Jean-Michel Basquiat born December 22, 1960 in New York, USA, died 1988 - American artist.
Basquiat was born in New York - in Brooklyn. He had two younger sisters. His mother, Matilda, was from Puerto Rico, and his father, Gerard, was of Haitian descent. Thanks to this, since childhood, Michel spoke fluent French, Spanish and English, read books, including Symbolist poetry, myths and history. Already at an early age he showed an aptitude for art, and his mother encouraged these aspirations. His father was a successful economist. He owned the building on Pacific Street where his family lived. At the age of six, Basquiat became a junior member of the board of the Brooklyn Museum.
In September 1968, at the age of eight, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street. His arm was broken and several internal organs were damaged, and he ended up undergoing surgery to remove his spleen. While he was recovering from his injuries, his mother brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to keep him occupied. This book had a significant influence on his future artistic vision. That same year, his parents divorced, and he and his sisters stayed with their father. They lived in Brooklyn for five years and then moved to Puerto Rico in 1974. Two years later they returned to New York.
When Basquiat was 11, his mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital. At the age of 15, Basquiat ran away from home. He spent the night on a bench in Washington Square Park and within a week was arrested and returned to his father's care. Basquiat was suspended from the tenth grade at Edward R. Murrow High School. Then his father kicked him out of the house and he lived with friends, earning money selling T-shirts and postcards on the street. He also worked at the Unique Clothing Warehouse on West Broadway, Manhattan.
In 1976, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz began drawing graffiti on the sides of buildings in Lower Manhattan, signing "SAMO" or "SAMO shit." The images consisted of meaningful phrases, the meaning of which is difficult to translate into Russian, for example, “Plush safe he think.. SAMO” (“He thinks that the plush protects (him). SAMO”) or “SAMO as an escape clause” (“ SAMO as a negation condition"). On December 11, 1978, the Village Voice published an article about these inscriptions. When the friendship between Basquiat and Al Diaz ended, the project also ended with the epitaph “SAMO IS DEAD” (“SAMO is dead”) in 1979.
In 1979, Basquiat appeared live on public cable television on the show TV Party, hosted by Glen O'Brien, and the two became friends. Basquiat appeared regularly on the show over the next few years. Also in 1979, Basquiat formed the group Test Pattern, playing noise rock, an experimental offshoot of punk rock. The group was later renamed Gray and performed in various clubs in Manhattan. Gray also included Shannon Dawson, Michael Holman, Nick Taylor, Wayne Clifford and Vincent Gallo. They performed in nightclubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah and the Mudd Club. In 1980, Basquiat starred in O'Brien's independent film Downtown 81, originally called New York Beat. That same year, Basquiat met Andy Warhol in a restaurant. Basquiat presented Warhol with examples of his work, Warhol was shocked by Basquiat's genius and charm. They created many collaborations together. They worked together and influenced each other's work. Their relationship continued until Warhol's death in 1987.
In June 1980, Basquiat took part in The Times Square Show, a collective exhibition of artists. In 1981, poet and art critic Rene Ricard published the article "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine, which propelled Basquiat's international career.
Towards the end of 1982, Basquiat came to Los Angeles to take some time off. Just a year ago, he managed to stay afloat thanks to his generous girlfriends, and now he himself rented a studio from Larry Gagosian at a cost of $2,500 a month. That year he painted his famous painting in shades of yellow Hollywood Africans, which is now in the collection of the Whitney Museum.
Hollywood Africans, 1982
At its center are three figures - a self-portrait and caricatures of graffiti artists RAMMELLZEE and TOXIC, whom he brought with him to the West Coast. In Tamra Davis' documentary The Radiant Child, dealer Fred Hoffman describes Basquiat's reception in Los Angeles. From this text it becomes clear what experiences inspired this painting:
“Around 10 p.m. I was standing in the lobby of the Spago restaurant, waiting to be seated. Following Larry Gagosian, Jean-Michel, RAMMELLZEE and FAB 5 FREDDY entered, and complete silence reigned in the hall. What I'm trying to say is that these three young black guys were each prettier than the other. I don’t know what people thought - maybe they thought these were some super new Hollywood stars or they thought they were about to be robbed. But there was just deathly silence in the hall. It was fantastic."
Since 1982, Basquiat has exhibited regularly with Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, a group of artists that art critics, curators and collectors would soon call the Neo-Expressionists.
In 1982, Basquiat worked briefly with musician and artist David Bowie.
