God – Given Skill

God – Given Skill
An artist is a person skilled in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others (“artist” Webster’s New World Dictionary). People associate artist with painters, sculptures, and drawers. Many artists recognize their gift at early ages. Although, many artist use their skill to show their cultures and feelings, the word artist, when heard people think Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, or Cassett. When people hear Black American Artist, they think of people who do African Art. However, many Black American Artists specialize in many other things other than African Art. Faith Ringgold, Jean Michel Basquait, William Tolliver, Jeremy, Maurice, and Robert Love, Kathleen Wilson, Charles Bibbs, Renee Cox and Paul Goodnight are famous Black Artists who have shaped the world of art for many up comings.
An overnight success, born in Brooklyn, New York, Jean Michel Basquait lit the torch for many black artists. Like other artists before him, Basquait started his work as a teenager. Basquait was skilled in the art of graffiti, the use of spray paint cans to depict pictures and words. At the age of nineteen, Jean Michel Basquait became famous for his art -work. His shows anticipated as the big events of the New York season, and his painting, were bought by the most powerful collectors and museums (Jean Michel Basquait by Annan Boodram pg.22). Baquait started his painting on subway cars and the walls of buildings in Brooklyn. Basquait’s paintings and drawings conjured up marginal urban black culture and black history, as well as the artist’s own conflicted sense of identity. Jean Michel Baquait’s friend and idol was Andy Warhol. However, at the age of 27, Basquait died of an overdose on drugs. He was the first black artist to really succeed in the powerful white art – world, his early death shows that he was casualty as well as phenom