226. Horn Players

 

Horn Players
Jean-Michel Basquiat. 1983 C.E. New York. Acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels

Honed his signature painting style of obsessive scribbling, elusive symbols and diagrams, and mask-and-skull imagery by the time he was 20.

Theme: 

2 jazz musicians - saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie

Form: 

Triptych w/ half-length portraits; many drawings/words of which some are crossed out; white swaths of paint (highlight background/obscure material beneath)

Function: 

Tribute to jazz and African American popular culture in general; jazz music inspiration/instruction for Basquiat's paintings

Content: 

(Left) Parker holding saxophone which emits several hot pink musical notes/distorted waves of sound; ; wording relates to Parker's life (Ornithology title of famous composition; Pree/Chan names of daughter/wife); (Right) Dizzy Gillespie holds a silent instrument alongside his torso - "DOH SHOO DE OBEE" - scat singing Gillespie often performed

Context: 

Basquiat known for wordplay on pieces - as teenager graffitied (SAMO); now known as "the black Picasso"; influenced by Picasso's Three Musicians; used Gray's Anatomy textbook to study human composition; was a musician himself

MODERN PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

• 1950's = new medium = acrylic 
• dry faster 
• dont change color when dried
• BUT they crack faster 
• oil is still preferred 
• also many abandoned the canvas for a computer screen 
• marble carving = dead
• modern forms of sculpture are faster to produced and reproduce 
• assemblages: sculptors made of objects 
• installations: large assemblages; can take up a whole room 

Horn Players, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983, acrylic and oil paintstick on canvas panels, Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, California

• born in Brooklyn NY -- parents were Puerto Rican and Haitian 
• rebelled against middle class -- what he was born into 
• triptych, canvas, oil paint = traditional 
• modernist expression = graffiti art
• FORM: flattened background -- patches of color; thick lines
• FUNCTION spotlights African American musicians 
• jazz like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on either side
• heads float over body outlines and slowly disappear the further down you go 
• FORM - focus on contrast and juxtaposition