Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist and the first artist of African descent to become internationally known. He began his career in art as a graffiti artist in New York, New York. In 1980 he participated in The Times Square Show. In 1981 he had a publish in the Artforum magazine called "The Radiant Child" which showed some of his pieces

and got him known world wide in the art world. By 1982 he was showing regularly and was involved with the neo-expressionist style of painting. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in an abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. He also did collaborations

with Andy Warhol from 1984 to 1986. After Warhol Passed away on February 22, 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his drug addiction and depression increased. Basquiat died due to a heroin overdose in his SoHo studio on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27. Since his death, his work has been held in many major exhibitions. In 1996, seven years after his death, a film biography titled Basquiat was released, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing as Basquiat.

Chester Arnold "Digger"

Chester Arnold is an artist who started painting in the twentieth century and still paints today. His paintings generally portray the environment in the way that we, as humans, are destroying it quickly with pollution, cutting down our forest, and many other ways we hurt our nature. The painting I saw at the Nevada Museum of Art and chose to talk about is his piece called "Digger" which was painted in 2006. The painting shows a section of forest that has been clear-cut and all that is left over are stumps on the ground, a random assortment of trash, and one man sitting there in what was once a forest of lush thriving trees. He is sitting halfway in a grave he has just dug and next to him is a shovel, a book (maybe the bible), and a lunch tray. Also, he appears to be holding a cup in his hand. What I like about this painting is that it is a simple, quiet painting at first look, but to me it has so much more meaning.
In the painting itself, to me, the man is digging his own grave because he knows with cutting down trees, which gives oxygen to us humans and helps us live in every way, he is helping destroy the planet we live on so he is getting ready to die. Also, the stumps that are in the painting are symbolic for tombstones of our fallen lives that once were living peacefully on Earth. the painting was inspired by the 1886 painting by Sanford Robinson Gifford called "Hunter Mountain" which shows a section of the mountain after it has been clear cut. It just goes to show that clear cutting of the forest has been going on for over a century and is still as much of a problem today as it was back then.