Jean Michel Basquiat: The Complete Story
Jean Michel Basquiat was the American artist who went from spray painting cryptic poetry on downtown walls to selling paintings for tens of millions, all before he died at 27. He fused graffiti, jazz, anatomy, history and black identity into raw, urgent canvases that made him the first black art superstar.
His rise was almost impossibly fast, and so was his fall. In about eight years he went from homeless teenager to global fame to a heroin overdose.
Born: Brooklyn, New York, 1960
Known for: Neo Expressionism, graffiti roots, crowns and words
Died: New York, 1988, aged 27
SAMO on the walls
As a teenager Basquiat tagged buildings in Lower Manhattan with a friend under the name SAMO, short for same old, scrawling sharp, funny, philosophical lines instead of standard graffiti. The art world noticed the words before it knew the face behind them.
He was sleeping on friends' couches and in parks, selling hand painted postcards and T shirts, when dealers began to circle.
The fast rise
By the early 1980s he was painting on canvas and the market exploded around him. At 22 he became one of the youngest artists ever in the Documenta exhibition in Germany. Collectors fought over the work.
His paintings are dense with words, diagrams, skeletons and his trademark three pointed crown. He crossed out words on purpose, saying that made you look at them more.
Warhol, race and the pressure
He became close to Andy Warhol, and the two made work together. The friendship drew huge attention and some cruel reviews, and Warhol's death in 1987 hit Basquiat hard.
As a black artist in an overwhelmingly white art world, he faced constant condescension, treated as a wild natural talent rather than a serious thinker. He pushed against that label his whole short career.
The book that gave him his skeletons
The accident is the detail I keep coming back to. At seven he was hit by a car in Brooklyn and spent weeks recovering from a broken arm and a ruptured spleen.
His mother Matilde brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to pass the time. Those diagrams never left him.
The skulls, the exposed ribs, the labeled organs that crowd his canvases all trace back to a hospital gift. He liked the book enough to name his noise band Gray after it.
He grew up speaking French, Spanish and English, and read constantly. In 1981 the critic Rene Ricard put him on the map with an Artforum essay titled The Radiant Child.
Two years later, at 22, he was among the youngest artists ever included in the Whitney Biennial.
The questions Basquiat still raises
What is Basquiat famous for?
Neo Expressionist paintings full of words, crowns and skeletal figures, born out of graffiti. See what is Pop art.
How did Basquiat die?
A heroin overdose in 1988, at 27. More in how did Jean Michel Basquiat die.
Why does he matter?
He broke the color barrier at the top of the market and made street language into museum art. More in interesting facts about Basquiat.
The street, hung beside the old masters
Basquiat proved that the energy of the street could hang beside the old masters, and he did it as a young black man in a world that resisted him. His influence runs through art, fashion and music today.
One last number. In 2017 his painting of a skull sold for 110.5 million dollars, the most ever paid at auction for an American artist, three decades after his death.