ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I seek to reverse the theme of colonial imagery by examining the work of an African diaspora artist in contemporary New York. It ought to be possible to write about artists without mentioning their ethnicity but as yet, only white European and American artists truly enjoy that privilege. In this second section, I examine the short but intense life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (19601988) as an exemplary case of the complex nexus of race, gender and identity which must be confronted by any contemporary artist who does not fall into this limited category. From this study it will become apparent that the body of the artist is also implicated in the body s/he represents. Basquiat’s painting explored, celebrated and diversified what it means to paint the body, above all concerned with the question of encorporated identity, of what it might mean to be an artist or a spectator of art in the hybridity of the 1980s. Basquiat’s painting was an investigation into the possibility of being African, American and an artist.
