Jean-Michel Basquiat
1981
Acrylic, Oil Paint Stick, Spray Paint on Canvas
805 x 830 inches
Jean-Michel Basquiat began his creative career as a street artist, tagging in the streets of New York City. This part of his personal history makes him an important figure in contemporary art, since his work represents a very fresh take on what fine art was and is. Basquiat's transformation from street artists to world renowned celebrity of fine art did more to change the art world than it changed his personal style. Basquiat is famous for his uncanny ability to freely create – it seemed his creative process was almost entirely uninhibited, which resulted in some of the most honest and spontaneous artwork of the twentieth century. Some attributed with ability to a mystical or sacred 'gift,' reserved for especially enlightened individuals and geniuses.
The free flowing, instantaneous nature of “Red Man,” surely holds spiritual power. These images remind us of indigenous culture, not yet polluted by globalized or commercialized forces. There is a purity to the work, like what we see in the artwork of children, but the topics addressed in Basquiat's work are far from innocent. There is an anger and a decisiveness in the paint which hails back to cave drawings or political graffiti from an ancient city. The image is wise without being refined. It is sure of its power.
By using clearly identifiable icons, like the crown in the lower right corner, Basquiat infused his work with the same iconographic impact that we see in traditional religious art. In place of a cross or star, Basquiat chose the crown as the icon of his imagined universe. First drawn on the street and then painted in galleries, Basquiat's crown is the perfect folk symbol – an object of ultimate authority, but subverted into the imagined world of a gifted artist.