Do Not Revenge 1982

Jean-Michel Basquiat made *Do Not Revenge* with paint and crayon sometime in his short but brilliant career. Look at how the yellow and red under layers create a visual intensity that feels both urgent and raw. The surface is a dense network of marks, lines, and symbols. Notice the skeletal figures, crowns, and scrawled words all jostling for space. The paint application is uneven, with some areas thickly layered and others thinly washed, allowing the underpainting to peek through, which gives a sense of depth, as well as the history of the painting’s making. Take, for example, the skull on the right, its crude outline filled with drips of blue, yellow, and white. The colours seem to run down the face like tears. It's this kind of raw emotion, combined with the complex layering of meaning, that makes Basquiat so powerful. The work of Cy Twombly comes to mind, but really Basquiat is in a world of his own: poetic, angry, and always questioning.