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This was part of a final for an art class I took last summer. The prompt asked us to choose any work from Basquiat and analyze what is meant by ‘the gaze’ and ‘the context.’ Here is an exerpt from my analysis.

Untitled Skull by Jean-Michel Basquiat

The image of the skull that Basquiat renders is so rich, colorful, vibrant, energetic and layered that it is almost screaming at us, despite the fact that the eyes in the image are not looking directly at us. The skull communicates with us by trying to avert that very communication. The eyes are not hiding, but seem to be passively unaware, captured inside depressing thoughts that have lost connection with a physical reality. They are beyond cognizance of another person’s presence. The eyes communicate that perhaps the thoughts have become stagnant and isolated from one another, as we can infer from the disconnected train track-like scribblings working along the mind of the skull. Maybe the tracks represent neural pathways that no longer transmit thoughts between parts of the brain. The skull communicates death, while the eyes represent the last vestige of life, dwindling away in a corroding mind.

We can presume that he is representing his own mind; he has become lost and disconnected in it. The dark corners threaten to overcome the light and his eyes, the last connection to his spirit, are on the edge of giving in to the lifelessness of it all. These inferences can relate possibly to his mother’s condition in the asylum; the blank stare unaware of physical time and space, lost in the disconnections of her mind. Maybe it relates to how he feels about his own disoriented mind in relation to the shambles of worlds in which he exists. The gaze and the context of this work speak to all of these interpretations. The essence of Basquiat is seen in this work; it is both a window into his mind and its inner workings and to the disappointment, disillusionment and disconnectedness of the world as he saw it.