Man from Naples
1982Acrylic and collage on wood124 x 246.7 x 3.5 cm
Man from Naples (1982) is an iconic painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, from his most productive period, when his works were laden with personal and political implications, tied to his status as a young black artist in the white-dominated art scene.
In the late 1970s, Basquiat’s graffiti in New York stood apart from subway graffiti because of the cultural references and cryptic epigrams, which revealed the artist’s interest in literature, language, history, and anatomy. In the early 1980s, he smoothly blended his past in the graffiti underworld with the new studio experience, developing a style of his own, informed with his passion for language and for images.
In Man from Naples, the figurative elements are only secondary to the exuberant text. The artist’s linguistic resources are also present in the repetitions, variations, strikethroughs, and misspellings that bend, stress, or contradict conventional meaning.
The result of Basquiat’s trip to Italy in 1982, on the occasion of his first solo exhibition, Man from Naples expresses the artist’s scathing criticism to his Italian art dealer, whom he called “the pork merchant”. In line with this is the cartoonish pig head in the center of the picture, as well as the phrases scribbled all over, which underline the caustic tone: mercante di prosciutto, pig selling, pork chops, and so on. References to the marketing of art and the commodification of the artist can be seen in the scattered symbols for money. Man from Naples deals with a series of recurring issues in the work of Basquiat: man and property, ownership and slavery, wealth and poverty, commodities and trade – universal themes with a particular impact on the artist, which continue to be relevant today.
Original title
Man from Naples
Date
1982
Medium/Materials
Acrylic and collage on wood
Dimensions
124 x 246.7 x 3.5 cm
Credit line
Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa
Resources
Perspectives
Man from Naples, by Jean-Michel Basquiat
Man from Naples (1982), by Jean-Michel Basquiat, is a mosaic of culinary and street references, chosen by chef Andoni Luis Aduriz as an icon. In conversation with curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller, Aduriz shares his thoughts on the humor, the irony, and the primitivism that lie at the heart of this painting’s expressive power.
