Anatomy, Anterior View
Anatomy, Anterior View
Signed Print
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Screenprint, 1982
Signed Print Edition of 18
Critical Review
Anterior View is a drawing of the anatomy of an arm depicted from behind. We can see labels for the scapula, humerus, head of the radius, trochlea, radius and phalanges. The clinical character and compositional sparseness of the print clashes with the popular vision of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s riotous and colourful graffiti-like images. The childlike rendering of the body parts underlines the artist’s attestation that “I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child”.
The lines used to indicate different bones, whilst emblematic of the drawings’ diagrammatic quality, echoes the extensive use of arrows and abstract lines in the artist’s body of work, such as in Ascent.
Even though Basquiat labels each body part which he draws in this x-ray-like image, there are traces of omissions and erroneous strokes, with an ‘a’ being omitted from ‘phalanges’ and an errant line beside the ‘radius’ annotation. This is the merest suggestion of the lexical experimentation and textual rupture which features heavily in Basquiat’s canvases.
