ART1000 Introduction to the Visual Arts
The Arts Institute
9th July 2017
Milestone 1 Task 1: Untitled, Jean-Michel Basquiat
Selection 1
Introduction
The first piece of art presented to The Apollo collection for consideration is “Untitled.” It is an acrylic and mixed media piece on canvas painted and created by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981. The work is a part of the Broad Collection in Los Angeles.
On first inspection of the piece, the piece seems to be made up of lots of lines and blocks of colors creating jagged shapes along with broken lines all pieced together in a collage-like, layered fashion to form the overall appearance of a skull. The color palette used is mainly based on subdued primary tones of red, blues and yellows against the dominate black forming some shapes and lines, and the white of the abandoned canvas showing through.
Subject Matter and Interpretation
The first impression this artwork gives the viewer is one of …show more content…
Although that is all the information that has been given about the mediums used, looking closely at this work it appears a crayon or oil pastel type of media has also been used to form some of the lines within the skull, such as the large black geometric line work almost forming a misshapen cube, the outline to create the teeth of the skull and also the random rapid scribbles that are see on the bottom right hand corner of the canvas. An oil pastel is pigment set into wax, it is a soft wax medium that does not dry. A crayon on the other hand is very similar, but the wax that the pigment is set into is harder, prohibiting the pigment of the crayon somewhat but allowing it to be a dry medium. The tell-tale sign of an oil pastel or crayon is the waxy, rough and broken style of the lines where the pigment of the media is picked up on the raised texture and missed in the minute indents of the canvas, creating a broken look to the