Basquiat-Warhol
Brooklyn born Jean-Michel Basquiat was a son of immigrant Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother. At a young age Basquiat’s mother instilled the love of art in him by constantly taking him to museums and enrolling him in art programs. His talent for art was discovered at age 4 by his art teachers in the New York Museums Youth art program. In his junior year, Basquiat dropped out of high school to pursue his passion for art. He began to graffiti buildings in lower Manhattan under the name “SAMO”. Jean-Michel Basquiat had worked on his signature painting style of obsessive scribbling, elusive symbols and diagrams, and mask-and-skull imagery by the time he was 20. His street art portrays dichotomies comparing social status such as wealth vs. poverty and were heavily influenced by the neo-expressionist and abstract movements. However, his canvas paintings feature more abstracted figures and are deeply autobiographical explorations into his personal life and identity.
Basquiat had a past using drugs. However, his drug use was ceased temporarily when he became friends and co-workers with pop artist Andy Warhol. Together the two combined artistic styles and created paintings that had themes of pop art and abstract art styles. In their collaborative paintings each artists’ style can be seen. The use of Black characters commonly used by Basquiat is present in his collaboration artwork. Finkelstein had said before, "In every social encounter, we are directed to think about how to make a good impression and how to influence the opinion of others. We pay attention to the other, and they turn and pay attention to us." Through the collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol, they each admired each other's work and inspired each other.
Andy Warhol is known for his bright, colorful paintings and prints of subjects ranging from celebrities including Marilyn Monroe and Mohammed Ali, to products that can be found in an everyday kitchen such as cans of soup and Brillo pads. But behind these iconic images are some surprising approaches and ideas. From a young age Warhol was infatuated with fame, fashion, celebrity and Hollywood. As a boy living in Pittsburgh he found escape from his ordinary working class life in popular teen magazines and by collecting autographs from film stars. To make his images, he began by making a drawing, either by hand or tracing it from a found image. Afterwards, he then would go over the lines of this drawing with ink or watercolor. The final stage in his process was to press a clean sheet of paper onto the wet lines to make a ‘printed’ image. He did this several times using the same original drawing. The resulting images were spontaneous and expressive. This technique was the first of many that Warhol used to explore the creative possibilities of repeating images and from then on, the pop art movement was created.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Andy Warhol
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