JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
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Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who applied concrete poetry in his work, marrying signs and symbols with modern day advertisement and word constructs that often made letters into words and singular words as meaning and marks wavering between abstraction and gesture. TEXAS, OIL, COWS, PETROL, THE SUGAR INDUSTRY, CHEAP LABOR - or phrases like ONION GUM MAKES YOUR MOUTH TASTE LIKE ONIONS, which was incorporated at least thrice -to words like STAFF INTO SERPENT TRICK, MAGIC LEP- ROSEY and MAGIC WATER INTO BLOOD highlight his fascination too with magic.
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TPB's notes: Found text:
(From Jean-Michel Basquiat Museo d’Arte Moderna, Città di Lugano. Edited by Rudy Chiappini. 2005)
Basquiat is keenly aware of the historical and contemporary manipulation and misuse of natural and human resources that benefit few, and continuously lead to the subjugation and exploitation of many, invariably minority groups. With this paining, Basquiat is directing the viewer to contemplate DEXTROSE, and the varied implications of its transport, processing, packaging, and selling; and consequently, the overwork, suffering, poor housing, poor diet, poor pay, corruption, dishonesty, disease, and death that accompany it. Similarly, the gold surface of The Wolves contains only one word, MILK. The painting consists of two canvases joined by a piano hinge from top to bottom; the left half is thickly painting in gold with two collaged drawings of goofy, cartoon characters, and the right side is gold and orange with collaged photocopies of cartoon drawings and three large, cartoon-like wolf heads. The cartoon figures are most likely inspired by one of Basquiat’s favourite cartoon artists, Tex Avery, who made many television and movie cartoons during the 1940s and 50s. the wolves, however, may not be cute, funny TV animals, but may be a greedy and cruel pack of animals that control MILK.
A large number of Basquiat’s paintings are solely about comics and cartoons. Since childhood, he was an avid admirer of television cartoons, comic books, and popu- lar music, and later he freely incorporated them into his paintings and drawings. Especially appealing to him were cartoon images of two characters fist-fighting, and humorous, anthropomorphized animals. Many paintings take cartoon themes as their entire subject, such as Piano Lesson (For Chiara) (1983), which depicts the comic book hero, Batman (with his hands and feet detached and float- ing at his side), and his sidekick, Robin, complete with a TWO WAY WRIST RADIO on his right arm. Basquiat has also playfully printed the word POOEY and encircled it in a cartoon balloon, and drawn a black spider with cob- webs attaching to Batman’s head which makes a sly refer- ence to another favoured character, Spiderman. Basquiat’s production in the mid-1980s displays a pronounced emer- gence of Pop icons, reminiscent of the early 1960s work of Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, and Andy Warhol – all of whom featured comic book heroes, cartoon characters, popular celebrities, and references to art history, anatomy, and money in their paintings. Basquiat primarily em- phasized the symbols of childhood and juvenile popular culture, and his works contain hundreds of words derived from comics, cartoon characters, advertisements, junk food, and joke tricks.
One of Basquiat’s very few three-dimensional works, Fa- mous (1982), is modeled after sidewalk signs seen around New York City in front of shops, car garages, and delica- tessens. It is a tall, rectangular panel supported by two wood feet that hold it upright, and both front and back are completely collaged with photocopies of basquiat’s drawings. Convenient and inexpensive photocopy shops were relatively new in the early 1980s and Basquiat would frequently make multiple copies of his drawings to used in other works. Famous displays repeated copies of a number of drawings arranged in a loose grid, that illustrate some of the artist’s favourite subjects: TRICK BLACK SOAP, SKIN HEAD WIG, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SUPERMAN, SPIDERMAN, WALT DISNEY, SLAM, and ZOOM. One of Basquiat’s ubiquitous black faces is painted on each side, one accompanied by the word FAMOUS. The title derives from the name of an American commercial brand of food, Brothers Famous Sausage, and it is very possible that an advertisement for these sausages appeared on such a sign.
