Icons

An icon is used to speak powerful messages to the community through an artist's work. They can be religious, political, or pop culture as some examples. I used Jean-Michel Basquiat's In Italian to demonstrate how powerful an icon can be. For example, Basquiat uses the symbol of a crown in many of his paintings. In In Italian he wrote out crown of thorns and then crossed out the word thorns. He uses the symbol of a crown to demonstrate his own idea that he is a king and also to similar to the dreadlocks that he used to have (Book 7, n.d.). Another point is that of all of the words on the canvas, not one of them is in Italian so people try to understand why he named it In Italian in the first place. The reason for the name is that he spent a lot of time in Italy selling paintings. He was once detained at the Italian customs for have 100,000 dollars in cash on him. The main character is supposed to resemble a picture of Christ from the Baroque era which is why the crown of thorns is written over his head. As you can see, Jean-Michel Basquiat has many different meanings all combined into one painting (Seed, n.d.). This is why his In Italian is perfect to demonstrate how powerful an icon really is.

References

Book  (7), t. (n.d.). Jean-Michel Basquiat at Gagosian Gallery | New American Paintings/Blog. New American Paintings/Blog | Juried Exhibitions-in-Print. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/jean-michel-basquiat-at-gagosian-gallery/

Seed, J. (n.d.). John Seed: Jean-Michel Basquiat: 80 Percent Anger and 20 Percent Mystery. Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/basquiat_b_2750666.html