Power is an authority exerted on people or a control of a state of mind, art or politic. Counter-power is a less formal mode of power which offsets the traditional idea of dominance. It can be perceived as an opposition to authority. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat (JMB), born in Brooklyn in 1960 and died in New York in 1988, created and demonstrated through his art an aspect of counter-power which is recognizable by his “aggressive” painting. This young boy of Brooklyn began in the late 70’s to speak and paint for an American black, street, musical, hip-hop community and entered in the art’s Neo expressionism movement. He created his own way of expression, named as “the self of community power” by Steele (Steele 28), under the influence of street art, the begging of graffities and several musical genres such as jazz, classic and hip-hop. However, he described his art as not scholar because we went through the boundaries of traditional art. Through his young age, Basquiat succeed to influence the world of Art by his culture and identity, creativity, and his social and politic state of mind. 

 

            Basquiat, thanks to his origin, explored the African and American cultures as we can observe through his famous drawings of faces. The faces seem to be angry, and revolt just like him. So, we can think that Basquiat drew his self-portrait through his black faces. He is an activist who demonstrated, without denounced, the place of black community in America. Indeed, his creations represent a “continuity between Art and life” (Bourdieu 4). Then, his paintings are influenced by the primitivism movement which reject beauty and subjective emotions to draw in a simplified way. His art works may be perceived as violent such as his aspect of life. These are a representation of the temper felt by his social class in the 70’s, 80’s in New York. He was a storyteller who express himself through Art. Indeed, in the movie Basquiat directed by Julian Schnabel in 1996, JMB, interpreted by Jeffrey Wright, tells the story of his famous drawing crown. According to the movie, the crown would come from a tale told by Basquiat’s mother when he was a child; the story of a prince locked behind bars with no right to speak. 

As social actions define power, Basquiat’s social reflections represent his counter-power. However, his art pieces are very personal, and he used, according to Steele, aesthetics as a demonstration and construction of self. Indeed, “the self’s ambiguity and indeterminacy […] are its most vulnerable and thus counter powerful qualities” (Steele 27).  Therefore, Basquiat’s particularity was his “mutability of language” (The Guardian) which evokes his capability to communicate through different language and signs. Indeed, he also used the music as a way of expression and recorded the song “drum mode” with his group Gray for the movie Downtown 81. He was a fan of music and owner of more than 3000 vinyl discs, according to the exhibition Seeing Loud: Basquiat and music organized with the museum of fine arts of Montreal and curated by Mary-Dailey Desmarais. He also painted music such in his canvas Plastic sax (1984) inspired by Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie. JMB was not only a painter, a street artist and a musician. He also was an actor who played his own role in the movie Downtown 81 directed by the photograph and director Edo Bertoglio. The movie was released in 2000, twelve years after Basquiat’s death and represents New York’s popular art through Basquiat’s eyes. 

His childish way of drawing was his own way of expression which mixed colors, black characters, words, and forms. According to Schnabel’s movie, JMB was drawing everywhere and all the time. At first, he signed his graffities under the acronym SAMO (same old shit) all in New York, acronym that he shared with the other street artist Al Diaz. We find the intellectual distance he had across his art which goes against the artistic and social restrictions. The intellectual distance he kept with his creations is an exploration of a counter-power of the intellectual movement. Basquiat conflicted with the social norms by represented his liberty and emotions through his creativity which is a particularity of the Neo expressionism movement.