Another of Basquiat’s preferred sources was an advertise- ment for joke tricks and toys that he found in the back of an old Superman comic book. This ad featured items such as chewing-gum that tastes like onions, soap that turns the user’s face black, eyeglasses that promise to let the wearer see through things, and worms that magically appear in a glass of water. That these items recur in so many Basquiat paintings and drawings during 1982-84, confirms the great amusement they provided him. Onion Gun (1983) is taken directly from this advertisement and retains much of its original design and text, but Basquiat exaggerated the silly-looking face by painting it blue and adding a long red tongue with radiating lines of onion smell. He has also added a small cartoon figure atop the head that appears to be standing on two small animals and hold- ing a long snake in each hand, and printed SNAKE and SERPENT at the left. The original wording in the ad says: “Yes, Looks like real chewing gum but tastes like... like... onions! It’s too funny! 12 slices to a pack. No. 281. 20¢.”
Basquiat has incorporated ONION GUM MAKES YOUR MOUTH TASTE LIKE ONIONS three times, noted that it was MADE IN JAPAN, and written a num- ber of INGREDIENTS (not necessarily copied from the gum packaging), such as NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE, and MONONITRATE. All of the words and images are written and drawn on a bright, solid yellow background that supplies a sharp visual contrast to the black, red, and purple lettering.
This type of subject fascinated Basquiat and appealed to his interest in naïve, childlike humor and drawings. More importantly, the concept of magic and optical illusion, and the realization that “things are not what they appear to be” were directly connected to Basquiat’s aesthetic and social sense of reality, viability, and equality. Basquiat embraced icons of popular consumer culture as appropriate subjects for art, but he chose ones with more direct socio-political subtexts. He saw in these popular car- toons and consumer items a deeper reflection of society’s institutionalization of racism, discrimination, and errone- ous representations of good and evil. He made a number of paintings and drawings about Black Face Soap (a joke item that turns the user’s face a black colour), which il- lustrates the internalized racism characteristic of American society and promulgated in young readers. Basquiat saw a microcosm of the world’s sociopolitical situation mirrored in children’s cartoons, and understood how cartoons (and sports events, such as the 1936 Olympics or the Joe Louis boxing match) can be exploited for social and political propaganda purposes. A related painting from 1983, Early Moses, continues Bas- quiat’s fascination with magic and also makes references to the Bible, sports, and race. The canvas is painted the same bold yellow used in Onion Gun and is dominated by a large, black and grey human leg, labeled KNEE; a foot de- scribed as SIZENINE and HEEL; a sole of a shoe with the number 208 written on it; and a facial profile. The title informs us of the subject and the written text confirms that the work is indeed about MOSES, MOSES, MOSES, MOSES, MOSES, MOSES, and the EGYPTIANS VS. MOSES. Basquiat is making reference to the Book of Exodus, the fourth chapter in particular, which relates the story of a young Moses leading the Israelites out of their oppression in Egypt. When Moses doubts God’s instruc- tions to lead the exodus, the Lord performs three miracles to convince him of the importance of his task. Basquiat, however, has transformed God’s three miracles into magic tricks: STAFF INTO SERPENT TRICK, MAGIC LEP- ROSEY and MAGIC WATER INTO BLOOD, as if they could be purchased at a toy store.
It is possible that Basquiat is equating Moses to Jesse Owens in this painting because other Basquiat works from this time show the same leg, heel, and shoe identified as JESSE OWENS, 1936 OLYPICS, BERLIN. Jesse Owens was included in Basquiat’s pantheon of “Famous Negro Athletes.” Owens was one of the greatest athletes of all time, winning four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin. He broke the previous record of medals won by any athlete and his great performance refuted the Nazi’s dogma of Aryan superiority. The leg, heel, shoe, and clock could be referring to Owens’s amazing athleticism and
36speed on the track. Accordingly, from Basquiat’s ironic vantage point, Owens refuted the inferiority of African- American athletes on the world stage in a manner similar to Moses leading the departure of the oppressed Israelites from the domination of the African, Negroid Egyptians.
Not all of Basquiat’s paintings are loud, aggressive, colour- ful, dense, and disorganized. Big Shoes (1983), for in- stance, is somewhat empty, quiet, and spare, yet Basquiat is able to combine a large number of his interests and themes onto one canvas. An autobiographical reference is contained in the right panel that shows a caricature of Basquiat’s current girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, wearing platform shoes identified as BIG SHOES. Citations of his black heroes are made in the cartoons of fighting black boxers and colliding fists complete with sound effects BAP! and BIP! that recall his admiration of boxers Sugar Ray Robinson and Cassius Clay, baseball players Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson, and jazz musician Charlie Parker. Basquiat’s familiar depictions of human anatomy are seen in the irregular, oval outline in the upper centre, identified as SHOULD[E]R, and the collaged sketches of legs, feet, and hands derived from his appreciation of anatomical studies by Leonardo da Vinci.
