Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Untitled (Skull)'

Great Art Explained • Season 2 • Episode 1

About this episode

In 1982 at the age of just 22 years old, Jean-Michel Basquiat would produce this painting. A powerful and dazzling image that mixes text, colour, symbolism and mark-making in a raw and uncensored explosion. In a single painting, he would use his instinctive power of visual language to say everything he wanted to say. About America - about art - and about being black in both worlds.