Jean-Michel Basquiat: Spiritual Warrior of

Yoruba, Orisha and Ogun

As an art student and artist in the early 2000s I developed my painting

skills and discovered the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an African
American artist, who descended from a Puerto Rican mother and a
Haitian father. I was drawn to Basquiats works in an instinctive way,
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although I was aware of his very difficult social, racial and cultural
background, as well as of his diverse knowledge of history, and his
multilingual and multidimensional identity. To put it simply, I was drawn
to his work and the way it reflected a diverse understanding of
American popular culture, European art history and African American
traditions[i].
In this context, I was also intrigued to find out that his African
American influences were often erased or redefined as European or
American art by art dealers, because his works were embraced by
American popular culture in museums and private galleries as part of
the American modernist movement. Dick Hebdige states:
The racist implications of the conditions attached to Basquiats
adoption by the art world were painfully apparent. If Jean-Michel was to
be taken seriously as an artist he had first to be skinned alive,
bleached of his blackness and delivered into the hands of the right
foster parents. This is the price he would have to pay for the privilege
of being integrated into the royal house of Western painting[ii].

Untitled. Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984.

Art dealers interpreted Basquiats primitive style of painting as a

representation of an inferior cultural tradition and origin, and for them
European and Anglo-American traditions of painting were superior,
sophisticated and more advanced, a line of thinking constructed
through a structure of colonial gaze[iii]. In this process, Basquiat was
exploited and taken for granted, while the dealers in the art market
made millions of dollars from his work. Because of his appearance with
dreadlocks, and in relation to his naive paintings, dealers saw him as
ignorant and inexperienced[iv].
What fascinated me about Basquiats paintings, drawings, collages,
silkscreens and sculptures was his ability to express creatively his
African American and Latino view on the history of the African
American struggle for justice in 1980s America, where black art was
under-recognised. What I found significant in Basquiats works was his
proficiency in portraying images of African American popular musicians
and athletes[v] such as Langston Hughes, Miles Davis, Hank Aaron,
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Henry Armstrong, Jersey Joe Walcott, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson,
Cassius Clay and Jack Johnson as a way to reconstruct his own identity
in a post-slave experience in America[vi].

Cassius Clay. Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982.

In addition, I found Basquiats works captivating because they dealt

with the historical experience of colonialism, slavery and religion, as
well as resistance, empowerment, oppression, street heroism, royalty
and black histories[vii]. Basquiat used the canvas as an instrument to
de-code social and cultural structures and hierarchies created in art by
the power of the western art world[viii]. He also used the canvas as a
weapon to fight oppression, discrimination and the marginalisation of
black art in America[ix].
Above

all,

for

me

Basquiats

works

are

an

exploration

of

unsophisticated primitive style of painting based on rock art, African

cave drawings and Native American archaeology. I was curious to find
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out about how his artistic sensibility gained inspiration from the art of
children and the insane, and resulted in a creative representation of
people, city life and space. Basquiats primitive style of painting with
simple lines, repeated patterns, form and shape, and his combination
of colour gave me inspiration to develop my painting skills. I adopted
his painting style during my undergraduate studies.
Therefore, because of my experience in the Diaspora, I found the need
to look at Angolan and African traditions in search of identity, and in
this process I was attracted by Basquiats works because he was doing
something similar. He used the canvas as a medium to pay respect to
the great Nigerian traditions and spiritual warriors of the Yoruba, the
Orisha Oshoosi and Ogun as symbols of identity[x].

Exu. Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1988.

Moreover, in his paintings, Basquiat was constantly drawing and

making offerings to the Nigerian spiritual tradition as a celebration
and embodiment of power[xi]. Frohne argued that he designates
his paintings as an offering to the orisha[xii]. Basquiat represented
himself as Oshoosi, the Yoruba deity of hunting, as well as the trickster
deity, Eshu, of the African Diaspora[xiii]. He drew images of hunters
with metal bows and arrows, as well as words such as x, exu, esu, ase
as a sign of connection to the lifeforce and spiritual energy of the
Yoruba tradition[xiv]. In Flash of the Spirit: Afro-American Art and
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Philosophy, Robert Farris Thompson published an illustration of the

metal bows and arrows of the Yoruba hunters. The words that Basquiat
used in his paintings made me realise that he was exploring the Yoruba
tradition and spirituality as a mechanism to reinvent his diasporic
identity in North America[xv]. This was expressed in his subtext as part
of his concept of diasporic consciousness and appropriation of space
in a new cultural situation.
In summary, Basquiats works gave me a better understanding of the
development of my own art practices. After a series of paintings on
canvas my work shifted to body painting as live performance. From this
period on, body painting became my medium to communicate my
fictional ideas of Angolan cultural tradition and religion as an artist in
the Diaspora reconnecting with my home of origin in a spiritual and
ancestral relationship.
References
Dimitriadis, Greg and McCartthy, Cameron (2001) Reading & Teaching
the Postcolonial: From Baldwin to Basquiat and Beyond, New York:
Teachers College, Columbia University.
Frohne,

Andrea,

Representing

Jean-Michael

Basquiat.

In:

Isidore

Okpewho, Carole Boyce Davies and Ali Mazrui, eds., (1999) African
Diaspora: African Origins and the New World Identity. Indianapolis:
Indiana University press, 439-451.
Hebdige, Dick, From Culture to Hegemony, In: Simon During, ed.,
(1993) The Cultural Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 357-67.
Kertess, Klaus, Brushes with Beatitude, In: Richard Marshall, ed.,
(1993) Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York: Whitney Museum of America
Art, 50-55.
Lemke, Sieglinde, Diaspora Aesthetics: Exploring the African Diaspora
in the works of Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence and Jean-Michel
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Basquiat,

In:

Kobena

Mercer,

ed.,

(2008) Exiles,

Diaspora

and

Marshall,

ed.,

Strangers, London: Iniva press, 122-144.

Marshall,

Richard,

Repelling

Ghosts,

In:

Richard,

(1993) Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York: Whitney Museum of America

Art, 15-27.
Mercer, Kobena, Mortal Coil: Eros and Diaspora in the Photographs of
Rotimi Fani-Kayode, In: Carol Squiers, ed., (1999) Over Exposed:
Essays on Contemporary Photography, New York: The New Press, 183210.
Thompson, Robert, Royalty, Heroism, and the Streets: The Art of JeanMichel Basquiat, In: Richard Marshall, ed., (1993) Jean-Michel Basquiat,
New York: Whitney Museum of America Art, 28-42.
Vega, Moreno, Marta, The Candombl and Eshu-Eleggua in Brazilian
and Cuban Yoruba-Based Ritual, In: Paul Carter Harrison, Victor Leo
Walker II and Gus Edwards, eds., (2002) Black Theatre: Ritual
Performance in the African Diaspora, Philadelphia: Temple University
press, 153-166.

Notes:
[i] Dimitriadis and McCartthy, 2001, 92.
[ii] Hebdige, 1993, 60.
[iii] Mercer, 1999, 290.
[iv] Lemke, 2008, 139.
[v] Marshall, 1993, 16.
[vi] Kertess, 1993, 50.
[vii] Thompson, 1993, 28.
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[viii] Tate, 1993, 56.

[ix] Frohne, 1999, 441.
[x] Vega, 2002, 161.
[xi] Frohne, 1999, 439.
[xii] Frohne, 1999, 445.
[xiii] Frohne, 1999, 439.
[xiv] Frohne, 1999, 440.
[xv] Lemke, 2008, 138.

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