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PORTRAITURE138 Self-Portraits headed, spear-brandishing warrior. It is an image of
THE MIRROR OF SELF-PORTRAITURE offers artists infinite confrontation—the ever-controversial young artist roars at
reflections of, and confrontations with, their most immediate us from his abstract city-scape.
and best-known subject: themselves. It is an opportunity to
look deep without the infringement of courtesies owed to a Man Ray's playful silk-screen assembly of color blocks,
commissioning sitter. It has proved to be a subject of piercing scrolls, scratched lines, bells, and buttons rings with surrealist
scrutiny, political outcry, humor, and indulgence. wit and agile improvisation. The artist has finished his portrait
with the signature of his hand smacked in the middle like a
The incandescent New York painter Jean Michel Basquiat kiss: a declaration of existence as old as man's first drawing.
pictured himself here in naked silhouette; a tribal, skull-
JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT
Short-lived American painter and
graffiti artist who began his blazing
nine-year career drawing on lower
Manhattan subway trains with a
friend, Al Diaz, signing their work
SAMO. Later Basquiat sold drawings
on T-shirts, postcards, and sheet
metal before being snapped up by
the New York contemporary art
scene. In 1986 he traveled to Africa
and showed his work in Abidjan on
the Ivory Coast He also exhibited in
Germany and France.
Signs and symbols This painting shudders
with symbols that ore written, drawn, and
scratched into its surface. The figure's position
is unequivocal and defiant while everything
around him is in a state of cultural flux.
Without the essential figure we would
belookingat a sophisticated and elegant
painting of signs, marks, and attitudes, similar
to work by Cy Twombly (see p.221). Islands of
graphic marks, made with great energy, float
and shimmer in the shallow pictorial space.
Self Portrait
1982
9 4 x 7 6 in (239 x 193 cm)
JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT
