Art Fact Friday #23 Jean-Michele Basquiat
- William Mandela Matthews
- Dec 29, 2023
- 2 min read
One of the more influential and successful African-American artist of the 1980s. Seen as a celebrity, represented by major blue-chip galleries in New York and Germany. His work is credited for uplifting graffiti artists to the gallery scene of New York. With works that have set records for the highest price ever paid for an American artist's work. Today, the artist works are held in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Born in Brooklyn, NY,on December 22, 1960 Jean-Michele Basquiat developed affection for art through visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art with his mother. He ran away from home at 17, fleeing to lead a new life in Washington Square Park. Basquiat began his career spray painting buildings and trains in SoHo and the East Village New York. Known by the infamous artist’s pseudonym SAMO. He quickly rose to fame in the early 1980s.
In June 1980, he exhibited for the first time, in “Times Square Show.” In 1981 he was highlighted in an article by art critic René Ricard in Artforum magazine. Later, 20 of his works featured in the “New York/New Wave” show at P.S. 1, in Queens NY. Annina Nosei who represented Barbara Kruger and Keith Haring, began representing the artist. In March 1982, he exhibited at Nosei’s gallery for the first time under the name Basquiat. The show sold out opening night, followed by an opening at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich.
He befriended by the Pop artist Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborations in 1983. In 1985, the New York Times Magazine featured Jean-Michel Basquiat on its cover. Titled “New Art, New Money.” Toward the end of Basquiat’s life, his works were selling around $25,000 to the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, but he was not invited exhibit. At the age of 27, he died from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY.
The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. Julian Schnabel’s first film, Basquiat released in 1996, highlights Basquiats meteoric rise in the art world. In May 2016, one of his paintings sold for $57.3 million. The following year, Untitled, created in 1982, sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s, setting a record for an American artist. According to Phoebe Hoban’s book Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, the artist left behind “917 drawings, 25 sketchbooks, 85 prints, and 171 paintings.” In 2017 The documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat was released; detailing his formative experiences in 1979.
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