Pyro 1984

Jean-Michel Basquiat made Pyro with a riot of color and raw, gestural marks. The sunny yellow background feels immediately engaging, like entering a frenetic state of mind. Look at the central figure – those bold outlines, the layering of purples and reds, the way the teeth are bared. There’s a primal energy here, a sense of urgency. Basquiat wasn’t trying to create a smooth, polished surface. He embraced the messiness of the process, letting the paint drip and splatter, allowing the rawness of his emotions to show through. It’s this directness that makes his work so powerful. You see it, too, in his use of text, scrawled across the canvas like graffiti. There's a childlike quality to the pagoda, next to scientific looking diagrams. Basquiat reminds me of Cy Twombly, another artist who wasn’t afraid to let his paintings look unfinished, to embrace the beauty of imperfection and ambiguity.