The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts is currently hosting the exhibition Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, which demonstrates how Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work, which is typically associated with painting, also draws from other media, including music, which is the main theme of this exhibition, literature, comic strips, cinema, and animation, which is a much less well-known aspect of his work.
Basquiat was born in New York in 1960 to a mother of Puerto Rican ancestry and a Haitian father. Using the alias SAMO, he created enigmatic graffiti in the late 1970s with Al Diaz. The artist established himself in the New York art scene rapidly (becoming friends with Andy Warhol and Madonna, among others). He later created paintings for himself, rising to prominence around the world.
The art of Jean-Michel Basquiat is more timely than ever during the Black Lives Matter movement. It draws attention to racial disparities, the absence of colored individuals in the media, as well as the violence experienced by African Americans.
I want to investigate this in this essay. The relationships between animated film and the visual arts (comics, painting), as well as on the American cartoon, are the main topics of my research as a PhD candidate in literature, performing, and screen arts.
