Jean Michel Basquiat Essay

“A picture is a poem without words” – Horace, the purpose of art is to reveal the sensations of life but also allows humans to express their emotions and views on certain aspects. Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Neo-Expressionist painter throughout the 1980’s who was known for his style. He was African American artist and musician that was part of the SAMO. The SAMO was a graffiti group that wrote epigrams. While growing up, one of Basquiat inspirations that encouraged him to paint was his diverse cultural heritage. Basquiat was a creative self-taught artist who thought outside of the box when it came to painting. Most of the pieces he made were a collaboration of different ideas and constructed them together into a collage. During the 1980’s Basquiat’s art used the human figure to portray Minimalism and Conceptualism. His target market that were in many of his pieces was on suggestive dichotomies that focused on the lower class versus the higher class. Even though Basquiat work was remarkable, he was criticized and faced some challenges among his journey because of the symbols and words that were used his paintings. Despite the criticism,

All the artist during that time all portrayed similar ideas that were introverted abstract art. Artist started portraying common objects in an abstract expressionism that were aggressive and emotional. During this era, Basquiat and other similar artist created pieces that were rich in detail that demonstrated different aspects of life. During this art movement, many people considered it be controversial and didn’t find the artwork to be intriguing. This movement started in Germany and later on settled in the United States. Neo-Expressionists were sometimes called Neue Wilden (“The Wild Ones”). The word Expressionism was a movement in poetry and in paintings and this is usually would present the subjective