Prodigy of the Philistines

"Every line means something."

      Jean-Michel Basquiat

Untitled. Chalk and admittedly some smushed food on wall. 2013

One of the best decisions we made when we moved to this house was to paint one of the walls in the kitchen with black chalkboard paint. We all go at it: christmas lists and chore charts, vocabulary, tic tac toe, faces and cats and cartoons of cats with no faces saying ickskoosme! (It's phonetic.)

Every few months I take a photo before erasing the whole thing, and tonight as I was about to wash it away it struck me how much the wall looks like a Basquiat painting. No doubt Zoey's portraits reflect the power struggle of class and gender while Ozzy's kinetic line-work reveals the dichotomy of the inner versus outer experience, yes? Graffiti artists turned Neo-Expressionistic Primitivists, all before the second grade.

To compare: Basquiat's Philistines. Acrylic and chalk on canvas. 1982

Happy (very nearly almost) Friday,

S