Jean-Michel Basquiat was heavily influenced by Cy Twombly. Richard Marshall states that, Twombly was one of the few artists that Basquiat cited as an influence and “his impact is apparent in his numerous loose, scratchy and scribbled works” (Marshall 1996:35).
Marshall, R, D. (1996) ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat and His Subjects’ In Navara, E (ed) Jean-Michel Basquiat. Paris: Galerie Enrico Navara.
Basquiat has appropriated the imagery of arrows and grid formations from cave art. Lucy Lippard refers to them as calendar grids and they may have been used for marking the passing of time.
Lippard, L, R. (1983) Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York: The New Press.
Marshall suggests that Basquiat had a fascination with rock art and directly borrowed images from African cave drawings.
Bernard Blistene states that Basquiat sought to go back to the origins. He suggests that his work could be “regarded as the modern equivalent of this form of cave art”. He suggests that he uses an “instinctive sense that guided the hand of the first men” (Blistene, 1997:9).
Blistene, B. (1997) Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works on Paper. Paris: Foundation Dina Vierny Musee.
Marshall suggests that Basquiat began as a graffiti artist and was attracted to rock art as it is an early form of graffiti. Both Twombly and Basquiat use writing as a visual language. This is in the same vein as ancient writing such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Oriental calligraphy and ideograms from other ancient cultures.
