Basquiat

September 17, 2014

Writing Assignment for the film Basquiat

In the film Basquiat, he had many of real life issues and accomplishments throughout the film. He was a very unique interesting individual. Basquiat grew up in Brooklyn, New York and was motivated by his mother to paint and draw. His paintings and drawings were very different from the other artist back then, his drawings were mostly composed of graffiti’s and paintings on canvas. His drawings all meant something wheter it was about the economy, different cultures/ethics, politics, and etc. He was guy trapped a bit inside of his own mind creatively, but at the same time really responsive to the world around him He was very close to a guy named Andy Warhol, not only was he his best friend, he helped Basquiat gain his recognition. Jean Basquiat ended up dying from heroin overdose at the age of 27.
Jean Basquiat created a painting called, “The Profit I”, he created it in Italy in 1982. In this drawing, he combines examples of past painting with urban graffiti to create an audacious personality that is part self-portrait and part voodoo shaman. Since creation, has been in the collections of two art galleries, as well as the personal collection of Lars Ulrich, from the heavy metal band Metallica. Profit I is dominated by a skeletal black man who looms enormous out of the darkness like a Voodoo zombie. Influenced by the Art Brut of Jean Dubuffet, Basquiat paints the figure with stick-man simplicity and it is this directness, combined with brash brushwork, which endows the picture with its rawness and immediacy. Above his ghostly face is a crown of thorns that, against the yellow ground, also acts as a halo. His upraised arms allude to a crucifixion or an action of surrender or alarm. Yet the gesture could also be interpreted as an aggressive attack by this bogeyman. Thus Basquiat does not indicate whether the figure is victim or aggressor. If one reads this as a self-portrait, then, the painting...