Focusing on the Analysis of this artwork, explore the Teeth about the The Symbolism of Words.
Teeth There are hidden words in this work. Upon closer inspection the painting reveals text embedded in the figure's teeth. The letters spell out "HAVE TEETH." The primitively rendered character bears a wide grin, "[creating] the illusion of the teeth by this alignment of letters". This manner of portraying teeth is a recurring theme in Basquiat's work. For Basquiat teeth represent the ability to speak. "HAVE TEETH" is the access to speech. "Speech is a cry and that of Basquiat, that of a planetary warrior," as Jane Rankin-Reid wrote, observing "the constant use he made of the terms associated with verbal expression, THROAT, MOUTH, TEETH." "In the context of the 1980s, Jean-Michel Basquiat felt that the time had come to inform a new word by using painting to retrieve a formal vocabulary of figures, 'pictograms' and 'mythograms' derived from the desire of a population to make its voice heard. By choosing to make painting a screen, the ideal place for an inscription, Basquiat joined the camp of Dubuffet and Twombly. Following the example of these giants, his art swells from a specifically existential dimension that universalizes it," wrote the museum curator Marie-Claire Ades.
Dubuffet pictogram Jean-Michel Basquiat Twombly