Jean-Michel Basquiat.
He is also famous as the creator of the painting "Untitled," which was sold for approximately 6.2 billion yen by businessman Yusaku Maezawa in 2016 and was auctioned again in 2022 for the very high price of 11 billion yen.
In his very short career as an artist of only about 10 years, he left behind more than 3,000 drawings and 1,000 paintings.
We will introduce the life and works of Basquiat, the poster child of street art, who continues to attract the attention of art fans even today.

What kind of artist was Basquiat? - An Overview

Although Basquiat became a hot topic in Japan in the 2010s with the news about Mr. Maezawa, he was actually active in New York street culture in the early 1980s.
He was one of the first black artists to be recognized in art history, and his activities may be evaluated as an art version of jazz music, a music that spread from African Americans to the rest of the world.
He was a friend of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, who were active in the same era, and was one of the rare pop artists who achieved explosive popularity on a global level in his early 20s.
However, his career as an artist, and indeed his life itself, came to an abrupt end in 1988 at the young age of 27. It is said that he died from overdose of heroin.
Despite his limited time, he left behind a vast body of drawings and paintings. His unique expression, which includes self-portrait-like motifs such as "crowns" and black silhouettes, as well as scientific motifs such as anatomical drawings and chemical formulas, has made him a strong favorite among contemporary art enthusiasts.

Basquiat from childhood to adolescence

Childhood

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born to a Puerto Rican immigrant mother and a Haitian immigrant father. He reportedly painted from an early age, and was greatly influenced by his mother. It is known that her mother was enthusiastic about her art education, taking Basquiat to local museums and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Basquiat was a precocious child, learning to read and write by the age of four. He also showed a talent for art from an early age, as he met a friend named Mark Prozzo in elementary school, and the two of them created a picture book together.

The accident that changed Basquiat's life and "Gray's Anatomy

In 1968, at the age of 7, Basquiat was hit by a car.
He broke his arm, suffered internal injuries, and had to undergo surgery to remove his spleen.
During his hospitalization, his mother brought him a well-illustrated but scholarly anatomy textbook called "Gray's Anatomy," a must-have book for medical students, to entertain him. In fact, the name "GRAY" would become the band name of the noise band he would later form.
The medical image of the human anatomy was also burned into the young Basquiat's brain, and is thought to be the source of the skinned human body model-like images that are frequently seen in his works.

Beginning of Spray Painting

When he entered high school, he was as naughty as ever and dropped out of his first high school, but in his second high school (City as School), he and a friend named Al Diaz created a character named SAMO (SAMe Old shit) and serialized his cartoons in the school newspaper. They continued their playful activities.
Then, at the age of 17, they began spray-painting "SAMO," a Brooklyn and New York legend, on walls in subways and slums.
During that period, Basquiat and Diaz both used SAMO as their tag name and painted poetic and satirical advertising slogans such as "SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD" and other messages all over town.
However, in June 1978, Basquiat dropped out of high school for the second time at the age of 17 for throwing a pie at the principal.
His father kicked him out of the house because of this incident, so he worked in an apparel warehouse and went out into the city at night to paint graffiti. In December 1978, the Village Voice, which had taken notice of SAMO's unusual presence on the streets, published an article about SAMO graffiti, and Basquiat and Diaz's activities began to become known.

Connections with Keith Haring and other friends

In 1979, at the age of 18, Basquiat appeared on TV Party, a show hosted by Glenn O'Brien.
This led to him becoming friends with O'Brien, and over the next few years Basquiat would appear regularly on the show.
He also began painting graffiti around the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he became friends with John Sex, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring, who were also students at the time, and who would later become, like Basquiat, the darling of the era.

Formation of the band "GRAY" and a yearning for chemical imagery

Also in April 1979, Basquiat met hip-hop sensation Michael Holman at a party and formed the noise-rock band Test Pattern.
The band later changed its name to "GRAY," taken from an anatomy textbook.
Other members included Shannon Dawson, who was recognized for their ability to play on stages of big clubs such as CBGB, Hurrah, and the Mudd Club.
During this period, Basquiat shared a room with Alexis Adler, a biology student at Barnard College. He often copied chemical diagrams from Adler's textbooks and collected them. The geometric imagery of chemical formulas became an important element in Basquiat's expression, as did Gray's anatomy drawings, which captured his attention as a child.

First Encounter with Andy Warhol

Encounter with Warhol and Fame as a Graffiti Artist

Having dropped out of high school, Basquiat earned his living selling T-shirts and postcards when he was around 20 years old.
It is said that while selling postcards in Soho, he spotted Andy Warhol with the art critic Geldzahler, who barged into the restaurant where they were having lunch and sold them postcards. It was an abrupt beginning, but the two would later build an irreplaceable relationship, including the creation of joint works of art.
At the same time, Basquiat had a falling out with Diaz, a friend from high school, and they sealed off their graffiti SAMO by inscribing "SAMO IS DEAD" on the streets of Soho. He went on to work as a solo artist under the name "Jean-Michel Basquiat.
He also appeared in a TV show called "Graffiti '80: The State of the Outlaw Art" through a relationship with O'Brien, with whom he had befriended during a TV appearance.

