![]() His artworks, made from paint, oil stick, pastels and ink are cruel but childlike and almost crude in technique – a style that, while holding a mirror up to the world he had become immersed in, belittles and mocks it at the same time. In Basquiat’s case, who was born to a relatively well-off family in a middle-class neighborhood of New York, his exposure to many of the dark and intimidating aspects of a city in the middle of an economic crises was voluntary – he became fascinated by the squalor of the impoverished scenes he encountered in New York city and immersed himself in it. ![]() ![]() The African-American experience is portrayed in two distinct styles by two distinct and very different artists linked by a common ancestry and the marginalization faced due to this background. The New York streets of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s youth, which fascinated him at an early age and help to color Angelou’s stirring words with an edginess hinted at the instability of Maya Angelou’s early childhood in the Deep South and her ongoing struggles as a marginalized black woman in America. It is a short, simple but resonant book which blends Maya’s defiant and proud poetry with the raw, simple but lively and raucous child-like paintings of the poster-boy of the New York art-scene who came to the forefront of the Western art-world in a decade when the city became a cultural hub for artists from all backgrounds and mediums. Life Doesn’t Frighten Me At All (1993) is a short poem written by Maya Angelou and illustrated by paintings of 1980’s artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. ![]()
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