Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. In a few fast-paced years, Basquiat swiftly rose to become one of the most celebrated, and possibly most commercially exploited American "naif" painters of the widely celebrated Neo-Expressionism art movement.
Background
Jean-Michel Basquiat, the oldest of three children, was born on December 22, 1960, in the Park Slope suburb of Brooklyn, New York, to Haitian Gerard Basquiat, an accountant, and Puerto Rican Matilde Andrades. He demonstrated his artistic inclinations at the age of three when he drew pictures inspired by TV cartoons. His mother, who also had artistic abilities, nurtured his talents by drawing and painting with him and taking him to art museums. When Basquiat was seven, he was hit by a car and suffered injuiies that required the removal of his spleen. During his convalescence at the hospital, his mother brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy so that he could look at the drawings of the human body images that later appeared in his art. Basquiat's parents separated when he was seven and his father retained custody.
Education
As a child, Basquiat attended St. Aim's, a Catholic school in Brooklyn. After the fourth grade, Basquiat was transferred to PS 101 The Verrazano School in Brooklyn where he impressed Iris teachers by drawing elaborate cartoon comics, and by his overall interests in drawing and in art. Then Basquiat enrolled at the Edward R. Murrow High School but was unable to complete any course. He dropped out of that school in the tenth grade at the age of seventeen and then attended City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan, home to many artistic students who failed at conventional schooling. While there, he was asked to draw for the school's yearbook and collaborated on the student newspaper, where he provided artistic illustrations and wrote poetry. Basquiat spent only one year at City-As-School.
Basquiat's art was fundamentally rooted in the 1970s, New York City-based graffiti movement. In 1972, he and an artist friend, Al Diaz, started spray-painting buildings in Lower Manhattan under the pen name SAMO, an acronym for "Same Old Shit". SAMO soon received media attention from the counter-culture press, the Village Voice was the most notable among them. When Basquiat and Diaz had a falling out, Basquiat ended the project with the terse message: SAMO IS DEAD, which appeared on the facade of many Soho art galleries and downtown buildings.
Although Basquiat broke his artistic partnership with Diaz in 1979 because Diaz was concerned with Basquiat's use of drugs, he continued painting along the subway lines. SAMO's identity was kept from the public, but Basquiat started to draw his graffiti close to art galleries and public places where established artists could see it. The press then started to write about the artist, and in 1980 he and Diaz revealed SAMO's true identity in an interview with the Village Voice.
Basquiat used this exposure to change from graffiti art to mainstream painting, where he could develop his artistic concerns in a more formal way. He forged a friendship with Henry Geldzahler, curator of contemporary twentieth-century art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Geldzahler was influential in connecting him with artists, art dealers, and patrons who helped him develop his talent.
In 1979, Basquiat founded the rock band Test Pattern - which was later renamed Gray - along with Michael Holman, Wayne Clifford, Nick Taylor, Shannon Dawson and Vincent Gallow. The band performed at several well-known nightclubs. The following year he appeared in the film "Downtown 81". Artist Andy Warhol was impressed with his paintings and the two worked on joint projects a few years down the line.
In 1980 Basquiat participated in the "Times Square Show", a group exhibition where he sold his first painting for $100. During 1981 he participated in several group exhibitions in New York and was asked to do his first solo exhibit at Galleria d'Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, Italy, where his art was critically acclaimed. In 1982 he had his first individual exhibit at the Annina Mosei Gallery in New York. Mosei became an early mentor for the artist, was his first art dealer, and provided Basquiat with studio space in the basement of his gallery. This was a period of prolific production when Basquiat's art commanded high prices and when he worked and exhibited regularly. During this time, Basquiat created some 200 art works and developed a signature motif: a heroic, crowned black oracle figure.
In 1982, Basquiat met famous American pop artist Andy Warhol and started a long and fruitful collaboration with him. Both artists shared a passion for elements of popular culture. They developed several joint exhibits that expanded Basquiat's artistic horizons.
In 1983, Basquiat worked at art dealer Larry Gagosian’s home studio in Venice, California for his show that took place later that year at the Gagosian Gallery. In the same year, he produced a rap single in collaboration with K-Rob and Rammellzee. On the insistence of art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, he collaborated with Andy Warhol in 1983 and produced painting for the next two years. His association with Bruno Bischofberger, Warhol's dealer, also led to a series of art exhibits in Europe and Japan that brought him more attention. The most famous of them being "Olympic Rings".
Basquiat went to Abidjan in Ivory Coast, Africa for a show in 1986 and during his stay he was inspired by African art. After that tour, he produced about 60 works and they were exhibited at the Gesellschaft Gallery located in Hanover.