Single "Beat Bop", 1983
In 1983, Basquiat released a 12-minute rap single featuring hip-hop artists Rammellzee and K-Rob, the single included two versions of the same track: "Beat Bop" with vocals on one side and an instrumental version of "Beat Bop" on the other. The single was released as a limited edition one-off label by Tartown Record Company. The single's packaging is famous for Basquiat's work, making it a coveted item among record and art collectors alike. Thanks to an offer from Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger, Warhol and Basquiat worked on a series of paintings together between 1983 and 1985. In Olympic Rings (1985), Warhol made several versions of the Olympic rings, painted in the original original colors. Basquiat responded with abstraction, stylizing this logo in his graffiti style.
Basquiat often painted in expensive Armani suits and even appeared in public in these paint-splattered suits.
In 1986, Basquiat exhibited at the famous Mary Boone gallery in Soho. On February 10, 1985, he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine with the headline "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist." Since 1984, many of Basquiat's friends begin to notice his increasingly strange behavior caused by drug use. Basquiat became addicted to heroin during his years living among New York street artists.
In April 1988, Basquiat had his first solo exhibition at the Vrej Baghoomian Gallery in New York.
Among his works was "Riding With Death" There is no crazy text here, characteristic of his work; as if he is trying to calm down, clear his inner gaze. At the center of the painting is a single human dark-skinned figure, twisted and alone. She sits astride the skeleton of a horse. This may be a visual reference to the slang word for the drug that would claim his life just four months later, in August 1988.
"Riding With Death", 1988
The background of the painting depicts a flat and featureless field of golden color. It can symbolize something sacred, a better life that the artist was striving for. But this background may also be symbolic of the culture of glamor and money in which he was immersed. It's hard to say whether this is a blessing or a curse, which makes this story especially sad.
When Andy Warhol died on February 22, 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his heroin addiction and depression became worse. Despite attempting to abstain during a trip to Maui, Hawaii, Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, of a heroin overdose in his art studio on Great Jones Street in New York City. He was 27. Basquiat was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Basquiat's work can be divided into three periods. In his early period, from 1980 to 1982, he often depicted skeletons and masked faces, reflecting his extraordinary interest in mortality. Other common images include cars, buildings, police, children playing on the sidewalk, and graffiti, which came from his experience of painting on city streets. The middle period, from late 1982 to 1985, was marked by Basquiat's interest in his Haitian roots. The last period, from 1986 to his death in 1988, was marked by a new manner and new images.
Basquiat's art exudes vital energy - he worked quickly, and painted everywhere, on every surface that surrounded him - and its endless appeal owes much to the legend of the artist's spontaneity, unfettered by self-censorship. But if you look closely, you will see that almost all of Basquiat's works are imprints of his painful consciousness. This painting is allegorical, it is not about the black race as a whole, but about Basquiat's complex status that existed between two communities, amidst expectations that he could not live up to. In fact, if you interpret his work correctly, you will see that they were a sharp indictment of the very public that so readily accepted him, and of the fame that came to the artist to destroy him.
“Eyes and Eggs”, 1983
Take for example a painting from the Gagosian exhibition, for example, "Eyes and Eggs" (1983). It depicts, in Basquiat's typical expressionistic style, a tormented black man. (Human figures seem to have been exposed to radiation from some kind of X-ray machine, their bodies are deformed, torn apart, teeth and ribs are visible through the skin, genitals are separated from the body). The man's overalls have his name written on them - JOE. In his hands he holds a frying pan on which two eggs are broken. Their blood-red yolks visually rhyme with the sparkling eye sockets of the skull. The title of the picture makes it clear that in fact the hero makes an omelet from his own eyes. This work not only attracts the eye with its dark subject matter, waiting for an art critic, but is something much more complex. The figure here is both subject and object; the depicted hero takes his vision, his own perception of the world and makes scrambled eggs out of it, which he treats to regular viewers.
After a brief fascination with graffiti, fame came to Basquiat. Graffiti was a staple art form in cash-strapped New York in the 1970s. However, Basquiat was never part of the Bronx graffiti scene. His street art work was explicitly aimed at the residents of Soho, meaning that the art primarily appealed to the creative class living downtown. It worked. In just two years in the early 1980s, Basquiat went from being an extraordinary writer known as SAMO to exhibiting in gallery shows, with his work fetching prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Everyone who met Basquiat noted his ambition, his desire to declare his own creative aspirations (his symbol, and the copyright symbol with which he marked everything around him, was the crown). When he turned to painting on canvas, he retained his nervous style, inspired by graffiti but peppered with references to classical art themes.
Basquiat could see that the media were mainly interested in his physiognomy rather than his art. In 1985, his joint exhibition with Warhol was heavily criticized, with the feeling that he was some kind of fashion whose time was almost up.
As an artist, he had a very keen sense of what is always on stage, always playing a role; after all, his first stretched canvases were created for the 1981 film in which he played the role of a failed artist. This gives an idea of how short he lived in his self-created mythology. Drugs helped him concentrate and meet the demands that the art market placed on him. They were part of the image of the Rabelaisian artist-martyr, a legend which, as far as he knew, remained the engine of his success. “People tell me I should quit drugs,” he should have noted, “and then when I do they say it might affect my creativity.”
