Jean-michel Basquiat Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Jean-michel Basquiat - Essay Example His artistic out-put was later described as Neo-Expressionism ( Etier, 2010), defined as :- Although he no longer lived on the streets in his later years, the graffiti influence was always there in Basquiat’s works, as was evidence of his place as part of the African diaspora. He was also a drug user and often the works were also created under the influence of drugs. His work moved on from pure graffiti into other areas, so he became hard to fit into just one category. His work ‘Flexible’(1984) has been called ‘a bridge between traditional tribal art, graffiti art and modern socio-political propaganda ‘ and so crosses many boundaries (Rakaa 2013) or acts to give these differing genres some unity. Basquiat was precocious, in that his artistic genius flourished and was recognised very early when he was still in his early twenties, especially after he participated in a joint exhibition alongside other young artists of the time in 1980 ( Brooklyn Museum, 2014), but his artistic life, his whole life, ended with his early tragic death in 1988, still in his twenties. He was considered black, yet had few black friends, and according to Hoban, did not want to be known as a black artist, but as a famous artist. With that end in mind he was driven to produce thousands of images, not only on conventional surfaces such as canvas, card and paper, but also on the easily available surfaces of a variety of found objects, such as refrigerator doors, book margins and elsewhere ( Brooklyn Museum, 2014). The word Graffiti most commonly refers to writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illegally on a surface in a public place. It can also be said to refer to a style or group of styles, even if produced licitly, as for instance to decorate a youth centre on even on line as in Graffiti Creator ( undated) . Some people think the art form began in New York in the late 1960s, whereas others associate it with the Second World War, but it is