Overview
This talk by Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University, focuses on the works of the 1980s art legend Jean-Michel Basquiat, with an emphasis on its affective reach and poetic digressions via color. Basquiat’s creations dismantled how the art world viewed late 20th-century painting and American art in general. The work’s genesis from urban graffiti and a hip-hop aesthetic was the stuff of modern mythology.
But what made Basquiat significant and what continues to intrigue the art world about his work was his furtherance of post–World War II art brut, reimagined via an assortment of discursive strategies (such as writing, reiteration, erasure, and automatism), as well as particular themes and preoccupations such as history, martyrdom, urbanism, hero worship, fatalism, linguistics, and the analysis of signs.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, born Brooklyn, New York (1960–88), Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, 1982, acrylic, crayon, and spray paint on canvas, 96 × 164 in., Private collection, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat; Licensed by Artestar, New York, Image courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, DC
