Jean-Michel Basquiat

Infobox Artist
bgcolour = #6495ED
name = Jean-Michel Basquiat


imagesize = 300px
caption = Untitled (Skull), 1981
birthdate = 1960
location = Brooklyn, New York City
deathdate = 1988
deathplace = SoHo, New York City
nationality = American
field = Graffiti, Painting, Neo-expressionism
training =
movement =
works =
patrons =
influenced by =
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Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22 1960 - August 12, 1988) was an American artist. He gained popularity first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. Basquiat's paintings continue to influence modern day artists and command high prices.

Biography

Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1960. His mother, Matilde, was Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard Jean-Baptiste, is of Haitian origin and a former Haitian Minister of the Interior. Because of his parents' nationalities, Basquiat was fluent in French, Spanish, and English and often read Symbolist poetry, mythology, history and medical texts, particularly Gray's Anatomy in those languages. [citation | title= Basquiat at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2006 | date= November 20, 2006 | url= http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/1569/basquiat-at-houstons-museum-of-fine-arts/| accessdate=2008-04-21 ] At an early age, Basquiat displayed an aptitude for art and was encouraged by his mother to draw, paint, and to participate in other art-related activities. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti art on slum buildings in lower Manhattan, adding the infamous signature of "SAMO" or "SAMO shit" ("i.e.", "same ol' shit"). The graphics were pithy messages such as "Plush safe he think; SAMO" and "SAMO is an escape clause". In December 1978, the "Village Voice" published an article about the writings. [cite news|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/0543,50thsmith2,69264,31.html|title=Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Contemporary Art Scene|author=Smith, Roberta|publisher="The Village Voice"|date=1982-03-23|accessdate=2008-02-05] The SAMO project ended with the epitaph SAMO IS DEAD written on the walls of SoHo buildings.

In 1978, Basquiat dropped out of high school and left home, a year before graduating. He moved into the city and lived with friends, surviving by selling T-shirts and postcards on the street, and working in the Unique Clothing Warehouse on Broadway. By 1979, however, Basquiat had gained a certain celebrity status amidst the thriving art scene of Manhattan's East Village through his regular appearances on Glenn O'Brien's live public-access cable show, "TV Party". In the late 1970s, Basquiat formed a band called Gray, with the then-unknown musician and actor Vincent Gallo. Gray played at clubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrahs, and the Mudd Club. Basquiat worked with Gallo again in a film "Downtown 81" (a.k.a "New York Beat Movie") which featured some of Gray's rare recordings on its soundtrack. [Kellman, Andy. "Downtown 81 Original Soundtrack". Retrieved January 16, 2008, from http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:acfoxql0ldje ] He also appeared in Blondie's video "Rapture" as a replacement for DJ Grandmaster Flash when he was a no-show.

Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980, when he participated in "The Times Square Show", a multi-artist exhibition, sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab). In 1981, poet, art critic and cultural provocateur Rene Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in "Artforum" magazine, helping to launch Basquiat's career to an international stage. During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his works around New York alongside artists such as Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, as well as internationally, promoted by such gallery owners and patrons as Annina Nosei, Vrej Baghoomian, Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger.

By 1982, Basquiat was showing regularly alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, thus becoming part of a loose-knit group that art-writers, curators, and collectors would soon be calling the Neo-expressionist movement. He started dating an aspiring and then-unknown performer named Madonna in the fall of 1982. That same year, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship. He was also briefly involved with artist David Bowes. [cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=W7yF6cGfghoC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=%22basquiat+a+quick+killing+in+art%22+bowes&source=web&ots=rLxSk7AE9w&sig=9S5OKQn6RzDGUNmRUGcBVhojIjs|author=Hoban, Phoebe|publisher=Penguin USA|date=2004|isbn=0143035126|title=Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art] [Randy P. Conner, David Hatfield Sparks, "Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions", Haworth Press, 2004, p299. ISBN 1560233516]

By 1984, many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his excessive drug use and increasingly erratic behavior, including signs of paranoia. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit by this point, starting from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York's underground. On February 10, 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of "The New York Times Magazine" in a feature entitled "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist". As Basquiat's international success heightened, his works were shown in solo exhibitions across major European capitals.

