Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Scull/Skull)
1981
acrylic and oilstick on canvas
81 x 69 1/4 inches
The Broad Collection
Jean-Michel Basquiat - written by Max Presneill
During the rise of graffiti, as art form, in the late 1970’s an anonymous duo named SAMO appeared with dark texts on the walls of New York City. Al Diaz and Jean-Michel Basquiat were SAMO until 1979. This was the first we knew of Basquiat and he would become an L'enfant terrible of the art world, at once lionized and dismissed until his early death at the age of 27 in 1988. His career was meteoric, from 1980 (The Times Square Show) he went from unknown to world famous practically overnight until his premature death by a heroin overdose. He left behind a legacy of art works that inspired many artists, as well as increasingly commanding record prices at auction for the ’savage’ junkie artist.
The insensitive racial stereotyping of the artist as a ‘primitive - as part of a superficial tendency to view his immediacy of mark as somehow pre-intellectual rather than just vital, raw and unabashed, managed to ignore the poetic and deeply layered complexity of his relationship to black history and the usage of language. His Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage was seen as inducing ‘voodoo’ like qualities into a primitivism that ignored his submergence in the art world of New York, his ongoing relationships with important rising artists and his engagement with art museums and galleries.The reassessment of this only truly began after his death and eventually led to his prominent position as an icon of late 20th century painting.
The works themselves are powerful and unsettling social commentary. He deliberately used image/text to condition the picture plane as fluid and dynamic, in transition, uncertain, framing a critique of class and racism. His paintings, sculptures and drawings often utilized a series of references to his heroes, prominent black figures such as Charlie Parker and sports figures.
Bold and jarring color juxtapositions added to this sense of displacement, mixing figuration and abstraction. He took elements from street graffiti but blended them with early Modernist influences and that of some of his contemporaries to find a unique and singular voice of his own. The visual echo with early Picasso (himself influenced by African sculpture and religious totems) is apparent as well as his visual interpretations from jazz and early rap music - improvised, rhyming, syncopated and experimental, not with a street voice, but with a street-wise voice. David Bowie, a collector of Basquiat’s work, commented, "He seemed to digest the frenetic flow of passing image and experience, put them through some kind of internal reorganization and dress the canvas with this resultant network of chance.”
The work I selected to refer to for this text is his 1981 Untitled (Scull/Skull), which we here in Los Angeles are lucky enough to be able to see at The Broad on permanent display. It seems to me to reflect his self-awareness about his own mortality, his ongoing battle with heroin addiction, the pressure of his new found fame, as well as perhaps a reflexive quote regarding his own public persona as the young rebel, famously photographed in a suit but with no shoes on (the street urchin masquerading as an elite intellectual amongst high society? - another problematic reading that converges racism, his public persona and his art practice). In Untitled (Scull/Skull) we can interpret this via the downcast eyes, the vague sense of horror at it all. Scratchy, energized, vibrating with nerves and intensity. The skull is full of structures, of grids on grids, layers on layers, masking and hiding the crowded space within.
Basquiat's work was and is powerful, unabashed and direct. It has an emotional and poignant honesty that tells us that it is imperfections, energy, and attitude that can give us what we need, more than what we perhaps want, from the best of art. Keith Haring, a long time friend of Basquiat’s said at his 1988 funeral, "He truly created a lifetime of works in ten years. Greedily, we wonder what else he might have created, what masterpieces we have been cheated out of by his death, but the fact is that he has created enough work to intrigue generations to come. Only now will people begin to understand the magnitude of his contribution"