Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
ADJUNCT MODULE D: WORLD ART
Preferred Title:
Untitled
Image View:
Overall view
Creator:
Jean-Michel Basquiat (American painter, 1960-1988)
Location:
repository: Broad Museum (Los Angeles, California, United States) B-BASQ-2P82.32
Location Note:
221 S. Grand Avenue
GPS:
34.0544-118.251
Date:
1981 (creation)
Cultural Context:
American
Style Period:
Neo-Expressionist; Twentieth century
Work Type 1:
painting (visual work)
Classification:
Paintings
Material:
acrylic paint; oilstick on canvas
Technique:
drawing (image-making); painting and painting techniques
Measurements:
81 in (height) x 69.25 in (width)
Subjects:
abstraction; contemporary (1960 to present); head; mask; skull
Description:
Many of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings are in some way autobiographical, and Untitled may be considered a form of self-portraiture. The skull here exists somewhere between life and death. The eyes are listless, the face is sunken in, and the head looks lobotomized and subdued. Yet there are wild colors and spirited marks that suggest a surfeit of internal activity. Developing his own personal iconography, in this early work Basquiat both alludes to modernist appropriation of African masks and employs the mask as a means of exploring identity. Basquiat labored over this painting for months, evident in the worked surface and imagery, while most of his pieces were completed with bursts of energy over just a few days. The intensity of the painting, which was presented at his debut solo gallery exhibition in New York City, may also represent Basquiat’s anxieties surrounding the pressures of becoming a commercially successful artist (Source: Broad Museum [website]; https://www.thebroad .org/)
Collection:
Archivision Adjunct Module D: World Art
Identifier:
7A1-BASQUIAT-U81-A01
Rights:
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.

Untitled