Born in 1960, Brooklyn, New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat is unquestionably one of the most important artists of his time; his influence still remains strong in the works of many artists nowadays. Considered by critics, curators and other people in the area as “the father” for black American artists inside the commercial white world of art, Basquiat has opened the possibilities (and the market) for a whole new generation of afro-American and post-colonial artists – Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare amongst them.

 

He started his career doing graffiti with spray-painting in the slum buildings of lower Manhattan at the age of 17. By the end of the 1970s, Basquiat was already known in the East Village art scene, and a few years later he became recognized in a national scale by gallerists and critics. It didn’t take much time until his work began to be talked about in the rest of the western canon, shown side by side with other significant artists in the 1980s - such as Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente - soon called by the critics as the Neo-Expressionists. By the time, he was already working in some collaborative projects with Andy Warhol, with whom he became close friends. Jean-Michel Basquiat died at the early age of 28 after a turbulent period of depression and drugs addiction, but his career would go a lot beyond that and his persona would also have a big impact even outside the art canon.

 

In This Case is a work constantly in evolution. Its primordial aspect is at the same time referring to the artist condition in the world – in his case the black artist in the white community –, and to the flaws of human beings and its imperfections; both situations eternally developing. The use of strong colours and hard lines to create a disfigured character are well-known features of Basquiat’s work at the time; there’s a sense of angriness and uncomfortness due to the big size of the head in relation to the rest of the canvas, as if one is caged. The power of street art culture is widely perceived, as the work resembles some of the graffiti spread around NY and other metropolis (including some of Basquiat’s own); while the flatness of the head and its unreal configuration recalls Picasso’s drawings, the look of an unfinished juvenile sketch might make the viewer think of some CoBrA movement artists in the post World War II period. Another perspective could as well be taking it as a self-portrait, Basquiat representing himself as the black man and his origins.