“I don’t think about art when i’m working, I try to think about life.” (Jean-Michel Basquiat) As an artist I find great truth to generate from that quote by Basquiat. Most of the time I find that when I begin a sketch I don’t have any set idea as to what it is I plan on drawing, I simply just allow my emotions and what’s going on in my life at the time to influence me. It gives me the opportunity to gather my emotions and express them in a way that allows me satey and vulnerability at the same time. I have always resorted to sketching whenever I needed understand and organize the noise that goes on in life. This ability to express myself freely and comprehend my own emotions is influenced by Jean-Michel Basquiat. I have always been a big fan of his artwork. His raw and distorted imagery has always held much appeal to me and the style of artwork I find myself creating. I had an opportunity to do a bit of research of Jean-Michel Basquiat as my subject that allowed me to have a greater depth of understanding his life. From the total sum of my research I will inform my readers with a brief history of Basquiat’s life, his overall involvement in the neo-expressionism era, as well as things that influenced his creativity.
To begin I would like to give a brief synopsis of Basquiat’s early life. Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn Hospital on December 22, 1960. Basquiat had a relatively nuclear size family consisting of his father is Gerald Basquiat from Hati, his mother Matilde Andrades from Brooklyn but with Puerto Rican descendants, his siblings, Jeanine, Lisane, and Max . However Max Basquiat died shortly after the birth of Jean-Michel. When Basquiat was just a child his father would come home from his accounting firm with paper for Basquiat to draw on, after noticing his innate ability at drawing his mother encouraged him to continue with his creativity. She would often motivate him by simply sketching alongside her son, she herself had a strong interest in fashion design and sketching. “ His mother got him started and pushed him, she was actually a very good artist.” (Gerard Basquiat).
In 1968 his parents divorced, Jean and his siblings left to go live with their father in East Flatbush. Jean then begins to run away from home, at one point he was gone for two weeks in which his dad found him only to hear Jean say to him “ Papa, I will be very, very famous one day.” In 1977 Nora Fitzgerald moves in with Basquiat’s father and she begins to play a very maternal influence in his life, however, it does not alter Jeans trouble making tendencies. At his friends Diaz graduation he is “dared” to run up to the principal while he is giving his speech and dump a whole box filled with shaving cream on him, which he does, thus ending his high school career a year early. In June of 1978 Basquiat officially leaves home and begins who journey to stardom as an artist.
Jean-Michel was a major influencer of the Neo-Expressionism era in the art culture. Any time someone brings up this era of art Jean-Michel is seen going hand in hand with this style. Neo-Expressionism utilized common inspirations but distorts them creating a more rigid and arbitrary version of the concept, usually painted or sculpted with bright and vivid colors and design. Jean would literally paint on anything he could get his hands on when he was first starting out. You can see that a lot of his pieces of art from the beginning of his career would literally be on doors, cardboard boxes, clothes. At one point or another it was almost unbearable to live with Basquiat because you didn’t know if you were going to wake up and have your things painted on. “Basquiat painted on anything he could get his hands on, refrigerators, lab coats, cardboard boxes, and doors.” (Mary Ann Monforton).
In June of 1980 Basquiat painting are shown for the first time in a an art exhibit called the “Time Square Show.” This propels Basquiat’s career forward as it becomes a well received by both of the subcultures in the art genre of New York. Through the beginning of the 80’s Basquiat begins to present his painting in different art exhibits such as New York/New Wave, and the Lower Manhattan Drawing Show, and Beyond Words. In 1981 Basquiat has a article written about him in the December issues Artforum titled, “Radiant Child” by Rene Ricard. It speaks on the emerging artist and the new form of expression they are creating simply stating how they turn simple and unconscious matters to a moral dilemma and prognition. In March of 1982 Basquiat received his very first solo art exhibit in which his career was propelled to new heights. He was regarded to have such a touch in his artwork that conceptualized originality and spirituality creating a new way of viewing the world around us. He then has his first stand-alone art exhibit open up in the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland, thus helping him establish himself as an international figure in the art world.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was heavily influenced by the world around him, he would observe his world and surroundings. He would then take the observations and put them on whatever canvas he could find to express his art. At a young age he began to draw but his very first influence he utilized in his drawing was the book Greys Anatomy. He received this book from his mother after he was in a very bad car accident as a child. It is one of the reasons that he developed and started drawing a lot of piece with the human body as the subject. Basquiat late in his early adult life actually created a band in which he subsequently labeled “Greys” after his favorite book. He was also influenced by Alfred Hitchcock as a child often drawing cartoon versions of the subject.
From a young age he always fantasized about becoming famous and receiving stardom that he so desired. Some of the individuals he idolized were Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. He would look at their lives and their success and be driven to achieve those things. As an adult you begin to see a lot of cultural influence in a lot of his art pieces, usually dealing in the subject matters of race, inequality within races, or even fakers in the art world. People who wanted to be perceived as Avant-Garde but were simply using their parents money to perpetuate an image. With this influence a lot of his pieces regarding human subjects were black, his art, where a phrase was the subject, would target “fakers” or “posers” in the world even his music was original and of itself. He was a person who was able to absorb everything this world had to offer him and create beautiful masterpieces with.
Basquiat is an interesting individual, it is of my own accord that he was destined to be famous, destined to be a legend of his time even while he was still alive. Every story I researched of him, every interview that describes him I find has one common theme behind his description… Jean-Michel Basquiat was unforgettable. He was someone that always stood out even when he acted like he didn’t want the attention. It is great admiration that I write this research report on Basquiat. I hope after giving a history of his childhood, his influence on his era, and the things he drew inspiration from you are also intrigued enough to go see his art pieces.