At the centre of the canvas is an outlined box containing the words ORIGIN OF COTTON. This phrase is one that Basquiat spray-painted on building walls during his SAMO graffiti period in the late 1970s, and alludes to the blacks of the deep South enslaved on cotton plantations and forced to grow and harvest this valuable commodity. Another recurring image in Basquiat’s work is human skulls and allusions to death, and an oblique reference
to death is included in Big Shoes in the upper left corner where there is a Christian cross and the birth and death dates, 1951-1953, of jazz musician Charlie Parker’s infant daughter PREE.
In 1983 Basquiat dramatically increased the size of his canvases, often employing from two to eight connected canvases. Florence (1983) illustrates a lare horizontal for- mat achieved by hinging two canvases together that allowed the artist to increase the amount of imagery and text. Basquiat’s paintings are frequently diaristic and autobio- graphical, and Florence probably recalls one of the artist’s visits to the Italian city and expresses his interest in its history. In fact, Basquiat has prominently located himself in Florence with the black self-portrait head at the left side of the canvas. This large red and yellow painting is covered with names and places related to Florence, such as PIAZZA PIOLA, VIA PASCOLLO, and PIAZZA LEONARDO.
The majority of the text refers to the famous Medici fam- ily, and Basquiat has diagrammed a partial family tree, including COSIMO IL VECCHIO (1389-1464), PIERO IL GOTTOSO (1416-69), and GIOVANNI (M.1463). the Medici family moved to Florence in the mid-thirteenth century, and grew in power and wealth until they con- trolled most of the city and its surrounding territories. The family produced two popes, and Basquiat has included the name of one, PAPA CLEMENTE (which might also allude to his close friendship with the Italian artist Francesco Clemente). The Medicis are most famous for their interest in the arts and their support of artists, including Basquiat’s favourite, Leonardo da Vinci. Basquiat created another his- tory painting in Toussaint l’Overture Versus Savonarola (1983). This elongated painting is composed of seven sepa- rate canvases that are hinged together, and each appears to have been painted individually before being assembled, as there is no discernable narrative reading from left to right. The first two canvases are visually related by their overall, random coverage with black-and-white photocopies of drawings, as seen in Famous; the third panel consists solely of dark brown brushstrokes on raw canvas; and the fourth is heavily painted with blue and orange acrylic over which the artist has drawn a goofy cartoon animal with wild eyes and electric spikes of red hair and the word OHIO© enig- matically written below.
It is not until the fifth panel that the subject of the work first appears. A serrated red rectangle is seen at the up- per right corner that represents a seal appearing on comic book covers and the price, 12¢, suggesting that this panel is a comic with a cartoon animal painted in the centre. However, the subject abruptly shifts with the inclusion of the dates 1452-1498 © and the name SAVONAROLA writ- ten twice. This entry indicates the birth and death dates
of Girolamo Savonarola, an Italian religious and political reformer. Savonarola, a Dominican friar, was a fascinating and notorious historical figure of government and church in fifteen-century Florence, preaching against the human- ist revival of the Medicis and calling for the most stringent repression of vice, frivolity, and the arts. He quickly ran afoul of the Catholic Church in Rome for falsely claiming to have seen divine visions and uttered prophecies, and for provoking sedition, and was promptly excommunicated, hanged, and burned.
Basquiat’s knowledge of Savonarola is unknown, but he probably read about him in a tourist’s guide to Italian history (the same source for the facts painted in Florence), and found him captivating. The following panel is strik- ingly empty of words and images but surprisingly full of surface texture. It holds a white piece of cotton fabric that has been heavily over-painted onto which Basquiat has attached masking tape, a rectangular paper box, and the bristles of a paintbrush without the handle. Perhaps it is a visual interlude before the final canvas that presents and outline figure holding a sword and wearing a three- corner hat, on a background of blue with the written name L’OVERTURE, T. and another word that has been obscured.
