I generally dig it when the respective worlds of fine art and comic books cross paths, and this is one of the coolest instances I've encountered yet (I blogged about another time this happened a while back). I was flipping through an art book the other day (because I'm fancy) about the life and work of Jean-Michael Basquiat, when I noticed a small, crossed-out "Marvel Comics" scrawled on the bottom right corner of Charles the First. It's a pretty well known painting, even I'd seen it before, but it was my first time noticing that.
So naturally I went into Nerd Alert mode and frantically scanned the rest of the book for similar hidden clues, glimpses into the secret 4-color history of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Turns out, this was just one of those things he did from time to time. After exhaustively researching the internet for a grueling 10 minutes I rounded up all the comics-inspired Basquiat works I could find for your viewing pleasure and my future reference. Enjoy. And if you know of more, pass 'em on.
Action Comics
Marmaduke (Painting by Basquiat, glare by me)
Riddle Me This, Batman
Flash in Naples
(My personal favorite)
And then there's just tons of pieces like this that actually resemble comics as a medium, with the way they merge art and text across a series of panels. (Basquiat used to make actual comics back in high school during his SAMO days, but I couldn't find any examples of those)
Boom for real, y'all.
1 comment:
Very interesting post. I too love the combination of high art and "low art".
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