His Glue Sniffing Valet 1984

Jean-Michel Basquiat made this painting, 'His Glue Sniffing Valet', using a riot of colors and frantic strokes that just explode off the canvas. Look at that red, almost like the painting is bleeding, the blues feel like an ominous sky and those wild strokes of white? Maybe they’re a rush of something illicit. I feel like I’m diving into Basquiat’s mind here, like I can see him grappling with something intense. What was he trying to say with those figures? The valet hammering away, the other figure stuck in a wheelchair… there’s a story here, a dark one, but Basquiat doesn’t spell it out. I reckon he just slaps down those colors and lines, raw and unfiltered, and leaves it to us to figure it out. He’s part of that lineage, you know? Like de Kooning, Twombly, and all those other painters just laying it all bare, the guts and the glory. It’s like they’re saying, “Here, feel this. Think about it. Or don’t. But feel something.” And that’s the juice of painting for me.