It often happens that paintings by artists increase in value several times after their death. A contemporary black artist from Brooklyn (USA) was no exception. Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died at the age of 27. His work “Untitled” (1982) at last year’s May auction at Sotheby’s was sold for a fabulous sum - $110,500,000. This is the most expensive painting ever sold on the art market and won first place in the ranking of American artists. It also takes 11th place in the top most expensive works of art in the world.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat - “black Picasso”.
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Jean-Michel
Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in 1960 in New York. At four years old, the boy already knew how to write, and by eleven he spoke three languages. While still very young, he began his artistic career with graffiti and street art, and was also interested in music. At the age of 22, fate brought him together with Andy Warhol, teaming up with whom they created many joint projects. And despite the big difference in age and skill, they became close friends.
A feature of the artist’s creations is the style of neo-expressionism, which combines graffiti and rock painting, and the theme of his work was personal experiences related to the situation of blacks in the United States in the 80s.
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The black artist’s star, having flashed brightly and quickly, faded just as quickly. However, he managed to leave behind a legacy that is valued at tens of millions of dollars.
According to statistics, the painting “Profit I” was auctioned for $5.5 million in 2002. In 2007, an untitled painting was sold at auction for $14.6 million. In 2013, the painting “Broken Heads” was sold for $48.8 million
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https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0-mishel-006.jpg" alt="Boxing ring. (1981).
Sotheby's experts discovered an invisible inscription on the artist's canvas.
"Thirty years ago the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat secretly signed one of his paintings with invisible ink", says the Sotheby's auction house, which discovered a hidden autograph when preparing the painting for sale.
We are talking about the painting "Orange Sports Figure", which experts valued at between 3 and 4 million pounds sterling.
Basquiat's paintings are often covered in words or obscure scribbles. But the artist rarely left his full name under his paintings. Almost always used the pseudonym SAMO. For example, this is how many of his graffiti on the walls of buildings in Manhattan are signed.
And with the help of ultraviolet radiation, under layers of acrylic and aerosol paints, the name of the artist and the date - 1982 - were discovered in the painting. According to the head of Sotheby's contemporary art department in Europe, Shann Westphal, employees were surprised and puzzled by the signature.
“No one probably knew about this invisible inscription. We are attracted by the prospect that he could have left other inscriptions on his canvases that are only visible in ultraviolet light.", she said.
As a result, the painting was sold for 4 million pounds sterling ($6.3 million), which, however, is not a record for paintings by this artist. The highest amount paid for a Basquiat work was $14.6 million. It was at this price that an untitled painting that Basquiat painted in 1981 was auctioned in 2007.
Jean-Michel Basquiat is an American graffiti artist and neo-expressionist. His vibrant style was largely influenced by abstract expressionists, as well as the work of street graffiti artists. The popularity of Basquiat and his paintings increased in 1988 after the artist's death. It was classic for that time - from a drug overdose.
Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the most famous contemporary artists. The American is also a major figure in punk art and neo-expressionism. Basquiat became famous thanks to his works in the style of graffiti and street art. He went international, focusing his creativity around issues of racism and all kinds of inequalities. Basquiat was the first black artist to achieve fame, and although his career was cut short by death at just 27 years old, Basquiat's work remains extremely influential in the art world.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Basquiat comes from a culturally rich but difficult family. His father was a Haitian immigrant and his mother was Puerto Rican-American. This allowed him to speak fluent English, Spanish and French. His mother loved painting and throughout the boy’s childhood she visited New York museums with him.
Some time after his parents divorced and his mother was admitted to a mental hospital, Basquiat left home due to physical and emotional abuse. He spent several years homeless, staying with friends, sleeping on park benches and abandoned buildings.
In 2013, the painting “Doubleheads” (1982) was sold for $48.8 million at auction in New York
Living on the streets played an important role in his career. Being homeless, Basquiat sold postcards and T-shirts with his drawings to earn at least enough food. Today these works sell for several thousand dollars at auctions.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Basquiat was friends and collaborated with Andy Warhol. Jean-Michel met the pop art legend in one of the New York restaurants. Having accidentally seen Warhol, he offered him to buy several of his postcards. Warhol agreed, and also invited the young artist to have lunch with him. He refused, saying that he needed to go. In fact, Basquiat ran to the studio, managed to paint a picture of the two of them, and then hurried back to the restaurant to give it to a new acquaintance. They ended up creating paintings together in which Warhol's pop art was covered in graffiti. From 1984 to 1985, they painted 130 canvases “with four hands”.
