Jean-Michel BasquiatEssay Preview: Jean-Michel BasquiatReport this essayJean-Michel BasquiatJean-Michel Basquiat was a painter and a graffiti artist. His work is mostly composed of graffiti, paintings on canvas and other mixed media compositions. Basquiat seemed interesting because, even though he did not live a long time, his life seemed to be filled with drama. His works seem interesting because they have a story behind them and they are supposed to be very political.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, NY. Basquiats mother, Matilde, was Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard Jean-Baptiste, was Haitian. When he was young, Basquiat was encouraged by his mom to expresses himself with his artwork. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti buildings in lower Manhattan with the signature of “SAMO” or “SAMO shit” which meant “same ol shit”. In 1978, in his junior year, Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School and left home. He moved into the city and survived by selling T-shirts and postcards on the street. By 1979, Basquiat gained popularity in Manhattan. This was due to his appearances on вЂ?TV Party’, which was a live public-access cable show. In the late 1970s, Basquiat formed a band called Gray, with Vincent Gallo. Basquiat worked with Gallo again in a film Downtown 81 which featured some of Grays recordings. He also appeared Rapture’s music video, which was a single by Blondie, another American Rock band. Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980. He participated in The Times Square Show with many other artist in a multi-artist exhibition. In 1981, Rene Ricard helped to begin Basquiats international career with an article he published in “Artforum” magazine. During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his works around New York as well as in different countries around the world. By 1982, Basquiat was becoming a part of what would soon be called the Neo-expressionist movement. He started dating an aspiring performer named Madonna in the fall of 1982. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he worked with a lot, eventually becoming close friends. By 1984, many of Basquiats friends were concerned about his drug use and increasingly strange behavior. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit that had started from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New Yorks underground. On February 10, 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. As Basquiats international success grew, his works were exhibited across Europe. Unfortunately, his success did not last. Basquiat died in his studio apartment in 1988 from a mixture of heroin and cocaine. He was only 27. (Wikipedia)
The piece that I am going to critique is called the Mona Lisa. Basquiat painted it in 1983 with acrylic paints and oil sticks on a canvas. The lines in Basquiat’s Mona Lisa vary in length and width. There are some thick, long lines and there seems to be some short, fine lines. The space is taken up my Mona Lisa’s humanoid form. The colors range from a vibrant orange of the background, to the back or the letters and Lisa’s dress, to the pink in the right-hand background corner. I think the orange and the black balance each other nicely in the sense that they do not seem to overwhelm or dominate the picture. Your eye does not really focus on one object in the piece so it travels around the picture, sort of taking everything in. The repetition of the number 1 in the painting gives it the appearance of a US dollar bill, which was most likely Basquiat’s
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Basquiat took the first piece to the showroom in San Francisco and opened it up to visitors. This particular piece was in his “Mélo”, and he took it to the shows every two to four years before getting a hold of it. He used a lot of acrylic paint to paint the whole piece.
Some of the details in the Mona Lisa are similar to this painting so it may have been a little different from the Mona Lisa. The background has four or six layers of painted textured lines. When they are painted over it has three-layer-style letters where you have a few little yellow lines between those four lines. That is kind of what the Mona Lisa was used to represent. There is a little bit of pink-green and silver-blue in the same amount to emphasize the orange and the red. The “charm” lines are the same colour as the blue of the “crown,” and are placed underneath a slightly different colour of the same shade and a little bit of pink or red in between.
The background is actually one of the color combinations in the painting so it is nice that it should be a “dark blue” or a “blue” color combination at this point. A lot of colours come down to different combinations of colours, such as white or red or blue. The black is more than twice as “hot” as the light blue or red which is more or less “black” than brown.
Basquiat’ takes different approaches and uses his “Mélo” style. The colors he uses are either a more or less white or black variation. This style takes more of a “dark blue” or “brown” approach, but some of the time comes from a lighter colour of an overlying area. The color is typically dark blue but some can be almost as brown as red. This style often comes in a more muted variety of colors and some are lighter in tone than other color. The last three coats are often light, dark or white with some extra blues. All three are fairly typical brown shades in Basquiat’s Mona Lisa.
The painting is great, very nice, really well done. I think it is the only piece in my collection that has made me come back to this painter. I love him and his work. One big thing I would like to add is that there is a little “white wash” in there that will give a nice, brown colour for the back corner. I think that would be very lovely!
The painting is gorgeous. I love the colour choices that have been used in painting or any other painting. The color palette and detail match the Mona Lisa and I am impressed with how it contrasts with the lighting that was used in the Mona Lisa when it was placed in the exhibit space. However, it did not match the lighting I had during the Mona Lisa and I don’t want to show this in another painting if it makes no sense.
We went on this trip because it is a special occasion where I want to dedicate many more hours, but we also need to go