Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential American artist born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father. Known for his distinctive style that blended elements of graffiti, social commentary, and abstract imagery, Basquiat emerged from a challenging childhood marked by frequent school changes and familial strife. He began his artistic career as a graffiti artist under the pseudonym SAMO in the late 1970s, gaining recognition for his thought-provoking public art that often critiqued societal norms and explored themes of identity, race, and class.
Basquiat's ascent in the art world began in the early 1980s, culminating in his first major exhibitions in both Europe and the United States. He collaborated with pop artist Andy Warhol, although their partnership eventually strained. Despite achieving significant fame and financial success, Basquiat struggled with the commercialization of art and his own identity within that space. Tragically, he died from a drug overdose on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27.
His legacy endures as a powerful voice in contemporary art, with his works commanding staggering prices at auctions, including a record-breaking sale of one painting for $110.5 million in 2017. While often referred to as the “Black Picasso,” Basquiat's art transcends simple labels, reflecting a complex interplay of cultural influences and personal experiences.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat
Artist
- Born: December 22, 1960
- Place of birth: New York, New York
- Died: August 12, 1988
- Place of death: New York, New York
A graffiti artist who blurred the line between high and trivial art, Basquiat shocked the 1980s art world with his meteoric rise and early death. He epitomized the excesses of the era, especially its out-of-control art prices and the nexus of music, fashion, art, and drugs.
Early Life
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born December 22, 1960, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, to Matilde Andrades, a Brooklyn native of Puerto Rican descent, and Haitian-born Gérard Basquiat. He grew up in the middle-class Park Slope section of Brooklyn as the only son of three children; he had two younger sisters, Lisane and Jeanine. (His older brother, Max, died as an infant.) While his father worked as an accountant, his mother took him to art museums. Basquiat later credited his mother and her parents for fostering his love of art and music, dedicating Abuelita (1981) to his Spanish-speaking grandmother. In 1968, Basquiat was struck by a car while playing in the street; his spleen had to be removed, and he suffered several other injuries. To help her son pass the time while hospitalized, Matilde gave him the classic anatomical book Gray’s Anatomy. The repeated themes of internal organs and human skeletons in Basquiat’s art undoubtedly owe much to the book, which he studied passionately.
Basquiat had little interest in formal schooling. He changed schools frequently after his parents divorced in 1968 and the children moved with their father to Flatbush and then to Boerum Hill in Brooklyn. When the family moved to Puerto Rico in 1974 for two years, Basquiat ran away from home for the first time. He later recalled that his art at the time reflected mostly anger. In 1976, the family returned to Brooklyn, but Basquiat’s relationship with his father remained troubled.
In 1977, Basquiat drew a comic for his school paper about a young searcher for truth who wants to find a modern and stylish form of spirituality and who struggles to escape the falsity of established religions. Basquiat signed the comic SAMO, the name of his invented pure religion. SAMO became the famous pseudonym with which Basquiat signed his graffiti in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. In 1978, he dropped out of school and left home for good.
Life’s Work
With a blond Mohawk, Basquiat quickly became a fixture on the New York City nightclub circuit. He played in a band called Gray, worked as a disc jockey, and made additional money by selling painted T-shirts. He met many of the most prominent artists of the 1980s as well as Mudd Club owner and filmmaker Diego Cortez. Basquiat’s first exhibition, the multi-artist Times Square Show in 1980, resulted from his friendship with Cortez. He acted in the 1981 film New York Beat and then opened a studio at the film production office. His early paintings reflect the theme of big-city life and clearly show the influence of French primitive painter Jean Dubuffet. American graffiti artist Cy Twombly was another strong influence. Basquiat gained fame for his unconventional mingling of various visual ideas and sources.
Basquiat’s reputation continued to grow throughout 1981 as he participated in shows and garnered critical acclaim in the magazine Artforum. He held his first one-man show that year in Modena, Italy, under the name SAMO. Basquiat’s first one-man show in the United States came in March 1982, at Annina Nosei’s gallery. The show featured his work Anatomy (1982), a series of eighteen silkscreen prints. His work was exhibited in Los Angeles and throughout Western Europe. While staying in Los Angeles, Basquiat produced the hip-hop single “Beat Bop” (1983), by Rammellzee and K-Rob. Upon returning to New York in 1983, he developed a friendship with his idol, pop artist Andy Warhol.
By 1984 Basquiat had become a major artist. His continued his early themes but also began to comment through his paintings on the absurd prices charged for art. At the time, Basquiat’s paintings were selling for twenty thousand dollars in Europe. Basquiat had little interest in money and strongly objected to his exploitation as an artist, once referring to himself as a “gallery mascot.”
When the Basquiat-Warhol collaborative show in 1985 received a near-unanimous critical panning, Warhol pulled away from the younger artist. Warhol’s death two years later left Basquiat inconsolable. He held a few more shows but gradually gave up on his life. He announced an intention to abandon painting. Basquiat died from an overdose August 12, 1988, in the Great Jones Street studio that he had rented from Warhol. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Significance
Basquiat produced art to make statements, not to make money. He protested his exploitation as an artist at the same time that he represented the excesses of the 1980s. His death is generally attributed to his disappointment and disillusionment with the art scene’s obsession with money.
Simplistically labeled the “Black Picasso,” Basquiat ultimately proves too complex for easy classification. Critical and scholarly treatment of his work declined in the 1990s, while, ironically given his stance on high-priced art, the prices paid for it continued to rise. In 2002, Sotheby’s auctioned Basquiat’s Profit I for $5.5 million. In May 2017, Basquiat's 1982 painting Untitled—a depiction of a skull done in spray paint and oil stick—was sold at Sotheby's auction house for $110.5 million. It was the first time a piece of art created after 1980 sold for more than $100 million. The sale also broke the record for the most expensive work by an American artist, previously held by Warhol, whose Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) sold in 2013 for $105 million.
Bibliography
Emmerling, Leonhard. Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1960–1988. Taschen, 2003. A heavily illustrated short biography of Basquiat.
Fretz, Eric. Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography. Greenwood Press, 2010. Part of a biographical series, this work covers Basquiat’s impact on the contemporary art world.
Hoban, Phoebe. Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art. Viking, 1998. A biography of the artist that also explores the art market of the 1980s, including the graffiti movement and the out-of-control auction houses.
Marshall, Richard, editor. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Whitney Museum of American Art, 1992. A collection of scholarly essays about the artist and his art, published in conjunction with an exhibition of Basquiat’s work.
Mayer, Marc, editor. Basquiat. Merrell, 2005. Focuses more on Basquiat’s art than his life, with detailed examinations of his works, including many rarely exhibited pieces.
Mercurio, Gianni, editor. The Jean-Michel Basquiat Show. Skira, 2006. A coffee-table book that provides a comprehensive examination of Basquiat and the 1980s New York City art scene.
Pogrebin, Robin, and Scott Reyburn. "A Basquiat Sells for 'Mind-Blowing' $110.5 Million at Auction." The New York Times, 18 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/arts/jean-michel-basquiat-painting-is-sold-for-110-million-at-auction.html. Accessed 9 June 2017.