Basquiat is portraying François Dominique Toussaint l”Ouverture, a self-educated slave with no military train- ing who drove Napoleon out of Haiti in 1791 and led his country to independence. In 1803, Napoleon agreed to rec- ognize Haitian sovereignty and invited Toussaint to France for negotiation, but the French emperor betrayed him, arresting him and putting him in a prison dungeon in the French mountains where he died of cold, starvation, and neglect. Again, it is not clear why Basquiat put L’Ouverture and Savonarola in opposition in this painting. Perhaps he saw a connection and/or contrast in their careers that was of interest; perhaps he was intrigued by the brutality of their respective deaths; Basquiat was particularly interested in Haiti because of his own Haitian heritage (it was the birthplace of his father, Gerard Basquiat)’ or perhaps Bas- quiat simply and casually assembled these seven completed, yet unrelated, canvases into one painting.
Basquiat completed Zydeco in 1984, and it is a full and complex painting which is more coherent and narrative. This three-panel painting deals with the subject of music, recorded sound, musicians, and “coolness.” Zydeco is an Afro-Atlantic jazz-related music that emerged in the southern state of Louisiana, and gradually travelled north to be appreciated and embraced by a larger, northern population. Basquiat has written ICE BOX, FREEZER, and WESTINGHOUSE (an American manufacturer of re- frigerators) on the left panel, and placed several stark white rectangles across the canvas. These literal and visual refer- ences to ice and cold can be interpreted as meaning “cool,” as a metaphoric phrase of admiration and assent of Zydeco music, rather than referring to a degree of temperature.
Basquiat’s inclusion of MICROPHONE, BOX CAMERA< EARLY SOUND FILM, and VITAPHONE all allude to the modern transmission of one of America’s greatest cul- tural legacies – black jazz, blues, and soul music – through the medium of film and recordings. The four outlined black heads at the upper left can be seen as musicians who are the crowned “kings of cool.” The prominent figure in the centre panel is playing an essential Zydeco instrument, the accordion, and nearby are the words PICK AX and WOOD accompanying their respective images. They are perhaps a reference to the forced, menial labour the black musicians endured, and could also be a meta- phor about the work, instruments, and talent required for creating music. It is ironic that the most famous and popu- lar use of the Vitaphone system was for the 1927 “talkie” motion picture, The Jazz Singer. It starred the Caucasian actor Al Jolson as a jazz singer performing in “blackface,”
a then popular show business makeup for actors (and promulgated with black Face Soap) that is now consid- ered abhorrently racist. The incident of a white person impersonating the black originators of jazz music in The Jazz Singer was and is a blatant example of the racism and discrimination ingrained in American culture.
Like the accordion player in Zydeco, the majority of Bas- quiat’s black figures are concurrently anonymous, self-por- traits, or representative of all black persons. The black man and the black experience are central to Basquiat’s aesthet- ics, and the majority of his works contain these allusions, as seen in an early painting, Untitled (1981) that presents a black man being arrested by two white policemen; the 1982 painting, Untitled (Prophet I), that implies a divine status for the figure; and untitled 1982 work that presents a bold, black figure with a saintly halo; and numerous figures that the artist has distinguished with crowns.
Alternatively, some of Basquiat’s figures are specific people, such as the portraits of P-Z, Rodo (1984), and Portrait of John (1985). His most famous portrait, however, is of a piece of fruit: Brown Spots (Portrait of Andy Warhol as a Banana) (1984). In this work, Basquiat has drawn a black outline of an upright banana on raw canvas and filled in details with white acrylic and black oil stick, then com- pleted the lower part of the bright yellow banana including three sections peeled away to expose the fruit (one includes eight brown spots). Atop the white flesh of the banana he has painted brushy silver slashes that symbolize Warhol’s silvery-white wig that sits above his pale complexion. But why a banana? Because Warhol was a fruit (i.e. gay)? (The phallic association with a banana cannot be ignored). Why brown spots? Because he was developing “age” spots on his skin? Warhol was fifty-seven years old at this time, and Basquiat was twenty-five. Basquiat often makes these types of associations. But, most likely, the banana is homage to Warhol’s design for the 1966 album cover for the Velvet Underground & Nico, a music group that he collaborated with, and promoted, in the mid-1960s. Warhol’s cover design for their first recording with a major record la- bel consisted of a screen-print image of a single banana with a stick-on peel that could be removed to show the flesh-coloured fruit beneath. Critic John Wilcox in 1971 described the Velvet Underground as “a four-member musical group whose most notable attribute is repetitive howling lamentation which conjures up images of a schoo- ner breaking up on the rocks. Their sound, punctuated with whatever screeches, whines, whistles, and wails can be coaxed out of the amplifier, envelops the audience with disploding decibels, a sound two-and-a-half times as loud as anybody thought they could stand.”
