At Large 1984

Jean-Michel Basquiat, sometime in the 1980s, made this painting, At Large, with a pretty chaotic mix of oil stick and spray paint. There's this real sense of urgency, you know? Like, he's grabbing whatever's at hand to just get the idea out. Look how that grey paint is dragged, almost like he's wiping it across the surface. Basquiat’s layering is so intuitive, scraping back into the wet paint, and drawing with the end of the brush or maybe even his fingers. It’s all very visceral, like a body in motion. That head on the bottom left, and then the outline of a figure on the right. The figure is roughly rendered, almost ghost-like, emerging from the grey ground. I wonder if he was thinking about mapping something, but then overwriting it with something else. This guy was so good at this stuff, and I’m curious what he would have done if he was still around. Anyway, go have a look at de Kooning, and then come back here. See what I mean?