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Summary: Undiscovered Genius Of The Mississippi Delta

Decent Essays

Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta (Fig. 3) shares numerous characteristics with Jim Crow, most notably the almost palpable southern scenery. The context and regionalism of the Deep South pervades in this painting similarly to that of Jim Crow, in that there are various textual markers of this regional context that are quickly noticeable. For instance, we see MARK TWAIN scrawled three times in the upper left corner, and COTTON ORIGIN OF PA—the scrap is purposely cut‐off: what word is PA beginning to spell? PAIN, perhaps? NEGROES is scrawled three times in an almost identical manner to MARK TWAIN, and MISSISSIPPI is written repeatedly in the right limit of the painting—this is in direct relation to Jim Crow, or rather Jim …show more content…

4), in which the “LOIN” has been cut from the backside of a black cow, a cut of meat likely to be sold at a butcher’s shop or market. This is the type of morose sarcasm that vividly permeates Basquiat’s paintings, a quality that enriches his art in an often‐ confounding way. Basquiat’s ability to capture and convey a particular contextual 8 environment with the combination of text, image and color is evident in all three of these paintings that comprise the first group of this analysis. The scenery sets the stage for the tragedy occurring in the foreground, which are, in the case of these three dramatic works, the afflictions of marginalized and oppressed peoples. In “Jean‐Michel Basquiat: The Word and the Image”, Luciano Caprile writes, “[Basquiat’s] blackness, in addition to explaining his role as an outcast…provided him with an extraordinary narrative element to extrapolate from the myths and the rites of origin and put [it] on display, as a visual profanation and an existential declaration.”5 Untitled, Jim Crow and Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta are the displays, for they illustrate the mythic realities of Basquiat’s racial history

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