Basquiat would have read this description as a rave review. It was exactly the type of music he was making (or aspiring to make) with the group that he had put together in 1979. called Gray (after Gray’s Anatomy textbook), they often performed in various music and dance clubs in New York, most frequently the Mudd Club.
Basquiat understood, loved, and constantly played mu- sic. He would have known about and admired the Velvet Underground, and he would have remembered Warhol’s involvement with the group, especially the album cover.
To Basquiat, the banana on the Velvet Underground cover represented Andy Warhol, and he adopted that image for the portrait of his friend and favourite artist.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat shared similar interests in a great number of subjects and themes even before they began to make paintings together in the mid- 1980s. both were fascinated with combining written or printed text and images, and they consistently borrowed subjects from popular culture. In Warhol’s seminal works of the early 1960s, he repeatedly used newspaper head- lines, advertisements, product trademarks and prices, cartoon characters and celebrities as subjects for his paint- ings and drawings. Basquiat’s work, done twenty years later in the early 1980s, focused on similar topics, but he approached them from a different perspective.
In 1960-61, Warhol painted the comic book characters Batman, Dick Tracy, Superman, Nancy, and Popeye. Dur- ing the 1980s, Basquiat included Superman and his S logo in many paintings, in addition to Bullwinkle, Porky Pig, Gumby, and Batman and Robin. Warhol’s favourite celeb- rities included Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue, and Elvis Presley; Basquiat’s were Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Jesse Owens. Warhol painted one-, two-, five-, and ten- dollar bills, while Basquiat printed FIVE CENTS, FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS, and 100 YEN directly on the canvas. Warhol made the silk-screen paintings of 192 One-Dollar Bills (1962) and Four Mona Lisas (1963), but Basquiat painted Leonardo’s mysterious woman in the place of George Washington on the face of a US dollar bill in Mona Lisa (1983). Basquiat favoured commercial products such as Black Face Soap, Dial Records, and War- ner Brothers, as opposed to Warhol’s Cambell’s Soup, Del Monte Peaches, and Coca-Cola. Warhol expressed his intrigue with death in paintings of car crashes, suicides, and electric chairs; Basquiat represented death with skulls and skeletons.
It was a fortuitous and prophetic occasion when the art- ists were invited to work together. In 1984, Bruno Bis- chofberger invited Warhol, Basquiat, and Francesco Clem- ente to collaborate making paintings. .it was determined that each artist would begin painting on a few canvases and then pass them on to the next artist, until all three had contributed to the finished works.
It was a productive venture for the three artists, and the resulting fifteen paintings were exhibited at the Bischofberger Gallery in Zurich in September 1984. in the collaborative painting Cilindrone, Warhol first silk- screened the photograph of bathers on a beach; Clemente then added three of his characteristic human bodies to the scene; and Basquiat completed the work by adding black oil stick scribbling on the beach, obscured lettering in the sky, the printed price FORTY NINE NINETY NINE© and then painting over it with bright red and inscribing the word FISH and a childlike drawing of it.
Another painting, Pole Star, exhibits a very spare and clever collaboration between the three artists. Basquiat started by collaging the upper left metal panel with pho- tocopies of his drawings that include a variety of words and phrases such as PURE ALL BEEF ©, FAMOUS, POLE STAR, UFO, and PABST BLUE RIBBON, and then finished the work by dripping red acrylic down the surface. Francesco Clemente then painted over Basquiat’s contribution, placing one of his inexplicable self-portraits (with a small body extending from the mouth) on the left side of the panel. Instead of painting over Basquiat and Clemente, Warhol ingeniously had the panel pho- tographed in black-and-white and silk-screened onto five separate canvases. Warhol then joined the six panels into one painting, recalling the multiple-canvas, repetition paintings he did in the 1960s.
