Formal analysis of Jean-Michel BasquiatJean-Michel Basquiat moved from his inner-city origins to the international art gallery circuit. Basquiat became a famous, and probably the most commercially exploited, American painter in the very famous Neo-Expressionism art movement. His work is an example of how American artists were able to once again introduce the aspect of the human being into their work after the vast achievements of minimalism and conceptualism. This essay thus recounts how Basquiat skillfully and deliberately brought together in his work a horde of contrasting customs, practices and styles to create a kind of visual university. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The works of former graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have entered the global art scene with unprecedented speed. His work has attracted the attention of major art dealers such as Bruno Bischofberger, Mary Boone and Anina Nosei. His work also captivated a wide audience ranging from wanderers to high society. Today, his paintings are compared to ancient tribal drawings and kindergarten doodles. The comparisons are intended to show the raw innocence and tone of legitimacy of the works. Overall, there is nothing juvenile about the communicative power of Basquiat's work. His paintings express varied themes such as drug addiction, intolerance, jazz, capitalism and mortality. Issues of racial and socioeconomic inequality and the degradation of life seem omnipresent in his paintings. Each of his paintings carries an immediate message despite their impulsive composition. Through his paintings, society has the benefit of seeing urban beauty and decay, as well as the bad social practices that lurk within society. In Basquiat’s painting “Untitled,” the mood is one of sadness. It comes in black, white and dark blue, making it striking at first glance. The minimalist design depicts a prisoner, two men in uniform who are assumed to be police officers due to their hats and badges. The painting expresses racial connotations, as shown by the direct contrast between the prisoners and the police. A common symbol in Basquiat's work, "The Halo" is also visible in art. The symbol is used by Basquite in his works to represent black characters. In his painting “Untitled,” the symbol is used to signify the prisoner’s martyr status. A longtime director of the Museum of Modern Art in Lugano writes in a foreword to Basquiat to appreciate his use of blackness to indicate discrimination and confusion in the existing generation. (Chiappini,11) Furthermore, Basquiat indicated the geographical context of the scene which is distinctly distinguished by an urban environment. Most likely, he did not witness the New York urban scene during his lifetime. It is also well known that he was the victim of discrimination and racial profiling at one point, having repeatedly complained about not being able to hail a taxi in New York due to his race. It is therefore clear that Untitled is a painting about police discrimination and mistreatment of black individuals in the city. Basquiat's paintings are vividly imbued with sarcasm which at the same time enriches his art in the most confusing way. He uses animal and bestial imagery in his paintings. The explicit images in some of his paintings are crude and almost offensive to the senses of human beings. One example is the udder, which takes animal imagery into a whole newparadigm. His pictorial allusions to Twain's South and cotton context imply a reference to slavery before the Civil War. Luciano Caprile writes in “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Word and Image” about the extraordinary narrative element of Basquiat's work. It indicates that the paintings extrapolate from the original myths and rites and expose them, as a visual desecration and existential statement. (Caprile, 118) Basquiat's paintings were invariably linked to the market booms of the 1980s and, like his colleagues, he developed the artist's vision as a superstar, making recurring appearances in published periodicals. Her art appears on high fashion streetwear and luxury knitwear. This means that his fame continues to grow twenty-six years after his death. Documentary and narrative films have been made about his life and his paintings continue to skyrocket in the market. (Vogel) His art auction records are written by an editor of the New York Times Magazine. Basquiat's work does not show a deep disinterest in questions of institutional critique and minimalism. He is not totally concerned with it unlike the minimalist artwork. There is a broad representation of culture in his work. He is interested in Gray's Anatomy and African history. His approach also involved drawing from all layers of contemporary New York City culture. Based on world history, combining all interests in one's work is a way to create a very personal brand of painting. In the chronological framework of the painting, Basquiat's project is similar to other projects, with a notable exception in the use of collage; a technique Basquiat worked with when he was struggling to get his name out there. Jean-Michel uses paint and his work is hand painted, intrinsically personal and emotional. The kind of work he did could only be done because of him. His work is not only concerned with collected waste and remnants of society, but rather with a life and an individual made from waste and salvageable chaos. Some of Basquiat's paintings are emotional and psychologically evocative. They contain a lot of darkness and suffering on a much more personal or spiritual level. The suffering reflected in his paintings may be linked to ethnic disposition or inferiority. It may also be a reflection of a lifestyle of self-fulfilling prophecies that come true almost maliciously. His works also notably illustrate a more rapid condition of life and death. Basquiat is known to have been a frequent drug user who developed a habit of using cocaine and heroin. He often combined the two drugs to increase his body's response. In “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” Andy Warhol, who was a close friend of Basquiat, writes how his friend would come in and paint in slow motion, leaving a lot of empty space. Andy Warhol explains how Basquiat would bend over to fix his shoelace and stay in that position for five minutes. (Taka, 109) Although he assured family members and friends that he would stop using drugs, he died at the age of twenty-seven from an overdose of drug. One of his paintings probably refers to the urban drug problem. There is a significant relationship between the images he uses and the drug context. When one critically analyzes his paintings, the result will be related to how drugs transform man into beasts. Criticisms raised against Basquiant's works indicate that the symbols used by him were not satisfactory in all his.