Dichotomies: a favorite theme of Basquiat

Dichotomy Two, Richard Shipps
Originally uploaded by Richard Shipps

"Through­out his career Basquiat focused on “sug­ges­tive dichotomies,” such as wealth ver­sus poverty, inte­gra­tion ver­sus seg­re­ga­tion, and inner ver­sus outer expe­ri­ence. 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."
A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts.