Jean-Michel Basquiat has long been a favourite artist of mine. I love his use of colour, and his beautifully expressive, chunky figures. There's so many very satisfying shapes in his work.
On the 21st of September 2022, I went to see a Basquiat exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna, and I saw some stuff I loved.
One thing I love about Basquiat is his frank and silly depictions of human anatomy and sexuality. Here's a perfect man with a perfect cartoon penis. He looks a bit sad, but also has a halo above him, just like most men. He's perfect. And again, it's those wonderful rough shapes that make up an eclectic, textured background that make the composition so satisfying.
This is Pater (1982). The museum description reads:
Pater is the Latin word for father. Basquiat presents a generalized archetypal father image. This father can be a hero and role model, but also has an air of severity and authority about him. In this context, it would seem likely that Basquiat processes in this painting the complex relationship he had with his own father, whose home and custody he broke away from already at a young age. Like his portraits of his black heroes, the protagonist in Pater is both victimizer and victim, oppressor and oppressed, winner and loser. This polarity is not least expressed through the scribbly halo over the head and the cartoonishly overdrawn male genitals.
The genitals in question.
Basquiat often conveys really great expressions. Look at this guy:
He's mad, but sort of in the way that an enemy in Spyro the Dragon is mad. There's such a great cartoon abstraction here that kind of works to emphasise and almost mock the emotional expression within. Looking at the sword and the weird hairy feet, I'm reminded of drawings made in the margins of school books. There's something pure about it.
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| The bloke who wants to stab Spyro with his sword. |
Finally, I really liked this drawing of his girlfriend and her big shoes:
A perfect image.
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