Basquiat's Rise to Fame

Great Success in Exhibitions, Including the "Times Square Show

In 1980, Basquiat's participation in the "Times Square Show" exhibition attracted the attention of various critics and curators, including Jeffrey Deitch, who mentioned him in his article "Report from Times Square" in the September 1980 issue of Art in America magazine.
The following year, he was also a major presence in the "New York/New Wave" exhibition at New York's P.S.1 facility (now annexed to MoMA New York's Museum of Modern Art), which led to a solo exhibition and sale of his work in Italy.
In addition, art critic René Ricard published the first lengthy article on Basquiat entitled "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine, and between 1980 and 1981, Basquiat made great strides as an artist.

In 1982, he became the youngest artist to participate in the international exhibition Documenta

In 1982, Basquiat, who was growing in stature despite some troubles, including the breakdown of negotiations with an Italian gallery, participated in Documenta, an international art fair that has continued to this day. At the age of 21, Basquiat was the youngest artist ever to participate in the fair, a record that has not been broken to this day.

Collaboration with Warhol

In 1983, gallerist Bischofffelger commissioned Warhol, Basquiat, and Italian artist Francesco Clemente to work together on a collaborative project.
This was to commemorate the Los Angeles Summer Olympics to be held the following year, 1984.
Warhol had been a leading figure in American Pop Art in the 1960s, but by the 1980s his popularity was beginning to wane.
For Basquiat, it may have been a dream collaboration with an artist he admired, and for Warhol, it may have been a way of borrowing the recognition of a young, successful artist. Whatever the case, a friendship was formed, and Warhol picked up his paintbrush again.

Madonna, Gagosian, and Hip-Hop

After his participation in Documenta, Basquiat worked as a studio in a space created by Larry Gagosian, who was then working as a newly independent dealer. Gagosian would later grow into one of the world's leading galleries, and Basquiat's presence was essential to its growth.
In addition, he was dating Madonna, who was still an unknown singer at the time.
His relationship with hip-hop cannot be overlooked. She painted portraits of fellow graffiti artists and designed records for rappers Rammellzee and K-Rob.
His fame continued to ebb and flow with a number of major projects, including his participation in the Whitney Biennial at the age of 22 and a collaboration with Comme des Garcons.

Shadow of Success: Basquiat's Late 1980s

Mental Suffering Accompanying Success

Around 1985, he was earning $1.4 million a year. In addition, he received a one-time payment of $40,000 from a dealer, and was truly a star in the pop art world.
However, despite his success, his psyche became increasingly unstable.
As his earnings increased, he became increasingly paranoid and addicted to heroin."
Later, the journalist Schneerson wrote, "As his earnings increased, he became more and more paranoid and addicted to heroin.

1985, "Warhol and Basquiat: The Paintings"

Although Basquiat and Warhol had worked together on several projects since their collaboration in 1983, the growing rift between the two artists became more definitive in 1985 with the "Warhol and Basquiat: Paintings" exhibition.
The exhibition received mostly negative reviews from critics.

Basquiat, Late Years in Action

Warhol's death and his penchant for heroin

Around 1986, he and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Goode, began consuming heroin more and more. This is believed to have further fueled his addiction.
Furthermore, when Warhol died in 1987 after undergoing gallbladder surgery, Basquiat was plagued with grief and guilt.
For the 18 months prior to his death, Basquiat was like a cripple. An overdose of heroin brought him to his final resting place in August 1988.

Basquiat's Art Theoretical Evaluation

Art critic Franklin Thurmans analyzes Basquiat's borrowing from poetry, drawing, and painting, combining text and image, abstraction and figuration, and historical information and contemporary criticism.
His references to the social imply a sharply political and direct critique of colonialism and its perspective in favor of class struggle.
He also deconstructed the classical tradition that persists in Western art and created a new art history with the new tool of graffiti.

Art historian Fred Hoffman believes that Basquiat's self-identification as an artist was based on "a kind of oracle-like ability to distill his perception of the external world to its essence and project it outward through his creative acts," and that his art was "suggestive" of wealth and poverty, integration and separation, inner and and external experience.

Of course, there are those who are critical of Basquiat.
In the 1980s, art critic Robert Hughes criticized Basquiat's work as absurd.
Art critic Hilton Kramer began by saying that Basquiat did not understand the meaning of the word "quality. He relentlessly criticized Basquiat as a "talentless fraud" and "street-smart but otherwise ignorant," claiming that the art dealers of the time were "as ignorant of art as Basquiat himself.
However, these claims are one-sided, and today most critics are considered to have a positive view of Basquiat's work.



View TRiCERA ART's latest work


TRiCERA ART members receive a variety of benefits and preferences.

- Discounts, including members-only secret sales and coupons
- Create My Collection by registering your favorite artists
- Receive updates on popular artists, exhibitions, and events
- Receive a weekly newsletter with selected art
- Personal Assessment to find out what kind of art you like.

Please register as a member for free and receive the latest information.

Free Member Registration