Warhol and Basquiat enjoyed each other’s company and creativity, and developed a strong friendship, both profes- sionally and socially. They continued to collaborate after the original three-artist project had been completed, pro- ducing a number of large-scale canvases. It seems that they truly derived pleasure from these collaborative efforts, and each new artist challenged the other to advance new ideas, images, and techniques. It is especially noteworthy that Basquiat adopted Warhol’s trademark silk-screen tech- nique in some of the collaborations, and Warhol, after years of concentrating on silk-screen paintings, began to paint with a freehand method. Their working technique – almost always in Warhol’s studio – varied, but usually Warhol would project an image onto the canvas and then paint it by hand. China (1984) reveals that Warhol first hand-painted a map of China in red and yellow; Basquiat then painted a large black square in the centre of China and wrote BIG PAGODA, underlined in green. He then painted over the black area with white and added a grin- ning black head with yellow slanted eyes and a pointed dunce hat.
Another collaborative painting, “699” (1985), is very ambitious in content and scale and shows the two art- ists working and reworking over each other’s painting. Warhol’s hand can be seen in the prices $6.99 and $55.99, the profile of a female figure, two football play- ers, and other areas that Basquiat has concealed. Basquiat then took over adding many of his signature symbols and words, including the tall red-hatted figure at the left, aggressive white overpainting in the centre area with copyright and trademark symbols, © and TM, and the scary red, toothy, fire-breathing head at the right side of the canvas. Basquiat said in an unreleased video interview: “We worked for about a year, on about a million paint- ings... Andy would start most of the paintings. He would start one and put something very recognizable on it, or a product logo, and then I would sort of deface it. Then I would try to get him to work some more on it, and then I would work some more on it. I would try to get him to do at least two things. He likes to do just one hit, and then have me do all the work after that... we used to paint over each other’s stuff all the time.”
Basquiat’s intense awareness of the history of racial discrimination, slavery, and injustice to black people in America is acknowledged in Tenor (1985). The painting is physically and visually powerful, and is dominated by images of black crows with orange beaks and a black rat, identified by its Spanish name RATON, RATON, RA- TON, painted on a wide expanse of colour photocopies of Basquiat drawings. The selection of imagery is intentional, of course, because Basquiat is alluding to an ugly chapter of American history that was centred in the state of Mis- sissippi and the other southern states that the Mississippi River flows through. The term “Jim Crow” is derived from the colour of the crow bird – black – and identifies the era after 1883 when the United States federal government abandoned racial legislation and legal rights to local state control. Southern American states in particular, especially Mississippi, began establishing laws that revoked the civil rights of blacks and legalized segregation on all levels, which encouraged vast, white mob violence perpetrated against southern blacks. While the “Jim Crow” laws of the American South were in practice, Basquiat’s favourite ath- letes such as Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, and Joe Louis could not eat with their white team mates and managers in the same restaurant, or stay in the same hotels. This situation remained uncontested until 1914, but its effects continued through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and from Basquiat’s perspective, exist into the present. This sentiment is also expressed in two three-dimensional works from 1986 whose titles express Basquiat’s deep con- cerns: Black and Jazz.
In his latest works of 1987-88, Basquiat introduced new imagery and subjects, such as the depiction of a head with bandages and crossed-out eyes, and a full figure that had hands and feet ending in robot claws or hooks, and no visible skeleton or internal organs. As always, Basquiat’s black figures are self-referential, and these new heads and bodies could represent a different Basquiat – one who is feeling defeated or beat-up – from his continued drug abuse, his thwarted romances, or the death of his friend, Andy Warhol. But they also reveal Basquiat, the artist, and his interest in expanding his vocabulary of words and images, and exploring new forms of visual expression and composition. Basquiat introduced a number of symbols and phrases borrowed from source book of international signs that documents prominent hob symbols. These symbols present a lexicon of graphic designs that hobos (unemployed, itinerant, homeless men who travelled by train around America during the 1930s depression) used to communicate with each other by drawing them on walls, sidewalks, and fences. This was a very expedient way to tell their fellow travelers what they might expect to find in a place they were entering, such as “a beating awaits you here,” “fatal injury,” and “nothing to be gained here.”
