Basquiat/Warhol selfie

 

This piece was self care in two ways: I took the selfie while doing my skincare routine and listening to music. The second way was taking the selfie into procreate to draw over it. I didn’t plan it and just painted over it instinctively, which was really fun. 

Warhol and Basquiat

Untitled (boxer)1982 J.M.B          Dollar Sign (1981) A.W   Untitled Skull 1981 J.M.B.     Mao (1973)

After reviewing the two artists Andy Warhol and Jean Michael Basquiat there worked was very interesting to look at.  When it comes to art the first then you are going to do is judge the piece of art.  By judging the work, you are most likely using your eyes.  When it comes to Jean-Michel Basquiat he uses a lot of themes in his artwork.  I noticed that Jeans work has a lot to do race, religion and self-identity. “A common theme in nearly all of Basquiat’s works are the ideas finding one’s self and defining individual values while breaking social conventions.” (Art, Identity, and Culture).  Jean is not a normal artist and he is very different when creating his paintings.  After reviewing Andy Warhol artwork, you see that he is a type of person that has realistic portraits.  Some themes that Andy introduces in his artwork is identity, money, death and time.  Andy and Jean have similar themes when it comes to their artwork.

    Some influences that Andy have on his work is that he changed the American Pop culture.  His experience and expertise in commercial art really inspired him to do much more.  Something that influenced Jean Michel Basquiat was his childhood.  Back then, Jean’s mother suffered from mental illness and his father believed in corporal punishment.  Jean had a tragic childhood as a child and that made him want to start doing art because he wanted to put all his problems into art.  When it came to Andy growing up, he had a fatal disease.  He was on his death bed at the age of 8 years old.  Some subjects that is present in his artwork is death.  I believe his portraits has to deal with death because he almost died as a child. When Jean was growing up, he started involving himself with drugs. At the age of 17 he dropped out of school and went to the streets.  He was a party animal during that time, and nobody could stop him.

      One day Jean went to a club where he met Diego Cortez and after that day his life changed.  Jeans work has a lot to do with race.  “As a young black man living in New York in the 1980s, he turned to his art to criticize the histories of colonialism and racism pertaining to African Americans.” Jean wanted to explain what was happening in the world at the time.  Andy became very successful in the 1970’s through the 1980’s.  His work became very synonymous in the 1960’s in Bohemia. Jean accomplished a lot through the 1980s by making it big! The materials that Andy were a silkscreen printing to create some of the portraits he. made. Andy had the option to create his portraits by reproducing images in the public eye. He also had the ability to produce multiple versions of his paintings. Jean got his material from books and also pieces of work that he found on the streets.  He used them well in his paintings because it described his themes in his portraits. For both artist the materials meant a lot to them because they had multiple ideas when it came to creating the portraits.

 

Quote:

 

1. “The Basic ingredients of easy sociality are trusted and predictability” (page 77)

2. “Every social gesture is potentially ambiguous” (page 84)

                                                                Work Cited

Art, identity, and culture. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2021, from https://reinterpellations.web.unc.edu/about/basquiats-devil/basquiats-devil-essay/#:~:text=As%20a%20result%20of%20his,values%20while%20breaking%20social%20conventions.

The short but influential life Of Jean-Michel Basquiat. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2021, from https://www.artfinder.com/blog/post/basquiat/#

Warhol and Basquiat

Identity Biography and Fame

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat were prevalent artists to make noise in the art world. They valued fame and success, which reflects in their artwork. Warhol's work specifically centered around celebrity and consumerist culture. Using silk screen to create repetition and perfect recreation of iconic everyday objects (like Campbell's soup can) and celebrities (like Marylin Monroe and Elvis). Basquiat also had a strong interest in fame. His mother took him to museums at a young age exposing him to the arts. This grew as Basquiat became influenced by musicians and philosophers alike. In his work, unlike warhol, his recreation of icons and pop culture moments were “exploded” and emphasized. He stripped the original forms but not like the blocking of cubism the art world had come to know. Andy Warhol once said to him “ that's why you’re better than me, you're faster”. I would personally go as far as to say that Andy didn't mean he just admired his speed, but that Basquiat could recreate something so instinctively and effortlessly. Warhol was known to hate and struggle with drawing, and his own silk screen works were more direct copies of the subject. Basquiat created something new, something familiar but with more context. He once said “ influence is ideas going through a new mind.” (Radiant child)

Basquiat was described as painting ‘child-like’ not as an insult, but to explain how he doesn’t create based on the likeness of the image but based on the subject. As John Berger puts it, “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak''. This ability to return to the identifying skills of a child, while maintaining his extensive understanding of the arts, history, and anatomy set Basquiat apart. 

Both artists come from different backgrounds, Warhol was a sick kid who was often stuck in bed, leading to a lot of isolation where he started making art. His parents were working-class immigrants, which most likely began his interest in fame, as well as an awareness of how american consumerism took over culturally, right at the formative years or capitalistic monopoly.  Basquiat's father was hatian and a white collar worker. Basquiat was eager to please his father and prove he was successful. His Puerto Rican  mother encouraged trilingual fluency and education in the arts. He ran away from home at 17 and joined a community of underground like minded creatives. He lived in extreme poverty, he couldn't be working a regular job because of how inhumanely the working-class, especially as a black man, are treated. Even as a successful and famous artist, when he walked out of that environment, he was not recognized and subject to racism as any black man would be. This greatly influenced Basquiat's artwork, creating heavy themes on racial identity. 

