and how much of an impact it has had in today culture.
Walter Benjamin projected the future of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, providing the basis of aesthetic evaluation for photography, film, digital and reproducible art. In the film Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel and starring Jeffrey Wright, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, and David Bowie as Andy Warhol, the art world is explored in the midst of defining itself in light of the changes brought about by the technology of the twentieth century.
Gustav Klimt (GUUS-tahf klimt), perhaps best known for his controversial style, came from humble beginnings and was trained in classical style. After years of serving as an architectural painter of murals throughout Vienna, he was criticized for his overtly erotic style. This criticism served as a turning point in his career. He then revised his own sense of artistic value that ultimately led to his fall from the conservative academic art world to self discovery with an inventive and versatile style that is untouched to this day.
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.
Artists have a knowledge of all the artists that preceding them, creating a visual vocabulary from the art that they have seen and understand. For Jean-Michel Basquiat, that knowledge translates into his work, despite never having formal training in an art school. It is his awareness and understanding of the culture that surrounds him that brings a layer of sophistication to his painting, setting it apart from street graffiti that has been painted on canvas. Basquiat’s Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold) (1981) is a confrontation of his own identity that is created with the visual vocabulary of artists that preceded him.
The neo-expressionist movement in America lasted from the late 70s and came to an end in the early 90s. The movement was a revival of expressionism, a style in which an artist portrays emotional experience into their work (Sandler, 227). It was also a response to the popular art style of the time called minimalism, which involved mostly blank canvases or lines. Neo-expressionism, on the other hand, was raw emotion and chaos. The main figures of the movement were Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Ada Applebroog. A pioneer of the movement, and also the focus of this essay, is Jean-Michel Basquiat. His art referenced many famous artists and art pieces, from which he found inspiration. This inspiration was one of the features that made the movement
As his fame continued to grow, his art work developed a sort of sophistication and prestige. Basquiat began to expand his work by attending art festivals and events in other states and countries than just New York. One of his favorite places to visit was Africa.“This expansive work of the 1980’s compresses together the relationship of Egypt to Africa, with reference to more local centers of African-American music within southern culture (www.theartstory.org). Instead of displaying his work with the streets of New York, He exhibited his artwork in various places throughout the world, especially at the Kestner-Gesellschaft Gallery in Hanover, Germany.“His work and style received critical acclaim for the fusion of words, symbols, stick figures, and animals. His painting came to be adored by an art loving public…”(biography.com). The expansion of Basquiat work had become world wide topic that gained many art observers and critics
...ere was a very particular exposition of some of his work, called Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. It consisted in pages of regular notebooks, but with observations, sketches, ideas and poetry fragments, either from popular culture or from world history and races. These pieces were very unique and the sketches had a special touch that I had never seen before in any other artwork. Basquiat’s work was very simple, but with strong ideas and a clear message. That was the beauty of his work.