Horn Players
Jean-Michel Basquiat. 1983 C.E. New York. Acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels
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:
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:
Function:
Tribute to jazz and African American popular culture in general; jazz music inspiration/instruction for Basquiat's paintings
Content:
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:
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
- 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
