Because it Hurts the Lungs 1986

Jean-Michel Basquiat made Because it Hurts the Lungs with paint and collage. The way Basquiat throws paint around feels so raw, so off-the-cuff. The colours are bold, almost clashing, like that sickly green against the blood-red head. It’s like he's not trying to blend or smooth things out, but letting the materials do their thing, letting the messiness become part of the message. I am drawn to the head, like a distorted mask with those blocky teeth. It's both aggressive and vulnerable. The collage elements feel like fragments of a broken world. He doesn't hide the process, you can see the drips, the rough edges. The physicality of the paint, thick in some places, thin in others, adds to the emotional punch. Basquiat reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, in the way he uses a kind of elegant scrawl to make marks that are also language. It's a conversation between feeling and form, where the ambiguity is the point.