Name: The chaotic brilliance of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat - Jordana Moore Saggese
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T10:32:04.000Z
Duration: 4 min 33 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

A sky blue canvas ripped open  by an enormous skull.

Teeth bared through visceral slashes  of oil and spray-paint.

this untitled artwork was auctioned  off for over 110 million dollars.

But it’s not the work of some old master.

belong to 21 year old  black Brooklynite Jean-Michel Basquiat –

one of America’s most  charismatic painters,

Born in 1960 to a Haitian father  and a Puerto Rican mother,

Basquiat spent his childhood making art  and mischief in Boerum Hill.

he learned by wandering  through New York galleries,

and listening to the music  his father played at home.

He drew inspiration from  unexpected places,

scribbling his own versions of cartoons,  comic books and biblical scenes

on scrap paper from his father’s office.

But it was a medical encyclopedia  that arguably

exerted the most powerful influence on Basquiat.

When young Jean-Michael was hit by a car,

his mother brought a copy of  "Grey’s Anatomy" to his hospital bed.

It ignited a lifelong fascination  with anatomy

that manifested in the skulls,  sinew and guts of his later work –

which frequently explores both the power  and vulnerability of marginalized bodies.

By 17, he launched his first foray into  the art world with his friend Al Diaz.

They spray painted cryptic statements  and symbols all over Lower Manhattan,

These humorous, profound,  and rebellious declarations

were strategically scattered  throughout Soho’s art scene.

And after revealing himself as the artist,

Basquiat leveraged SAMO’s success  to enter the scene himself;

selling postcards, playing clubs with his avant-garde band,

By 21, he’d turned to painting full time.

His process was a sort of  calculated improvisation.

who composed their work by shredding  and reassembling scraps of writing,

Basquiat used similar cut-up techniques  to remix his materials.

he fashioned them out of discarded  wood he found on the street.

He used oil stick, crayons,  spray paint and pencil

and pulled quotes from the menus,  comic books and textbooks

He kept these sources open  on his studio floor,

often working on multiple  projects at once.

Pulling in splintered anatomy,  reimagined historical scenes,

and skulls transplanted from  classical still-lives,

Basquiat repurposed both present day  experiences and art history

He worked as if inserting himself into  the legacy of artists he borrowed from,

producing collages that were just as  much in conversation with art history

For instance, "Toussaint L’Overture versus Savonarola"

and "Undiscovered Genius of the  Mississippi Delta"

offer two distinct visions of Basquiat’s  historical and contemporary concerns.

such as the reappearing head that  also resurfaces in "PPCD."

All these pieces form a network that offers physical evidence

of Basquiat’s restless and prolific mind.

These chaotic canvases won  rapid acclaim and attention.

But despite his increasingly  mainstream audience,

Basquiat insisted on depicting  challenging themes

Marginalized figures take center stage,  such as prisoners, cooks and janitors.

His obsession with bodies, history,  and representation

can be found in works evoking the  Atlantic slave trade and African history,

as well as pieces focusing on  contemporary race relations.

Basquiat made thousands of  paintings and drawings-

along with sculpture, fragments  of poetry and music.

His output accelerated alongside  his meteoric rise to fame,

but his life and work were  cut tragically short

when he died from a drug overdose  at the age of 27.

After his death, Basquiat’s work only increased in value-

have impacted much more than their  financial worth.

Today, his influence swirls around us in  music, poetry, fashion and film-

and his art retains the power to  shock, inspire, and get under our skin.