Hobo symbols appealed to Basquiat because of the graffiti origins and his interest in obscure, secret languages.
The 1987 painting To Be Titled continues Basquiat’s interest in commercial products and popular advertising. He has included advertisement phrases such as LABORA- TORY TESTED FOR STRENGTH and FREE FOR A LIMITED TIMEONLY; comic book characters such as the LONE RANGER and HAWKMAN; a reference to Ian Fleming’s literary hero, James bond, as 007 (with a carica- ture of a Black Panther Party member holding a rifle); and food references to GRILLED CHEESE and CORN FLA- KEE (with a drawing of a rooster head which is the symbol for the Kellogg’s brand of corn flakes). Typical of paintings of this period, Basquiat has also incorporated the hobo symbol of a large circle and its meaning, GOOD PLACE FOR A HANDOUT, and a pointed reference to racial discrimination in the cartoon-like drawing of a black hotel porter carrying luggage and wearing WHITE GLOVES.
The title of TV Star (1988) refers to the stick figure drawn in the green rectangle prominently placed in the centre of the canvas, that Basquiat identifies as DORIAN HARE- WOOD and notes that he will be seen on television on channel 2 at 12:40am – which is definitely not prime time. The artists did not randomly chose this actor’s name. Dorian Harewood is an African-American actor who has appeared in numerous movies, and television programmes since the 1970s. this actor was especially admired by Bas- quiat because he played the role of famous black figures in biographies, such as “The Jesse Owens Stories” (1984) and “Guilty of Innocence: The Lenell Geter Story” (1987) about a black man wrongfully accused and convicted of armed robbery for eighteen months until a NAACP lawyer assisted in his release. This programme was shown on television in the same year that TV Star was painted. Seven years after Basquiat’s death, Harewood portrayed one of his favourite heroes in “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream.”
Basquiat has included additional references to television at the lower left of the canvas where the names of TV programmes are listed: NEWS, THREE’S COMPANY, MAGNUM, and WEBSTER. The cartoon-like figure with arms outstretched and wearing a three-pronged hat in the centre of the painting also connects to television. The fig- ure is the corporate logo of TRANSOGRAM, a company that made boxed board games based on 1950s and 1960s TV shows, such as “Superman” (1954), “Pop- eye” (1956), “The Flintstones” (1961), and “Buck Rogers” (1968). The painting contains a number of other words and symbols probably copied from books including a repe- tition of three circles with different meanings, but all asso- ciated with communication: the hobo symbol for NOTH- ING TO BE GAINED HERE; an OSCHILOSCOPE, a device often used to repair TV sets; and a transmitter, the LINK PARABOLE. A painting such as this illustrates Bas- quiat’s ongoing desire and need to communicate, convey facts, inform, describe, and express. It is prophetic that TV Star would be one of Basquiat’s final paintings – his star was soon to be extinguished and his voice silenced.
But his legacy survives. Basquiat drew and painted on canvas or paper with a confident and intelligent hand, working rapidly and spontaneously, and revising and changing instantaneously and visibly. His works are raw and aggressive, displaying an intuitive and spontaneous expression of form, colour, and gesture combined with a subjective content of meaning and importance. Basquiat masterfully fused painting and drawing with abstraction and representation. To Basquiat, the meaning of a word was not necessarily relevant to its usage because he employed words as abstract objects that can be seen as con- figurations of straight and curved lines that come together to form a visual pattern. The visual and graphic impact of printed letters was sufficient enough to stand alone as an artistic expression. Conversely, Basquiat also used words as conceptual containers of meaning when they made allusions to subjects that appealed to him, and when they were subconsciously or conceptually connected to other words and images through free association.
Baquiat’s paintings and drawings illustrate the wide and extreme range of his subjects, styles, and techniques, and they display the strength of his aesthetic drive to achieve a balance between the visual and intellectual attributes of the artwork. He constructs a circular transformation of marks into letters, letters into words, and words into mean- ing; and then he reverses the cycle to permit the marks to reconfigure from meaning into abstraction, while empha- sizing the integrity of the mark, the power of the gesture, and the fusion of representation and abstraction. Basquiat succeeds in creating artworks that offer equal importance and value to the physicality and process of painting, and the graphic impact of image and text, while simultaneously displaying a visual integration of abstraction, gesture, and writing.
