There is a huge black patch in the middle, some scribbles at the centre bottom. It has several writings such as 22 EARTH, PLUTO, CAST IRON AUTOMOBILE REPLICAS, ALLAH ZEUS BUDDAH, THE DOG TM, MALCOLM X VERSUS AL JOLSON, BLUE RIBBON, NECK, and COTTON among others. He seems to be illustrating some things using small scribbled pictures. For example, the word blue ribbon is in a distorted circle with spikes that resemble the sun. The term cotton is written in a rectangle, and so on. There is so much to see in the painting.
The Replicas painting encompasses some of his other works, such as Irony of Negro Policeman. The latter shows a scribbled black pointing of a black policeman. In the painting, the policeman lacks one arm, and one of his feet is distorted. His other famous works that simulate Replicas are Untitled Boxer, Tuxedo, Bird on Money, Horn Players, Hollywood Africans and Skull. While they look scribbled, viewers can see the message that Jean wanted to pass across.
Basquiat was famous for two major reasons. He was a black artist and painted his artwork in ways that popularised and embraced the black heritage. While Replicas looks raw and unfocused, viewers can see parts of his thoughts expressed clearly in the painting. According to art analysts, viewers had to ignore the context and check the impact and concepts in the artist's artwork. He used imagery and motifs that portray African art, and these made him get stereotyped for being a black artist. However, he tried as much as possible to only appear as an artist. Viewers can see the antagonism between how he wanted to present himself and how others viewed him. He explored his thoughts and expressed himself in a raw and aggressive way.
Replicas is among one of his works that demands a response from its viewers. While people may struggle to understand his internal struggles, they cannot just dismiss his paintings. There is something he was trying to portray. Born in New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a talented American painter who loved to express his thoughts using graffiti-like images and scrawled writing. He used neo-expressionism in his paintings and stood out from the other artists. Jean is among the few artists who had a short but maverick career. He died a very young man but left the most significant impact on global artwork.
