Rape of Roman Torsos 1982

Jean-Michel Basquiat made Rape of Roman Torsos with oil paintstick and oil paint on wood, but I don’t know exactly when. The colours are simple, raw, red, black and white, but the figures are not. I see an image-storm, a whole bunch of bodies, and bits of bodies too. What I find compelling is the confident, almost nonchalant way that Basquiat approached mark-making. It’s so fast. There’s real, in-your-face directness. Look at how the hand spans two of the panels at the bottom, that thick impasto, that carmine red outline. It’s a challenge, like, dare you ignore this? Basquiat isn’t afraid to expose his process. Compared to Cy Twombly, whose work also features sparse and frantic mark-making, Basquiat’s art feels less poetic, maybe more aggressive. Both artists create a kind of beautiful, raw, visual language. The conversation between the two, if there was one, is all the more intriguing when you know that they were friends. It shows you that art is about exchange, about ideas, and always open to interpretation.