Tobacco versus Red Chief is one of the first paintings made by Jean Michel Basquiat during his brief but prolific career (he died in 1988, at 27). It is one of several paintings concerned with stereotypes and is a biting, sardonic commentary on an American myth. The large and imposing figure is a Native American Indian chief, his arm raised, suggesting the television Indian greeting "How!" Rendered in outline in a boxy, primitive manner, the figure is filled in with color and articulated by raw detaillike the wooden figures used to advertise tobacco stores. His masklike face has been painted black, linking him with another minority and demonstrating Basquiat's tendency common among artists and historiansto impose in the process of image making his own identity on creations. The Indian is framed with a coarse, spiked line that reads as barbed wire. Gestures of painted color and drawn line are added.
Basquiat's own deep rooted concerns about race, human rights, the accumulation of power and wealth and the control of and respect for nature are evident in Tobacco versus Red Chief. He identified with the plight of Native Americans and the loss of their land to what the settlers regarded as industry and progress. For example, the tepees in this painting, which also appear in other works, are Basquiat's symbol for "subjugated peoples." (Richard Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, exhibition catalogue (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1992), p. 18.) The scrawled letters in the lower right hand corner appear to spell "hotel" (a temporary home, in this case within barbed wire), establishing a potent juxtaposition of word and image.
J. W.