Masque 1981

Jean-Michel Basquiat made ‘Masque’ with paint and maybe a crayon or two, and right away it's like, wow, that crown. It feels like it was scratched out in a hurry. I can imagine Basquiat in the studio, maybe some music is playing, and he is just going for it, digging into the paint. The way the colors smear and smudge, it’s like a face is emerging from the chaos, but one that is also a kind of mask. The black rectangle of the nose and the caged mouth feels both ominous and playful at the same time. I wonder if he was thinking about the masks we all wear, the way we hide and reveal ourselves. Like, how do you really see someone? How do you paint that? You can see echoes of Twombly and Picasso here. Artists are always riffing off each other. Painting is like an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas. It's never about fixed meanings but more about opening things up.