|
Title |
Horn Players. |
|
Creator |
Basquiat, Jean-Michel (American painter and sculptor, 1960-1988) |
|
Date |
1983 |
|
Cultural Context |
American
North American
African-American |
|
Subject |
Graffiti
Poetry
Music
Jazz
Portraits
Group portraits
Men
Musicians
Jazz musicians
Composers
Celebrities
Suits (Clothing)
Coats
Neckties
Eyeglasses
Mustaches
Faces
Musical instruments
Trumpets
Saxophones
Boxes |
|
Description |
"Although savvy enough to take [Robert] Rauschenberg and [Jasper] Johns as models, as well as to avoid the subways, Basquiat teamed up with a fellow dropout, Al Diaz, and headed for SoHo, where the art world soon knew the pair through their concrete poetry writ large on outdoor walls and tagged SAMO©. After winning a place in the 'Times Square Show,' SAMO© broke up, which left Basquiat free to sign his own name to a set of graffiti-scrawled, unprimed canvases and enter them in P.S.1's 'New York/New Wave' exhibition, held in early 1981. With the gallery support that followed, he began producing what many consider his strongest work, large canvases arrayed in rudely calligraphed names, titles, phrases, and poetry that periodically metamorphose into mock-primitive imagery - skyscrapers, grinning, Africanized masks and skulls, oddly dangling robotic figures. With its rhythmic, unifying admixture of improvised slashes of black or brilliant color, abstract signs and symbols - grids, crowns, arrows, rockets - the mature painting created by twenty-two-year-old Basquiat easily invites comparison with the art of [Jean] Dubuffet and [Cy] Twombly but, like the work of these senior artists, remains so distinctive as to lie beyond comparison." (Excerpt, pp.399-[400]) |
|
People Pictured |
Gillespie, Dizzy, 1917-1993
Parker, Charlie, 1920-1955 |
|
Material |
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Acrylic paint
Paint
Mixed media
Canvas |
|
Measurements |
8' x 6' 5" |
|
Inscription |
Left "panel", top to bottom: CHAN / EAR / ORNITHOLOGY [crossed through] / PREE / SOAP [with box around it] / FEET [somewhat crossed through]; Center "panel", top to bottom: [Two variations of DIZZY GILLESPIE] / [Variations of CHARLIE PARKER, some crossed through, partially covered in white brushstrokes] / ORNITHOLOGY [with box around it] / LARNYX [in parentheses and crossed through]; Right "panel", top to bottom: ORNITHOLOGY [underlined] / ORNITHOLOGY [with box around it] / ON ORNITHOLOGY [both crossed through and in same box] / OOH SHOO DE OBEE / TEETH / TEETH [crossed through with arrow pointing to right] / ALCHEMY / ALCHEMY / ALCHEMY / ALCHEMY / ALCHEMY [with circle around it] |
|
Work Type |
Paintings
Acrylic paintings
Mixed media |
|
Repository |
Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection (Santa Monica/Los Angeles, California) |
|
Source |
Hunter, Sam, John Jacobus, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 3rd rev ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. (p.399, fig.770). |
|
Rights |
Hunter, Modern Art: Copyright © 2000 The Vendome Press, New York. Further, it should be noted that many of the art works reproduced in this volume are subject to claims of copyright in the United States and throughout the world, particularly for those artists represented by ADAGP and SPADEM, both located in Paris and exclusively represented in the United States by Artists Rights Society, New York. For other artists, mainly American, the copyright agent is VAGA, New York. |
|
Digital Publisher |
University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center |
|
Format |
image/jpeg |
|
Digital File Name |
VRC 700-33.jpg |
|
Rating |
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