Getting to Know - Jean Michel Basquiat

[Music] in 1982 at the age of just 22 years old jean-michel basquiar would produce this painting a powerful and dazzling image that mixes text colour symbolism and mark making in a raw and unsensitive explosion in a single painting he would use his instinctive powers of visual language to say everything he wanted to say about america about art and about being black in both worlds basquiat's meteoric rise in the early 80s sent shockwaves through downtown manhattan in the new york art scene at the time he stood out not only as a black man in the white-washed world of art but also as an artist who brought attention to its ethnic imbalance and he would become one of the few black painters to break through into international consciousness i don't see that i know black people are never really portrayed realistically and not maybe not or not even portugal i mean not even portrayed in modern art enough basquiat would show the faces and name the names of countless millions of people that had been disregarded by art history he would shake the art world with paintings that depict the black experience paintings that would be placed in museums that were designed for a whole different audience 1982 was basquiat's year he was a rising star at the height of his powers and this would be his most mythical and sought after painting a painting that after its initial sale was not seen in public for over 30 years in fact only a tiny photo of it survived as proof it ever existed then in 2017 it came up for auction when john michel basquiat was in new york in 1978 it was a low-rent high crime bankrupt city downtown manhattan was a grubby mecca for the artist the musician and the filmmaker everyone was creative and everyone was going to make it big people assumed that basquiat was an uneducated uncultured graffiti artist from the ghettos with an almost supernatural talent it was partly a deliberate myth he constructed himself and partly people's expectations of what a scruffy dreadlocked black artist could be but he wasn't the noble savage the press liked to portray him as on the contrary he was an intensely ambitious middle-class young man who knew his art history particularly when it related to the presence and absence of blackness in western art basquiar was born to a haitian father and a puerto rican mother in a solidly middle class household in brooklyn privately educated he was a gifted child who could read and write by the age of four and would speak three languages fluently he was very close to his mother who encouraged his artistic side she took him to see guernica as a child at the museum of modern art and enrolled him as a junior member of the brooklyn museum of art the young basquiat would spend every second drawing unfortunately his mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital when he was 13 and he would leave home for good at 17. at first he lived rough on the streets of manhattan and in fleabag hotels graduating to friends and lovers sofas and beds then in 1978 he would team up with an old school friend al diaz and they would form the street art duo samo basquiar's career started with text under the pseudonym samo basquiat and diaz began spray painting on buildings in the lower east side but while graffiti was about tagging marking out territory samo wrote more than just a name if this was graffiti at all it was something quite different they were poets and provocateurs writing cryptic messages on walls next to art galleries mr seymour and his associate but for basquiat it was just a means to an end he wanted to become rich and famous and samo was a way to get noticed by the press and the public in 1980 at the height of their fame he called it quits and went solo he never considered samo to be graffiti to him they were statements and poems yet even when he was hugely successful bascial would be described as a graffiti artist or an ex-graffiti artist a term that he thought tied his work with the uneducated and unsophisticated a term he found simplistic and racist he moved into the east village with alexis adler because he had no money for canvases he would paint on the floors walls doors and furniture then he would make postcards which he sold for a dollar on the streets it was while selling postcards in soho that basquiar spotted andy warhol at a restaurant he was a big fan of warhol's and was thrilled when he sold him a postcard titled stupid games bad ideas it features the naughts and crosses he will incorporate into untitled warhol was intrigued by this paint-splattered street kid and a couple of years later would initiate a collaboration and hook onto basquiat's rising star there was a marketable glamour to being a down-and-out prodigy but it was an act for basquiat his reference points were fine artists like sight wombly and jean de buffet writers like jack kerouac allen ginsberg and william burras and musicians like david bowie and miles davis basquiar would look at how early rappers at the time used samples and he would apply that to his artwork in the same way musicians borrowed from james brown he borrowed from rauschenberg picasso african art and referenced his own haitian and puerto rican he would paint several canvases at once have dozens of reference books around him have music on full blast and the tv on at the same time his reference points were many and eclectic anatomy poetry jazz trash tv typography and art history they enabled him to create visual collages which were profoundly original and at the same time rooted in a rich linguistic history he would fuse words and text together instinctively like a musician but it was color that held his works together bascial was a master colorist and would use oil stick with spray paint crayons and acrylics undiluted primary colors layered in rapid succession and he would build his figures up by reinforcing and over drawing every line and form the words here have been scratched out and painted over in a conscious burrowing of an old masters technique known as pentimento this was a signature motif of basquiat who would say i cross out words so you will see them more the fact they are obscured makes you want to read them he would use his work to highlight black heroes and the double a we see in untitled may represent aaron a reference to hank aaron the celebrated african-american baseball player a childhood idol of basquiat and the first of his heroes to be crowned or sainted in his paintings crowns in western art come loaded with historical baggage and basquiar would use the symbol of the crown to challenge notions of race and power he would crown black heroes for him the three-pointed crown he used mostly represented athletes musicians and writers the crown raises the disenfranchised to royal even saintly status another symbol he used is the copyright sign he used it as an ironic attack on the mechanisms of the art market and as a sign of reclaiming authorship the course spiked lines we see in his works reader's barbed wire a common sight in the rundown new york of the 80s it has also been interpreted as metro lines but it is the skull we mostly associate with basquiar in 1968 at the age of seven basquiat was badly hit by a car while playing in the street and had to have his spleen removed as he recovered his mother bought him the textbook grey's anatomy which he memorized anatomy would become a central theme in the artist practice that obsession is at its most unforgettable in his depiction of human skulls these are the skulls of generations of slaves the voodoo skulls of haiti and the primitive african masks so long appropriated in western art basquiat's career would coincide with the arrival of the neo-expressionist movement a return to painting and the re-emergence of the human figure and this raw and powerful image would announce the arrival of the virtually unknown young artist as one of the movement's leading figures after finishing untitled in january 1982 new york gallerist anina jose gave him a studio underneath her gallery so he could work on his first solo show with her a rumor started that a wild black runaway was churning out masterpieces while being kept in the basement that's just um this has a nasty edge to it you know i was never locked anywhere i mean oh christ oh no it's just if i was white they would just say artists and residents rather than sell that other stuff it has been said that basquiat's driving force was a desire to be accepted after rejection by his father fame gave him that and a lot of money but he would never be totally accepted he sold his first painting to debbie harry of blondie for two hundred dollars and within a year he was selling paintings for twenty thousand dollars faster than he could paint them his solo show at a nina nose gallery was a huge success he found himself painting in europe and california living with madonna and befriending warhol he may have been living a lavish lifestyle but he still faced racism every day he would leave successful opening parties and find it impossible to get a cab in stores he was always followed by a security guard he would be refused entry into expensive restaurants and once he was held up for two hours at the airport and questioned as to how a black man with dreadlocks could afford to fly in first class for basquiat making it didn't mean getting a show a dealer or even making a fortune he wanted recognition from major critics curators and art historians the establishment but there was prejudice against him for his youth for his graffiti connection for being untrained and for his subject matter he met warhol again in 1982 this time for a lunch arranged by his art dealer basquiar had always admired warhol and perhaps he saw this as an opportunity to reach the art world establishment bascial went home after the lunch and within two hours a painting was delivered to warhol still wet of him and basquiat this painting started the deep friendship between the two artists and their collaboration began it is a myth though that basquiar's career really took off when he hooked up with warhol he was already famous or warhol wouldn't have been interested in him their relationship both professionally and personally was symbiotic they needed each other warhol's career had stagnated and he needed new life breathed into it and basquiat needed access to the art world elite their second exhibition of joint paintings in 1985 was slaughtered by critics and torn apart by the media one critic called basquiar warhol's mascot which hit him really hard the friendship never really recovered and basquiar severed ties with warhol despite the press attacks there was a genuine love and respect between the two artists warhol was one of the few people he would listen to when it came to advice on curbing his drug use warhol it was said loved basquiat like a son just over a year after their friendship ended warhol died suddenly during a routine operation basquiat was devastated he became increasingly isolated and his heroin addiction and depression grew out of control a year later he too would be dead is there any anger in you any anger in your question yeah of course there is [Music] unable to deal with the demands the fame brought him in 1988 at the age of just 27 jean-michel basquiar the most successful black artist in history died from a heroin overdose his meteoric rise and often controversial career had lasted for just seven years bascial was an artist who was as dedicated to his craft and just as aware of his legacy as michelangelo or picasso like all of the artists i've looked at in this great art explained series jean-michel basquiar was driven ambitious and worked extremely hard when madonna lived with him she said she would wake up at 4am and would find him still painting he had a desperate need to create and in his short career he will produce over two thousand works of art but he would never compromise to reach his goal never dilute the message his raw and brutal works draw on the problems faced by african americans in the u.s they are as relevant now as they were 40 years ago yet despite his importance there are almost no works by him in public collections not a single one in the uk and very few internationally untitled had been in the same private collection since it was bought in 1984 for 19 000 when it came up for auction in 2017 it reached the highest price ever paid for work not just by a black artist but by any american artist including andy warhol 110 million dollars his art is inextricably linked to his life his charisma and drive his race his talent and his untimely ending his works live on as a testament to his talent for placing the immediacy of the everyday into his art jean-michel basia's career was brief and spectacular but continues to cast a long shadow over the art world [Music]

Channel: Troy Middle School - 7th Grade Art

Views: 98,775

Keywords: art history, art history for kids, art history for middle schoolers, appropriate art history, art teacher, middle school art teacher, artist introduction video, artist video, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jean-Michel Basquiat for middle school

Id: Yz--5RBJZcg

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021