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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Johnston, Christopher. "Performing Blackness at the Heart of Whiteness: The Life and Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat," American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University, August 2008. Advisor: Dr. Andrew Hershberger
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican
mother, Jean-Michel Basquiat rose to prominence as a painter in the 1980s art world.
When he died in 1988 at age twenty-seven from a drug overdose, he had achieved more fame and wealth than any black artist in history; he remains today the world’s most recognizable black painter. This dissertation argues that Basquiat’s wild behavior and equally wild-looking art
represent a performance of blackness. The artist often embodied in his paintings and public
persona the stereotypical image of the young black male in order to comment on and
locate the casual racism and racially native attitudes of his predominantly white liberal
audiences. Although several popular and academic discourses explain Basquiat’s life and art in terms of the modernist construct of tortured genius, this study challenges this romanticized version by offering a more grounded and materialist interpretation. This dissertation, therefore, examines how the racism that Basquiat encountered in contexts such as his neighborhoods, schools, the graffiti and avant-garde scenes, and the art world impacted not just the way he painted but also how he walked, talked, dressed, wore his hair, acted in interviews, posed for photographs, and behaved in public in general.
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