Basquiat died of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin, known as "speedballing") at his 57 Great Jones Street loft/studio in 1988 several days before what would have been Basquiat's second trip to the Côte d'Ivoire. After his death, a film biography titled "Basquiat" was made, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat.

Artistic activities

Basquiat's art career is known for his three broad, though overlapping styles. In the earliest period, from 1980 to late 1982, Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas, often depicting skeletal figures and mask-like faces that expressed his obsession with mortality. Other frequently depicted imagery such as automobiles, buildings, police, children's sidewalk games, and graffiti came from his experience painting on the city streets. A middle period from late 1982 to 1985 featured multipanel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and seemingly unrelated imagery.

These works reveal a strong interest in Basquiat's black identity and his identification with historical and contemporary black figures and events. On one occasion Basquiat painted his girlfriend's dress, with his words, a "Little Shit Brown". The final period, from about 1986 to Basquiat's death in 1988, displays a new type of figurative depiction, in a new style with different symbols and content from new sources. This period seems to have also had a profound impact on the styles of artists who admired Basquiat's work. Basquiat's lasting creative influence is immediately recognizable in the work of subsequent and self-taught generational artists such as Mark Gonzales, Kelly D. Williams, chinghalle and Raymond Morris.

In 1982, Basquiat became friends with pop artist Andy Warhol and the two made a number of collaborative works. They also painted together, influencing each others' work. Some speculated that Andy Warhol was merely using Basquiat for some of his techniques and insight. Their relationship continued until Warhol's death in 1987. Warhol's death was very distressing for Basquiat, and it is speculated by Phoebe Hoban, in "Basquiat", her 1998 biography on the artist, that Warhol's death was a turning point for Basquiat, and that afterwards his drug addiction and depression began to spiral.

Up until 2002, the highest mark that was paid for an original work of Basquiat's was $3,302,500 (set on 12 November 1998). On 14 May 2002 Basquiat's "Profit I" (a large piece of art measuring 86.5" by 157.5"), owned by heavy metal band Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, was put up for auction at Christie's. It was there that the highest mark for a work of Basquiat's was set when "Profit I" sold for $5,509,500. [cite web |url=http://www.thecityreview.com/s02ccon1.html |title=Art/Auctions: Post-War & Contemporary Art evening auction, May 14, 2002 at Christie's |accessdate=2008-01-17 |author= |last=Horsley |first=Carter |work= ] The proceedings of the auction are documented in the film "Some Kind of Monster". On 15 May 2007, an untitled Basquiat work from 1981 smashed his previous record, selling at Sotheby's in New York for $14.6 million. [cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6660487.stm |title=Huge bids smash modern art record |publisher=BBC |date=2007-05-16 |accessdate=2007-05-16] .

Quotes

* "Every single line means something."
* "Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix… I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous."
* "I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life."
* "Believe it or not, I can actually draw."
* "I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is."
* "I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot."

Gallery

Notes and references

ee also

*Andy Warhol
*Bruno Bischofberger
*Rene Ricard
*Neith Nevelson
*TV Party
*No Wave
*Graffiti
*Figuration Libre
*List of famous Puerto Ricans
*List of contemporary artists

External links

* [http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/basquiat/ Brooklyn Museum] retrospective of Basquiat, including photographs of the artist and his work.
* [http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/2969/lang/1 Basquiat at Artfacts]
* Pearlman, Alison. [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15605.ctl Unpackaging Art of the 1980s.]
* Powers, Nicholas. [http://www.tribes.org/npowers/reviews/basquiat The Radiant Death, a review of the Brooklyn Museum's Basquiat exhibit]