Jean Michel BASQUIAT - Without title (1984)

 

Without title

1984
Acrylic, screen printing and oil pastels on canvas (223,5x195,5 cm)
Property of Jean-Michel Basquiat

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A polychrome background gives hospitality to primitive figures, apparently meaningless scattered phrases and scientific formulas. The effect obtained is a real visual cacophony of colors and shapes.

It is no coincidence that the most primitive figures in Basquiat are expressed mainly through the language of graffiti.

This work tells us about underground New York, where different and contrasting worlds meet in total freedom and promiscuity. We are faced with the artist's origins that sink into multi-ethnic culture and hip-hop music; here everyone seems to reflect the frenzy and chaos of street life in the great metropolis that has become the center of the world.

Basquiat belonged to a heterogeneous group of artists called graffiti artists, most of them working on the mere New York subway; Basquiat himself often smeared the walls of the public streets of the cities.

In the eighties he became famous, also thanks to the help of Andy Warhol; his popularity exploded and his short existence cut short by drugs stopped his artist career at the premature age of twenty-six.

Comparing artists: Dubuffet, Gaudier-Brzeska, Rauschenberg, Twombly