Jean-Michel Basquiat Overview

Basquiat emerged from the New York underground when he transferred his simplistic, figural graffiti to canvases full of dark, graphic picture-stories that served as emblems of the under-privileged. While the trend-hungry art world cashed in on Graffiti artists such as Keith... [more]

Basquiat emerged from the New York underground when he transferred his simplistic, figural graffiti to canvases full of dark, graphic picture-stories that served as emblems of the under-privileged. While the trend-hungry art world cashed in on Graffiti artists such as Keith Haring and Fab 5 Freddy, Basquiat grew his legend by remaining an enigma to dealers and other artists, to whom he was known only by the moniker SAMO. He finally emerged in his gritty splendor, announcing with a Warhol-esque flourish that he "wanted to be a star not a gallery mascot." Basquiat's will to paint was overwhelming. According to one of his girlfriends he "painted everything he could get his hands on: refrigerators, laboratory coats, cardboard boxes, and doors." His style was improvised, splattered, disjunctive, frenetic, and emotionally charged: a style well matched to his prevalent subject matter of racial identity and conflict within an oppressive white society. He incorporated text, cartoon images, and graffiti into his paintings, mingling them with painting techniques borrowed (and evolved) from painters like Franz Kline and Cy Twombly. Critic Jeffrey Deitch notes: "Basquiat's great strength is his ability to merge his absorption of imagery from the streets, the newspapers, and TV with the spiritualism of his Haitian heritage, injecting both into a marvelously intuitive understanding of the language of modern painting." Indeed, as someone who began his career sleeping in boxes on the street and spray painting his art on dingy New York walls, Basquiat traversed a rather wide arc in his short life. One of the tragic celebrity figures whom fame and money did not well serve, Basquiat died at age 27 of "acute mixed drug intoxication." [show less]