I’m Fine 97

"Art is what you can get away with..............." -Warhol Jean-Michel Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. This piece is a parody of Basquiat's titled work 'In Italian'. It is thought that the title could have been alluding to the painting's graffiti style. The word 'graffiti' originates from the Italian term 'graffito' (scratched) which was used by archaeologists to refer to inscriptions found on the walls of ancient ruins such as the Catacombs of Rome.