Monalisa (1983)

Monalisa by Jean-Michel Basquiat

I actually had the pleasure of watching a movie on Starz about this man's life. Though I was just a young tyke when he was relevant & alive, I could still feel that if I was of age this troubled soul could be my friend. We could have discussed all the things that were wrong in the world. He was troubled as were most in the 80's when fame was entangled with drugs, camera bulbs flashing, & everyone wanting to know you for what you could do for them, rather than how good of a person you were. Im gonna run a small biography of his life. Enjoy.

"Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), an artist who came to personify the art scene of the 80s,with its merging of youth culture, money, hype, excess, and self-destruction.
In his short life (1960-1988), Jean-Michel Basquiat came to personify the art scene of the 80s, with its merging of youth culture, money, hype, excess, and self-destruction. And then there was the work, which the public image tended to overshadow: paintings and drawings that conjured up marginal urban black culture and black history, as well as the artist's own conflicted sense of identity."

"He was, all at once it seemed, the ultimate party animal, a wannabe streetkid and grafittist hiding his black Brooklyn middle class roots, an advocate and interpreter of the marginal and dispossessed at the court of the mainstream, an angry black aspirant to the all-white art canon, a precocious talent, a creature of cynical marketing and a fraud, a proto-muIticulturalist, an American original."

"As I came across the abundant contradictions, the public perceptions, mythifications and self-inventions that went into the shaping of Basquiat's life and work, the more I wanted to understand how these had all attached to the same person. I set out to create my own picture of Basquiat."

-Robert Knafo (http://www.basquiat.com/)-

Everyone knows (or should know) that the beloved Andy Warhol set out to take & make as much monetary advantage of the young Basquiat. This is what caused a rift in their friendship before Jean-Michel's death. The infamous portrait of Jean-Michel & Warhol in the boxing gloves was not recieved well by Basquiat. Of course he died from continued use of drugs. I believe he lost his soul to the art world. It makes you ask yourself, do you think you could really handle being sold as a product? Do you really want to be famous? How lost would you become?

Movie: Basquiat (1996)

Until later...