jean michel basquiat

22/12/60 – 12/08/

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who first achieved notoriety as part of Samo, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic witticisms in the cultural hotbed of New York during the late 1970s, mixing with hip hop, post punk and street artists. In the 1980s he was exhibiting his paintings in galleries and museums internationally.

Basquiat's work is one of the few examples of how an early 1980s American Punk, or graffiti-based and counter-cultural practice could become a fully recognized, critically embraced and popularly celebrated artistic phenomenon, indeed not unlike the rise of American Hip Hop during the same era. Despite his work's "unstudied" appearance, Basquiat very skillfully and purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions, practices, and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage, one deriving, in part, from his urban origins, and in another a more distant, African-Caribbean heritage. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-basquiat-jean-michel.htm#key_ideas_header

Scull, 1981

number 196 1984 orange sports figure 1882

Basquiat video

Basquiat drew significant inspiration from Gray's Anatomy, the well-known medical book that was given to him by his mother at age seven. Beyond the anatomical symbols, Basquiat's other referential images were taken from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/22/jean-michel-basquiat-birthday-15-things-about-the-artist_n_2347564.html?slideshow=true#gallery/271436/2

Dustheads 1982

Notary 1993

Untitled 1981 Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump 1982