Great Hits of Leonardo da Vinci, 1982
The anatomical details in Basquiat's paintings appeared due to a childhood tragedy. When Jean-Michel was still a child, he was hit by a car. He suffered multiple internal injuries and a broken arm, and had to have his spleen removed. The rehabilitation process took a long time. For fun, the mother brought the boy a Gray's Anatomy textbook. The time spent with the book became the reason for the appearance of references to this anatomical atlas in the artist’s work.
In 2017, an untitled work by Basquiat from 1982 sold for $110.5 million at auction in New York.
The paintings presented at his first solo exhibition completely sold out. In 1982, the artist was only 21; instead of canvases, he used boxes, doors, windows and even refrigerators. After this, he became incredibly popular and was often spotted in the company of many stars. At the same time, he became friends with David Bowie, and dated Madonna.
Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Street art, or “street art” is one of the varieties of modern fine art, which is distinguished by a distinctly urban style and motifs. Many of us think that graffiti is street art, but this is a misconception. In fact, graffiti is only a fraction of this cultural phenomenon. Along with graffiti, sculptural installations, posters, and stencils are part of street art.
Every detail of a work of street art, from the outline to the shades of paint, is a very important, integral component of the whole image, since all these details reflect the unique style of the creator in the metropolis environment. In street art, the most serious task is not to occupy the space for a future work of art, but to attract the viewer’s attention to one’s work, initiating a dialogue between the creator and the observer.
The themes of street art works most often become topical, burning issues of our time. This art generates a storm of emotions in the audience and their range is very wide: from paralyzing shock to inner spiritual rejoicing. It is worth noting that street art is not a foreign entity in the urban structure, but quite the contrary, it, like a mirror, reflects the life model of a metropolis and its neighborhoods, demonstrates the mood of citizens and the speed of development of urban communications.
One of the brightest representatives of street art on a global scale is the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Unfortunately, his life was very short and tragic; Basquiat lived only 27 years. Many connoisseurs of contemporary art probably know about Jean-Michel in the context of his fruitful collaboration with the odious Andy Worgol, or perhaps thanks to the wonderful biographical feature film “Basquiat”, which was released in 1996.
What is the phenomenon of the work of a black master of illogical and often plotless New York graffiti? Perhaps no one can tell about Basquiat better than he did in his time through his works. But we'll try anyway.
Jean-Michel Basquiat spent his childhood and youth in Brooklyn. He was the eldest son of Matilde Andrades from Puerto Rico and Gerard Basquiat from Haiti. As a teenager, the guy became interested in urban wall paintings and inscriptions. His works, signed with the pseudonym “SAMO,” appeared on many walls of houses. His passion for graffiti was preceded by constant work on his own development; Jean-Michel was actively interested in culture, read a lot about symbolist artists, and studied mythology. Graffiti was followed by painting.
The artist plunged headlong into the bohemian life of New York. In a very short period of time, only a lazy art critic wrote about the black nugget from Brooklyn; Jean-Michel’s paintings became part of the American mainstream and were selling like hot cakes, at a price of at least $50,000!
A separate life and creative milestone for Basquiat was his fruitful friendship with Andy Vorgol. According to legend, they met in one of the Soho restaurants. The pioneer of pop art was pleasantly surprised and fascinated by the childishly frank manner of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The creative tandem of the young and somewhat naive Basquiat and the already “seasoned” Vorgol became very productive and successful for both of them. Their friendship continued until Andy Vorgol's death in 1987, and together the artists created several original and fresh installations.
It was with Andy’s light hand that Jean-Michel became a real star of the bohemian parties of New York; yesterday’s awkward teenager could boast of friendship with David Bowie and other iconic personalities of that period. In 1985, his portrait graced the cover of the iconic New York Times Magazine. Jean-Michel's creativity was not limited only to street art and fine art, he became the founder and frontman of the group "Gray", which played a lot in clubs in Manhattan.
Even when he was a street artist, Jean-Michel became addicted to drugs, and this passion destroyed him on August 12, 1988. What is the outcome of the life of this extraordinary personality? A short career of less than 10 years, thousands of drawings, many of which are in US museums of modern art, colossal multimillion-dollar revenue from the sale of paintings (in 2007, one of Basquiat’s paintings was auctioned for $14.6 million).
You may be asking: what does Jean-Michel Basquiat have to do with today's street art? The most direct! What a self-taught black artist began in distant Brooklyn has reached us. Street art is steadily gaining momentum in Russia. Have you noticed that recently more and more large-scale art objects painted with all the colors of the rainbow have appeared in the capital? This is the notorious “street art”.
And that’s not all, the already traditional Moscow Urban Art Festival MOST Festival is taking place in Moscow. We wrote about last year's event several times: and.
More detailed information about the organizers’ plans for 2013 (and there will definitely be a festival!) can be found on the official
