Monday, August 20, 2012

Young, black and mega-successful: Brooklyn-born painter Jean-Michel Basquiat


Jean-Michel Basquiat
Originally uploaded by mxnt
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988) was an American artist.[1] He began as an obscure graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, says Wikipedia, and evolved into an acclaimed Neo-expressionist and Primitivist painter by the 1980s.

Throughout his career Basquiat focused on "suggestive dichotomies," such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience.[2]

Basquiat's art utilized a synergy of appropriation, poetry, drawing and painting, which married text and image, abstraction and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.[3]

Utilizing social commentary as a "springboard to deeper truths about the individual",[2] Basquiat's paintings also attacked power structures and systems of racism, while his poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.[3]

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