Sketch Book for the Artist

PORTRAITURE

Self-Portraits

THE MIRROR OF SELF-PORTRAITURE offers artists infinite

reflections of, and confrontations with, their most immediate

and best-known subject: themselves. It is an opportunity to

look deep without the infringement of courtesies owed to a

commissioning sitter. It has proved to be a subject of piercing

scrutiny, political outcry, humor, and indulgence.

The incandescent New York painter Jean Michel Basquiat

pictured himself here in naked silhouette; a tribal, skull-

headed, spear-brandishing warrior. It is an image of

confrontation—the ever-controversial young artist roars at

us from his abstract city-scape.

Man Ray's playful silk-screen assembly of color blocks,

scrolls, scratched lines, bells, and buttons rings with surrealist

wit and agile improvisation. The artist has finished his portrait

with the signature of his hand smacked in the middle like a

kiss: a declaration of existence as old as man's first drawing.

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

be looking at 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

94x76 in (239 x 193 cm)

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT