Jean-Michel Basquiat worked in New York and was one of the most prominent painters of the 1980s. Basquiat responded to the culture of his era using image and text in his work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay During the 1980s, the new art movement in American popular culture, graffiti, began. Graffiti artists have exploited the readily available cheap spray can and ink marker to create art rooted in artistic vandalism. Signature "labels" were often written in elaborate styles on a monumental scale, the width and height of an entire New York subway car. The 1980s also saw a shift from the intellectualism of conceptual art to new, emotionally charged works. The art market flourished, with art rivaling the stock market as an investment option. Jean-Michel Basquiat worked in the Neo-Expressionism art movement, characterized by expressive, aggressive, and gestural works. At this time, it was believed that it was necessary to reinvigorate contemporary art and reaffirm the human character that had been lost in conceptually oriented art. Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960, and worked during the contemporary art era. Basquiat had no formal training in art; however, his mother was an amateur artist and encouraged him to draw and visit art museums. He was the son of a Haitian-born father and a Puerto Rican mother and spent three years in Puerto Rico with his father. Basquiat was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual and spoke French and Spanish fluently. Basquiat is known for his expressive, spontaneous and raw style, fusing a purely visual display with obscure symbolism. It combined elements from several movements including; cubism; abstract expressionism and outsider art, with graffiti, comics and tribal images. Basquiat shares in his works his knowledge of African art and African-American culture, as well as the history of post-war American painting. As the curator of a 2005 Basquiat exhibition pointed out, Basquiat's main concern in his paintings "was the direct representation of African cultural heritage within the artistic tradition of the West." Basquiat conveyed a harsh and personal social message. He added compositional strength and originality to enhance the emotional depth of his works. His art deliberately embraces styles and rejects the conceptual in favor of more accessible and spontaneous forms. Basquiat began to intensely examine his own sense of emotional and spiritual being through his works. His work always offers intriguing composition and a delicate balance between spontaneity and control. Basquiat gained notoriety in the late 1970s for spray-painting aphorisms on Manhattan's Lower East Side under the pseudonym SAMO. By this time, the hip-hop, jazz, post-punk, and street art movements had come together in New York, and images derived from pop culture references inspired much of the imagery and text in the work of Basquiat. Basquiat's paintings reflect his connections to graffiti art and the multicultural world of New York hip-hop culture and the fast-paced, violent life of New York's streets. Motifs from hip-hop iconography appear several times in his work, as do references inspired by sport, notably boxing and baseball. "He paid tribute to the black musicians and athletes who inspired him bypainting dedicatory works." Basquiat celebrated his strong sense of ethnic and cultural identity in his works. His multidimensional imagery includes crudely drawn figures, diagrams, formulas, and scientific texts. This set of styles, texts, d he images and stories spoke the language of neo-expressionism. Basquiat used various stylistic elements and merged them to present a new iconography of New York urbanity using charcoal, a pen, a stick of oil paint. , synthetic polymer paintings and collages, and his highly stimulating and dynamic style, Basquiat was able to focus his social commentary in the context of his own identity as a young black artist in a predominantly white art world. Notary is a rich collection. seemingly contradictory images and symbolic references, as well as a selection of textual references to; Greek mythology; African tribal culture; American popular symbolism and systems of monetary exchange. The painting is composed of a mixture of color spots, lines, texts and distorted human forms. Basquiat created a sense of rhythmic pattern through his expressive and spontaneous line work. He has also generated an exceptionally sophisticated collection of juxtaposing words and phrases. The word “salt” on the left of the table contrasts with the word “dehydrated” on the right. A striking white face is depicted on the left while an ornate black torso appears on the right. Words such as "parasite", "debt" and "fleas" are linked to Basquiat's personal understanding of life on the streets of New York. There is a hint of aggression or anger in the dense brushstrokes, contrasting colors and scratchings. In Notary, Basquiat used many materials and techniques to create an expressive and bold piece. The painting is composed of acrylic paint, applied boldly and spontaneously, producing emotional energy. The oil paint stick is used for text and outlines and is drawn with quick, confident strokes. Paper collages are also used beneath the work and are visible in some places. Thinner paint partly obscures the text in some areas and in other sections the paint is applied thicker, emphasizing and connecting the unstructured text. These expressive and dramatic techniques evoke a feeling of chaos and confusion. The work is part of the neo-expressionism movement, in a contemporary style. Basquiat combines very different levels of meaning in his text and images. A preponderance of repeated words such as "dehydrated", "leeches" and "salt", as well as crossed out and corrected words such as "Pluto" and "parasite", indicate that he is grappling with the conflict between self-realization and his truths and the responsibilities that come with public notoriety - back when his art was gaining public recognition. It has also been suggested that Notary struggles with darker aspects of human existence, as suggested by references to the Greek god of the underworld, Pluto. The composition of Notary is disordered. In the center of the canvas is a full-length portrait, surrounded by drawings and words, many of which are crossed out. The whole painting is filled with splashes of color and text. The color palette is saturated. Basquiat uses a subtropical palette of light blues, yellows, reds, pinks and greens, but also incorporates darker shades of black. Notary is a monumental scale, measuring 180 x 401 cm. This scale forces the viewer to immerse themselves in the painting and find meaning in the scattered words and phrases that cover the work. Basquiat uses fine, painterly lines to create surface and energy.