“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I think about life.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. His father was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and his mother was born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents.
Born and raised in New York, Basquiat first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO (shorthand for “same old shit”), an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s, he was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. Basquiat’s art focused on “suggestive dichotomies”, such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.
Basquiat primarily used texts as reference sources. A few of the books he used were Gray’s Anatomy, Henry Dreyfuss’ Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci published by Reynal & Company, and Burchard Brentjes’ African Rock Art, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson. From late 1982 to 1985, his work featured multi-panel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and imagery. The years 1984 to 1985 were also the period of the Basquiat–Warhol collaborations. The crown, Basquiat’s signature artistic motif, both acknowledged and challenged the history of Western art. “Jean-Michel’s crown has three peaks, for his three royal lineages: the poet, the musician, the great boxing champion,” said artist Francesco Clemente.
Basquiat died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988, but his work has steadily increased in value. In 2017, a 1982 painting depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets named Untitled sold for $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased. (Source)
Learn more about Jean-Michel Basquiat:
- The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Video: Growing Up With Jean-Michel Basquiat | I Was There
- Article: The Enigma of the Man Behind the $110 Million Painting
- Video: Getting to Know – Jean Michel Basquiat
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“I am alive, and I am Black! Therefore, I am motivated to paint the human elements and conditions that affect humanity. Truth has motivated me to paint along with a desire to express myself. Because I am life, I am compelled to paint the realities of life.
Arthello Beck, Jr., 1970
Arthello Beck, Jr. was an American artist who often painted scenes of places he had visited using a variety of mediums, including oils, watercolors, and charcoal.
Beck was born in Dallas, Texas, and attended Lincoln High School where he received his only formal art training. Beck is considered one of the leading Black artists in the Southwest. In 1971, he opened Arthello’s Art Gallery at 1922 South Beckley in Dallas, which is still being operated and managed by his wife. The gallery became a centerpiece of the Dallas art scene in the 1970s and 80s, and was instrumental to the careers of many black artists. In 2007, SDCC’s art gallery was named after Beck to honor his work and legacy.
He is possibly best known for his works from the 1960s dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, although Beck commonly featured other subjects, including children, religion, and human interaction, particularly in the African-American community. Beck was also a member of the National Conference of Artists and the Southwest Alliance of African American Artists, and was one of the founders of the Southwest Black Artists Guild. (Source)
Learn more about Arthello Beck, Jr.:
- Photos: Arthello Beck Jr.’s “Humanization” Exhibit at the African American Museum of Dallas
- Video: “Humanization – The Artistic Eye of Arthello Beck, Jr.” Artist Talk
- Video: 2022 MLK Black History Month Celebration: Unsung Artist, Arthello Beck, Jr.
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