Jean‐Michel Basquiat

Jean‐Michel Basquiat was a powerhouse with an unparalleled creative mind and natural intellect that took the world by storm. His tragically short life nonetheless boasts of benchmarks some may interpret as inconceivable for a person of his age. He held his first solo show at age 20 and was the youngest artist to exhibit at the hugely important documenta 7 in Kassel at age 21. Early on he caught the attention of mega art dealer Larry Gagosian with whom he would continue to exhibit, and collaborated with friends like Haring and Warhol, the latter of whom he considered a mentor. The fast and furious life of this early genius pervades his monumental works which continue to captivate audiences.

Basquiat was born in 1960 to a Haitian mother and a Puerto Rican‐American father in Brooklyn. At age seven he was hit by a car, breaking his arm and causing several internal injuries. He spent his nights at the hospital recovering with a copy of ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ by Henry Gray, a gift from his mother. Basquiat was instantly captivated by the book, particularly the anatomical drawings. ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ had a lasting influence on Basquiat who continued to explore the complexities of the
human anatomy throughout his oeuvre, often mimicking the diagrams in his use of labelling.

Basquiat first appeared on the public stage as a graffiti artist not long before he left high school. He famously worked as ‘SAMO’, short for ‘same old shit’, with his friend Al Diaz. The two graffitied buildings throughout lower Manhattan and Brooklyn from 1977, ending their collaboration in 1979 with the tag ‘SAMO is dead’.

Ubiquitous across Basquiat’s career is his ‘SAMO’ partnership, which often incorrectly pigeonholes him as solely a graffiti artist. Basquiat’s captivating oeuvre spans from colossal paintings which densely collage text together with anatomical images, to journal‐like screenprints which distil his wide‐ranging aesthetics. Therefore, Basquiat is one of the leading figures of Neo‐Expressionism, a movement that reasserted the importance of the human form in contemporary art.

Basquiat’s manipulation of the human form intertwined with his preoccupation with issues of race. He often spoke of the lack of representation of black bodies in art and was acutely aware of himself as one of a few black artists in a predominantly white art world. His signature motif was a crown which he bestowed on black male figures like athletes, musicians and writers. The crown, which sometimes takes the form of a halo, denotes these figures as heroes, elevating them to kingly or saintly stature.

Basquiat was also a writer and a musician, other lives and loves which are present in his fusion of image with text. Sections of a Chinese take‐out menu, the repetition of famous names like Thelonious Monk, diagrams and even his own poetry are just some of the written elements in Basquiat’s work. Curator Eleanor Nairn aptly calls them ‘hyperlinks’ due to their capacity to take the viewer down multitudes of directions, effectively enriching the images.

In each of Basquiat’s works there is a distinct density of information. The stream of consciousness like writing and crossing out allows viewers to experience his thought process, while the relationships he drew between text and image unveil his own mental associations. Effectively, Basquiat’s undeniable talent and unparalleled genius is preserved for the world in his artwork.