Jean-Michel Basquiat: Urban Expression and Raw Identity

Jean-Michel Basquiat1960–88 | AMERICAN | ACRYLICS; MIXED MEDIA; COLLAGE

Basquiat was a young, black, middle-class New Yorker, who died of a drug overdose aged 28. He was a frenzied and prolific self-taught artist whose work powerfully reflected the obsessions and conflicts of his city and his decade.

Basquiat’s large-scale work has the appearance, content, and crudity of graffiti on buildings (he began his career by secretly and illegally painting on public buildings). Their sheer energy, size, number, and consistency indicate an intelligence seeking release or crying for help. Shocking, controversial, ugly, drug-crazed they may be—boring and dismissable they are not.

His words, images, and collaged materials reflect the street life in which he grew up and lived, notably: racism, money (the art market took him up and his works sold for high prices), exploitation, Third World cultures, comics, TV and films, rap music, breakdancing, junk food, black heroes, urban ghettos, and sex.

Profit I

Jean Michel Basquiat, 1982

93¾ × 53½ in (229 × 134 cm), acrylic & spray paint on canvas.

Sold in 2002 for $5.5 million by drummer Lars Ulrich of heavy metal band Metallica.

KEY WORKS:Untitled (Skull), 1981 (Santa Monica: Broad Art Foundation);Saint, 1982 (Zurich: Galerie Bruno Bischofberger)