Philistines - Jean-Michel Basquiat

A powerful 1982 Neo-Expressionist work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, featuring skeletal figures and raw, gestural mark-making.

Philistines, executed in 1982, is a large-scale work that demonstrates the raw, gestural approach characteristic of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The composition features three central figures rendered in a skeletal, mask-like style. Basquiat employs a combination of acrylic paint and oilstick, creating a surface that balances aggressive mark-making with deliberate, layered colour fields. The figures possess wide, staring eyes and bared teeth, motifs that appear frequently throughout the artist's body of work to suggest themes of identity, power, and historical struggle.

The background is a chaotic arrangement of scribbles, cross-outs, and geometric shapes. These elements function as a visual shorthand, referencing urban graffiti and the frenetic energy of 1980s New York. Basquiat often incorporated text and anatomical diagrams into his paintings, and here, the skeletal structures of the figures serve to strip away the exterior, exposing the internal mechanics of the human form. The use of high-contrast colours, including bright yellow, deep red, and stark black, directs the viewer's attention across the canvas, preventing the eye from settling on a single point.

This work reflects the artist's interest in combining classical art historical references with contemporary street culture. By titling the piece Philistines, Basquiat invokes biblical narratives of conflict, reinterpreting them through a modern, personal lens. The application of paint is immediate and unrefined, with drips and smears left visible to document the physical process of creation. The work avoids traditional perspective, opting instead for a flattened, frontal arrangement that forces the viewer to confront the figures directly. It is a dense, layered composition that rewards close observation of its individual marks and the overall structural tension between the figures and their environment.