 

Indeed, the Neo expressionism movement has the particularity to be a violent, carefree, and hedonistic art movement. Basquiat’s paintings are overflowing of emotions and culture as in his tableau History of the black people(1983). His art represents his dark thoughts and his constant anxiety regarding life, as we can see through his artwork Profit I (1982). We noticed that several of his artworks are untitled. His rage attracted the art buyers and the Brooklyn boy participated to a lot of Art galleries. Basquiat’s work is about identification and thanks to this practice of self-representation into art, he succeeds to impact communities on and off screen. Basquiat is memorable not only for his community but for others who developed and develops sensitiveness and judge his art as beautiful and powerful. According to Kant, judgement is a power created by others to evoke their opinions about a person or his state of mind or art. Power is a human judgment which is for all of us a chose depending to our notion of beauty and our cultural, social, and educational environment. In a matter of fact “what makes power so attractive (…) is the freedom to choose the meaning of this beauty” (Steele 26). Relating to Basquiat, what made his counter-power’s power is his freedom. His liberty of thinking and creating is influenced by the underground culture such as hip hop, graffities and street art. Furthermore, he was one of the first to enter street culture into museums. He also developed his interest and curiosity for art through his friendship with Andy Warhol, figure of the Pop Art movement and Basquiat’s mentor. From their collaboration is born an intimate relation combining paintings and photographs and a turning point in the art history who combined a white artist and a black artist.

 

However, Basquiat had a particular bond with art. He wished to sell but not be used as a merchandise. The trading art part and the power of market riled him. He created for the ones who profoundly appreciate his art and for communicated his own message. Be seen as a product that we sell what exactly what he was opposed to and rejects this form of power. He was so personal in his creation that he was seen as an Heritier for his manners of “habitus” in the art area. Indeed, according to Bourdieu, a habitus is defined by the place occupied by each in different social spheres. The young artist strengthen trough his paintings the social and power relationship for black community in America. He performed Afrofuturism art, called that way for defined the “connection between the marginality of allegedly “primitive” people of the African diaspora and “modern” technology” (Elia abstract). The “modern technology” was, for his art, his American culture. We find back through his creations a political questioning, seen by Zuboff as “the oldest political question: home or exile? Lord or subject? Master or slave?”. In her writing, Zuboff reconsiders the power relationships between individuals and their home place, home would be the point of origin of any statements or creations. Basquiat, despite his African and indigenous culture from a Haitian father and Puerto Rican origin mother, created for American boys’ part of the hip hop community. His relationship to graffities was special as he begun to be known for his street art and sentences painted all over New York. At this time, hip hop was seen as a marginalized culture and its actors as outsiders. He had an American inspiration born with the beginning of street art and his fascination for Andy Warhol which he mixed with his own melancholia and pain for African folk. 

Moreover, the artiste indulged into drugs during his life and as a result to Warhol’s death in 1987. Indeed, he painted Riding with death, one of his last “tableaux” in 1988, the year of his 

death. His last painting evoked lost souls and misplaced into heroine, the cause of his death.

 

            To sum up, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a passive fighter who deliberated for a less formal power. He loved liberty, he wanted to express himself, he showed solidarity to his community and created for the one who understand him. Through his life, he succeeds to impose his own norms of Art, a mix of Neo expressionist and Afrofuturism movement, in the Art area, once reserved to white artists.  Indeed, he became a figure of the Americana’s culture. 

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Written by Olympia Dairaine Grimaux

 

SOURCES

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Steele, Brent J. Defacing Power: The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics. University of Michigan Press, 2010

 

Pierre Bourdieu. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Richard Nice (translation), Cambridge: Harvard Press, pp. 1-15. 1985

 

Adriano Elia. “The Languages of Afrofuturism.” Lingue E Linguaggi, vol. 12, pp. 83–96. 

 

Shoshana Zuboff. “Home or Exile in the Digital Future ” The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. 2019

 

The Guardian, Race, power, money - the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/08/race-power-money-the-art-of-jean-michel-basquiat

 

ARTE, Jean-Michel Basquiat – La rage creative. 2018

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vxr6q

 

Julian Schnabel, Basquiat, 1996. Eleventh street production, Jon Kilik, Miramax. 

 

Edo Bertoglio, Downton 81, 2000. Maripole producer. 

 

Ducrozet, Pierre. Eroica : Roman. Actes Sud, 2018.