I think that both artists became synonymous with their work. Andy Warhol focused on celebrity more specifically the consumerism of celebrity becoming more symbol that person. Warhol became and is to this day, very famous, his work is in itself a pop culture reference, and even during his own life became (both intentionally and as a result of fame) consumed by the masses. Basquiat began as a graffiti artist writing provoking messages everywhere. His transition to canvas and paper was unconventional and never tidy enough for the sterile museum and gallery walls of the high art world. But this in itself is a reflection of the artist; provocative and unconventional. Basquiat died very young, however his work is still making headlines to this day. 

Citation

Arthouse Films, Curiously Bright Entertainment & LM Media Gmbh; produced by David Koh ... [and others] ; a film by Tamra Davis ; produced & directed by Tamra Davis. Jean-Michel Basquiat : The Radiant Child. [New York] :Distributed by New Video, 2010.

Berger, John. Ways of seeing. Penguin Classics, 2008.

Andy Warhol slideshow. California State University, November 2, 2010

Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. 2006. [video] Ric Burns.

Finklestein Ch3 identity 

“There is the conscious and unconscious, private and public, civilized and base, good and bad, and we can create ourselves as well-rounded beings from the management of these seemingly opposed elements. Thus we are shaped by the circumstances of birth and have no control over our parentage, but we can, if we desire, make ourselves in our own image by employing the wide range of products and services designed for self-enhancement that are available in the consumer marketplace.” (126) i picked this quote because I wonder if this is truly a result of consumerism or an innate human desire. 

“Underscoring this association of identity with appearance is a cultural anxiety about knowing who it is we are encountering. Using coded items of clothing to make such categorizations more visible also makes them a site for playful resistance.” (128) people use clothing tattoos piercings jewelry etc to both feel that we are displaying a certain identity and to communicate it with others. 

Warhol and Basquiat - Identity, Biography and Fame + Chapter 3, Identity

“The crown is his symbol for himself as well as a symbol of respect for other figures of his work.”

“Identity can be what you believe to be true about yourself.”

“I used to Have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess. The same thing over and over again.”

“Andy loved being famous.”

“Jean Michel Basquiat became successful in the art world. He loved being famous.”

Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat were friends, they both loved painting. Andy liked to use primary bright colors; he once was told to paint anything he loved so he started to draw money also he liked to draw the same painting multiple times. “Warhol also frequently used art to explore his homosexual identity.” Jean liked graffiti, he liked to paint things he saw in real life and his paintings were always full of emotions, he always used to draw crowns to represent himself., his main themes were “mortality, race, self-identity, and religion”. They both liked to drew things from real life even though everyone had his unique personality in his drawings.

For both Warhol and Basquiat, their parents encouraged them to be creative painters, and, in their childhood, they were allowed to paint and to bring out the artist in them. Jean Basquiat was influenced by his race and culture in his paintings, he was always drawing native Americans, and his Haitian roots were well observed in his paintings.

Despite being friends and Warhol trying to be the Godfather for Basquiat, they represented similar ideas but with a different personality, Andy liked to use his bright colors as his identity in POP art and went on painting the same drawings several times but with different colors as what he did in Marilyn Monroe drawings. Jean had his different way to draw, he was more into graffiti and he had his kind of childish way of drawing. 

Jean needed Warhol's fame, money, and experience to be a more famous artist and Warhol needed Basquiat to get a new fresh creative blood. They both needed each other to excel as artists. They both loved being famous. Andy preferred using canvas because of his techniques in Silkscreen and acrylic painting. Jean Basquiat started his artistic journey as a graffiti artist in the streets so he was using any material that could be found in the streets to make his pieces.

Basquiat invented himself, his work made him a remarkable artist quickly but for Andy, I think was lucky enough to be public and his artwork made him more popular.

The art of Self Invention, chapter 3:

-"We are in an era where impressions matter, and where reputation is both an asset and a liability."(p.122)

We are living in an era that gives too much importance to money and appearance. We materialized everything, we now care about money more than we are about humanity.

-"Over the centuries links have been asserted between the shape of the head, or eyebrows, lips, ears and fingers, and the counterpart characteristics of intelligence, character, moral rectitude, perversity and criminality."

We stereotype every single aspect anyone can have. We have to stop sorting people according to their looking, skin color, or whatever. Everyone is going through battles you know nothing about them, so please be kind.

Work Cited:

Lehmann, R. (2014, April 24). Jean Michel basquiat. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.slideshare.net/RodriguezLehmann/jean-michel-basquiat-33897491

Moor, S. (2017, November 22). Identity basquiat case study. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.slideshare.net/SarahMoor3/identity-basquiat-case-study?qid=0309a165-0dad-41d5-af4f-2beb2d4c1c1f&v=&b=&from_search=2

Lehmann, R. (2014, April 24). Andy Warhol. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.slideshare.net/RodriguezLehmann/andy-warhol-33898878

University, C. (2010, November 02). Andy Warhol. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.slideshare.net/kimfrog22/andy-warhol-5651037

Andy Warhol Biography, life & QUOTES. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/warhol-andy/life-and-legacy/#:~:text=In%20the%20early%201950s%2C%20Andy,influenced%20his%20most%20notable%20work.

Art, identity, and culture. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://reinterpellations.web.unc.edu/about/basquiats-devil/basquiats-devil-essay/

Rosenberg, B. (2021, March 18). Basquiat paintings, Bio, Ideas. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/basquiat-jean-michel/

Tate. (n.d.). What was Andy Warhol Thinking? – look closer. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andy-warhol-2121/what-was-andy-warhol-thinking#:~:text=Death,Modern%20Art%20in%20New%20York.