Basquiat died of a drug overdose on August 12, 1988, in New York City. He was 27 years old. Although his art career was brief, Jean-Michel Basquiat has been credited with bringing the African-American and Latino experience into the elite art world. The demand for Basquiat's art grew so large that some art dealers sold his unfinished work even after his death in 1988.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American graffiti artist who rose to prominence in the 1980s for being one of the leading lights of the neo-expressionist era of the time. A painting he produced in 1982, which bears no title, is considered to be his most important work. It is the image of a skull and is an excellent reflection of the versatility that he possessed as an artist.
In 1983, Basquiat also became one of the youngest artists ever asked to participate at the Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At 21, Jean-Michel was the youngest artist ever to show at Documenta in Kassel, Germany.
Shortly after his death, the New York Times indicated that Basquiat was "the most famous of only a small number of young black artists who have achieved national recognition."
Basquiat's legacy has had influences upon literature, film, music and fashion. For example, Basquiat's work has been used by clothing companies such as SPRZ NY of Uniqlo, Urban Outfitters, and Redbubble. Notable private collectors of Basquiat's work include David Bowie, Mera and Donald Rubell, Lars Ulrich, Steven A. Cohen, Laurence Graff, John McEnroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Swizz Beatz, Jay-Z, and Johnny Depp.
Directed by Basquiat's fellow colleague Julian Schnabel, the biographical indie film entitled Basquiat was released in 1996, which starred Jeffrey Wright in the title role and David Bowie as Warhol, among its star-studded cast.
A few years ago, a plaza in Paris was named after Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in New York was opened.
On May 18, 2017, at a Sotheby's auction, Basquiat's 1982 untitled painting, created with oil stick and spray paint and depicting a skull, set a new record high for any United States artist at auction, selling for $110,500,000. It was also the highest price for a painting by Basquiat and by a black artist.
Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari
Pelptic Ulcer
J's Milagro
Aboriginal
La Colomba
Jawbone of an Ass
Self-Portrait
Profit I
Max Roach
Six Crimee
Scull
Gringo Pilot (Anola Gay)
Grillo
King Alphonso
Hollywood Africans
Self-Portrait
Rice and Chicken
Formless
Eroica II
NOT DETECTED
Pork Sans
In Italian
Gold Griot
Self-Portrait as a Heel, Part Two
Eroica
Hollywood Africans in Front of the Chinese
Dos Cabezas
Ascent
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict
Charles the First
Mitchell Crew
Dog Leg Study
King Pleasure
History of the Black People
Head of a Fryer
painting
Wine of Babylon
All Colored Cast (Part III)
Unbleached Titanium
painting
painting
Sugar Ray Robinson
Price of Gasoline in the Third World
Olympic
Riding with Death
Jim Crow
The Nile
Jimmy Best...
Mace
Glenn
Skin Head Wig
Wolf Sausage
It Hurts
Replicas
The Guilt of Gold Teeth
After Puno
50 cent Piece
God, Law
painting
Religion
Basquiat's works included the anti-religion message, which can be the proof of his atheism.
Politics
Basquiat's poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.
Views
Basquiat very skillfully and purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions, practices, and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage, one deriving, in part, from his urban origins, and in another a more distant, African-Caribbean heritage.
Membership
SAMO
Gray was an industrial-sound band from New York. Its members included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Michael Holman, Wayne Clifford, Nick Taylor, Shannon Dawson, and Vincent Gallow.
Gray
,
United States
1979 - 1988
Personality
Freedom was the key to Jean-Michel's personality. He loved travel, adventure, variety and meeting new people. He also loved to be involved in several things at the same time as long as he was not tied down to any one area. Change was constant in his world, requiring adaptability and courage. With his upbeat and often inspiring personality, Jean-Michel Basquiat made friends easily and attracted people from all walks of life. He had a way with words and an uncanny ability to motivate others.
The growth in his popularity and fame created pressures that led him to increase his drug use. He became paranoid about the people around him. His drug use eventually affected his artistic production. Moreover, it has been reported that Basquiat was bisexual.
Quotes from others about the person
Basquiat speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador. We can read his pictures without strenuous effort—the words, the images, the colors and the construction — but we cannot quite fathom the point they belabor. Keeping us in this state of half-knowing, of mystery-within-familiarity, had been the core technique of his brand of communication since his adolescent days as the graffiti poet SAMO. To enjoy them, we are not meant to analyze the pictures too carefully. Quantifying the encyclopedic breadth of his research certainly results in an interesting inventory, but the sum cannot adequately explain his pictures, which requires an effort outside the purview of iconography... he painted a calculated incoherence, calibrating the mystery of what such apparently meaning-laden pictures might ultimately mean.
Interests
Gray's Anatomy
Writers
William Burroughs
Artists
Jean Dubuffet, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly
Music & Bands
Curtis Mayfield, Donna Summer, Bach, Beethoven, David Byrne, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin
Connections
Jean-Michel Basquiat had never been married but had a long term girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk. He was also known to have been in a relationship with singer Madonna. He had no children.
