With a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat’s diverse cultural heritage was one of his many sources of inspiration. A self-taught artist, Basquiat began drawing at an early age on sheets of paper his father, an accountant, brought home from the office. As he delved deeper into his creative side, his mother strongly encouraged to pursue artistic talents. Basquiat first attracted attention for his graffiti in New York City in the late 1970s, under the name “SAMO.” Working with a close friend, he tagged subway trains and Manhattan buildings with cryptic aphorisms. In 1977, Basquiat quit high school a year before he was slated to graduate. To make ends meet, he sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork on the streets of his native New York.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York. He first attracted attention for his graffiti under the name "SAMO" in New York City. He sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork on the streets before his painting career took off. Jean-Michel Basquiat is the only black American painter to have made a substantial mark on the history of art. He is amongst the most influential artists of an international movement started around 1980 which was marked by the post-modern return to figurative painting. Basquiat is art’s answer to Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker. Although his work might look unsophisticated at first, it is evidence of a powerful poetical and visual gift. Basquiat was getting an international echo with his work before most of the artists his age had time to finish art school. Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27, in New York City.
n.
An art movement based on expressionism that developed in the early 1980s in Germany, Italy, and the United States and is characterized by crudely drawn, garishly colored canvases depicting violent or erotic subject matter.
Basquiat enjoyed attacking the art world from the outside. As success and acceptance came, however, it would recast him in an inside role, and critics of his work often said that the raw street energy would be sapped by a more comfortable life style made possible by money and fame. For Basquiat to remain an outsider and avoid becoming comfortable or satisfied transgressions of artistic and behavioural norms would have to proceed at the same rate as the recognition of his work would draw him into the inside.
While Basquiat’s earliest works copy the aphasic style of rap, later they take on the bold and crisp look of Ellsworth Kelly’s art. Pop Art, figurative or abstract, edged into Basquiat’s work not to vacuum-seal and purify life’s conflicted spaces, but rather to mark a trend. The trend of the American lifestyle is marked by the advertisement-like explicitniess of its symbols represented by the dollar sign, also present in lesser variants as collage superimposed on painting. A brutality in any case absorbed by a formal order that does not overlook Pollock, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg. The artist receives energy and a sense of contamination from Action Painting and the New Dada, the ability to express himself with paint and images, action and construction.
Warhol’s death hit Jean-Michel extremely hard. He was already frustrated and upset about his lack of recognition by the art world, and this only added to his distress. He became more unhappy and began heavily using drugs. Many of his friends tried to help but he was almost inconsolable. Through it all he continued to work, but his art and his face reflected his unhappiness. The once vibrant young man was bitter,lonely, and frustrated. Most of his friends truly abandoned him, and he sank deeper and deeper into depression. His race and his cutting edge talent were held against him until the end of his career.
