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Jean Michel Basquiat

The Outsider

Jean Michael Basquiat was the most innovative artist that America has brought to the world's attention. His Like other great artists such as Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin, his work was not a visual statement of words, but something beyond linguistic explanation. Specifically, he showed a fusion of emotion, logic and morality in a way that mere words alone simply could not do.

Basquiat’s style is typically referred to as Neo-expressionism. Because it didn’t conform to entrenched aesthetics about the way art should be or pay homage to realistic form, Basquiat's style was somewhat childlike. Despite his style having a sense of a child’s naivety,  Basquiat’s motifs demonstrated an experience of the world and an engagement with it. Some of his motifs were appropriated from society while others were his own creations. Mixed into his work, he sometimes used words that gave an agreed meaning but he used like a poet fond of ambiguity.

"Untitled (Skull)" (1984)

Much of the development of Basquiat’s style can be attributed to his background as a graffiti artist. On the streets of New York, he created poetic and political graffiti and tagged them with the words SAMO. Because his style developed while experiencing the world, rather than when experiencing the narrow confines of an art school, he was able to free himself from established conceptions about the way art should be. Furthermore, he didn’t need to stand before assessment panels and justify what his art was about. The whole of New York became his canvas and the whole population became his audience.

Basquait’s initial break came in 1979 when he started appearing on a live public-access television cable hosted by Glenn O'Brien, who later formally introduced him to Andy Warhol. As admirers of each other's work, the two began collaborating. Basquiat also followed Warhol’s lead of organising parties and his apartment became a revolving door of interesting people seeking something new and exciting. In 1981, he came to the world’s attention when Rene Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine. It was a whirlwind rise that owed much to the fact that many people found his work instantly interesting.

Unfortunately, Basquiat struggled with heroin addiction and in 1988 he overdosed. He was only 27.  In a sign that he was more than just a bit of marketing hype, 20 years later, Lars Ulrich from the band Metallica sold a 1982 Basquiat piece, Untitled (Boxer), for US$13,522,500.

Mona Lisa

As is always the case with someone who succeeds in the artworld, not everyone had been happy with the praise Basquait received over the years. Art critic Robert Hughes articulated the views of many critics when he argued that the rise of the unskilled and untalented Basquiat was a product of racism masquerading as political correctness. In his own words:

“His career, both actual and posthumous, appealed to a cluster of toxic vulgarities. First, the racist idea of the black as naif or rhythmic innocent, and of the black artist as "instinctual," someone outside "mainstream" culture and therefore not to be rated in its terms: a wild pet for the recently cultivated collector. Second, a fetish about the freshness of youth, blooming among the discos of the East Side scene. Third, guilt and political correctness, which made curators and collectors nervous about judging the work of any black artist who could be presented as a "victim." Fourth, art-investment mania. And last, the audience's goggling appetite for self-destructive talent: Pollock, Montgomery Clift. All this gunk rolled into a sticky ball around Basquiat's tiny talent and produced a reputation….Having no art training, he never tried to deal with the real world through drawing; he could only scribble and jot, rehearsing his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for "face" or "body" over and over again…. But the effort to promote Basquiat into an all-purpose inflatable martyr-figure, the Little Black Rimbaud of American painting, remains unconvincing.”

Hughes' comments were quite peculiar since he was an avowed fan of abstract expressionism. For example, when writing about Mark Rothko, Hughes didn't mock him for being unable to deal with the real world through drawing, thus needing to paint in coloured shapes over and over again. Likewise, when the CIA promoted abstract expressionism as the avant-garde style of America, Hughes didn't mock stuffy collectors of Rothko as having a fetish for freedom. When collectors praised Rothko's rectangles, Hughes didn’t mock the art market for their racist stereotype proposing that migrants from Communist countries are geometric in their thinking. Finally, when critics heaped praise on Rothko, Hughes didn't accuse them of being politically correct for fear that mocking Rothko's work might be construed as anti-Semite. If nothing else, Basquait's art was a version of expressionism that referenced social reality in order to give it a complexity that abstract expressionism lacked. Anyone who was able to appreciate abstract expressionism should have been able to appreciate Basquiat.

Hughes’ problem, like many other critics of Basquiat, was that he was too racially conscious. For Hughes, people saw Basquiat as outside "mainstream" culture, not because he developed his skills as a graffiti artist on the streets of New York, but because he was black. Likewise, people saw Basquiat as "instinctual", not because he painted from feeling and avoided artist statements demanded by art schools, but because he was black. In other words, whereas others formed their impression of Basquait as an outsider by considering his story and looking at his art, Hughes and fellow critics did it by looking at the colour of his skin. Unfortunately, instead of coming to terms with his own racial difficulties, Hughes projected them onto Basqiat's collectors and accused them of doing what Hughes' himself was doing.

Hughes' racial focus made it impossible for him to understand why people liked Basquiat’s work. As far as Hughes was concerned, people weren't praising his work because they actually liked it, it was because they were afraid of being racist. It never occurred to him that the art market was becoming bored with minimalist styles such as a white canvas on a white wall or generic abstract expressionist styles that were about as innovative and daring as a McDonalds Big Mac.

While Hughes was not able to appreciate it, Basquait’s career was testament to a fusion of left and right brain thinking that was made possible by an individual somewhat escaping society as a homeless graffiti artist, yet still engaging with society through his work. It reflected both the mind of an individual, as well as a society going through the individual’s mind. It had relevancy to others who want to consider the issues of society, but to see them considered in the uniquely holistic ways that only visual artists can do.

Jean-Michel Basquiat : The Radiant Child