Neo-expressionism Art Movement Art Movement in Basquiat's Work

Jean-Michel Basquiat worked in New York and was one of the prominent painters of the 1980s. Basquiat responded to the culture of his time using image and text in his work.

During the 1980’s, the new American popular culture art movement of graffiti began. Graffiti artists exploited the readily available, cheap spray can, and ink-marker to create art rooted in artistic vandalism. Signature “tags” were often written in elaborate styles on a monumental scale, the width and height of a whole New York subway car. The 1980s also saw a shift from conceptual art’s intellectualism to new, emotionally charged works. The art market thrived, with art rivalling the share market as an investment option.

Jean-Michel Basquiat worked in the Neo-expressionism art movement, which was characterised by expressive, aggressive, and gestural works. At this time, there was a belief that there was a need for the reinvigoration of contemporary art and for the restatement of the human character that had been lost from conceptually oriented art.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960, and worked during the contemporary art era. Basquiat had no formal training in art; however, his mother was an amateur artist and encouraged him to draw and visit art museums. He was the son of a middle-class Haitian-born father and Puerto Rican mother and spent three years living in Puerto Rico with his father. Basquiat was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual and was fluent in French and Spanish.

Basquiat is known for his expressive, spontaneous and raw style, merging purely visual display with obscure symbolism. He combined elements of multiple movements including; cubism; abstract expressionism and outsider art, with graffiti, comic strips and tribal images.

Basquiat shares knowledge of African Art and African American culture in his works, as well as of the history of post-war American painting. As a curator of a 2005 Basquiat exhibition noted, Basquiat's main concern in his paintings, 'was the direct representation of African cultural heritage in the artistic tradition of the West.' Basquiat conveyed a stern, personal social message. He added compositional strength and originality to aid the emotional depth of his artworks. His art deliberately embraces styles and rejects the conceptual in favour of more accessible and spontaneous forms. Basquiat began to intensely scrutinise his own emotional and spiritual sense of being through his artwork. His work always offers intriguing composition and a delicate balance between spontaneity and control.

Basquiat gained notoriety in the late 1970s for spray-painting aphorisms around the lower east side of Manhattan using the pseudonym SAMO. At this time, the hip-hop, jazz, post-punk, and street art movements had united in New York, and images derived from pop-culture references are seen inspiring much of the images and text in Basquiat’s work.

Basquiat's paintings reflect his connections with graffiti art, and the multicultural world of New York hip-hop culture and fast-paced, violent New York street life. Motifs from hip-hop iconography repeatedly appear in his work, as do references inspired by sports, particularly boxing and baseball. 'He celebrated the black musicians and athletes who inspired him by painting dedicatory works.” Basquiat celebrated his strong sense of ethnic and cultural identity in his works.

His multidimensional imagery includes crudely drawn figures, diagrams, and scientific formulae and text. This cluster of styles, texts, images, and histories spoke the language of Neo-Expressionism.

Basquiat used various stylistic elements and merged them to present a new iconography of New York urbanity. Using charcoal, pen, oil paint stick, synthetic polymer paints and collage, and his highly stimulating and dynamic style, Basquiat could concentrate his social commentary down to within the context of his own identity as a young black artist in an art world that was predominately white.

Notary is a rich collection of seemingly contradictory symbolic imagery and references, alongside a selection of textual references to; Greek mythology; African tribal culture; popular American symbolism and systems of monetary exchange. The painting is composed of a mixture of patches of colours, lines, text, and distorted human forms. Basquiat has created a sense of rhythmic patterning through his expressive and spontaneous line work. He has also generated an exceptionally sophisticated collection of words and phrases, which juxtapose each other. The word ‘salt’ on the left of the painting is contrasted by the word ‘dehydrated’ on the right. A startling white face is depicted on the left while an adorned black torso appears on the right. Words such as ‘parasite,’ ‘debt’ and ‘fleas’ connect with Basquiat’s personal understanding of street-life in New York City. There is a hint of aggression or anger in the dense brushstrokes, clashing colours and scratching out.

In Notary, Basquiat has employed many materials and techniques to create an expressive and bold piece. The painting has Acrylic paint, applied boldly and spontaneously, producing emotional energy. Oil paintstick is used for text and outlines and is drawn with quick and confident strokes. Paper collage is also used underneath the work and can be seen in some areas. Thinner paint partly obscures text in areas and in other sections, the paint is applied more thickly, emphasising and connecting the unstructured text. These expressive and dramatic techniques evoke a sense of chaos and confusion. The work is in the Neo-Expressionism movement, in a contemporary style.

Basquiat combines highly differing levels of meaning in his text and images. A preponderance of repeated words such as “dehydrated,” “leeches,” and “salt,” as well as crossed out and corrected words such as “Pluto”, and “parasite”, point to his wrestling with the conflict between realising himself and his truths, and the responsibilities that come with public notoriety - at the time when his art was obtaining public recognition. It has also been suggested that Notary grapples with darker aspects of human existence, as suggested by references to the Greek god of the underworld, Pluto.

The composition of Notary is disordered. There is a half-length portrait in the centre of the canvas, which is surrounded by drawings and words, many of which are crossed out. The entire painting is filled with patches of colour and text. The colour scheme is saturated. Basquiat uses a subtropical palate of light blues, yellows, red, pink, and green, but also incorporates darker hues of black.

Notary is a monumental scale, at 180x401 cm. This scale forces the viewer to become immersed in the painting and to find their meaning in the scattered words and phrases coating the piece. Basquiat uses thin, painterly strokes to create a chaotic surface and energy, as well as thick, blocky strokes to create a transparent texture. He also uses collage to achieve surface texture with word fragments, allowing sections of silkscreen prints to be seen beneath the paint and incorporating various painterly languages.

Notary can be seen as how Basquiat saw himself and his inner turmoil as he reached public notoriety. The chaotic and evocative nature of the work allows the viewer to connect with Basquiat’s emotional commotion.

Through his manipulation of the structural properties, Jean Michel Basquiat’s work can communicate to the audience in a much more personal way, as the audience is invited to pose their interpretations of the conglomeration of words, phrases, and images to connect with the work. Louis Armand, a visual art critic, said – “Basquiat truly raised his voice above the din of the hectic era that was the 1980s. His work exhibits a frenetic and driven need to express and define his role in the larger world, and within the urban multi-ethnic culture of New York.”

Basquiat used image and text to respond to his world and the issues he faced throughout his life. Due to the speed of his public recognition and the brevity of his artistic career, Basquiat was plagued with self-doubt and died of a drug overdose aged only 27. However, he left behind a substantial body of work addressing diverse themes, and he significantly aided the transition of street art into high art, making an extremely valuable contribution to the world of art, as we now know it.