Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn on December 22, 1960, to a Haitian father, Gérard Basquiat, and a Puerto Rican mother, Matilde. As a child, he visited New York museums with his mother. After he was struck by a car at age seven, she gave him a copy of *Gray’s Anatomy* while he recovered. Anatomical diagrams later became one of the sources he drew on in his paintings.

In the late 1970s, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz wrote cryptic phrases on buildings in Lower Manhattan under the name SAMO. The messages attracted attention before Basquiat became known primarily as a painter. He appeared in the 1980 *Times Square Show*, an exhibition that brought together artists working beyond conventional galleries, and in the 1981 *New York/New Wave* exhibition at P.S. 1. His first New York solo exhibition followed at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982.

Basquiat’s canvases combined figures, lists, fragments of language, crowns and images drawn from anatomy, music and history. He often crossed out words without making them unreadable. In *Hollywood Africans* (1983), he depicted himself with the artists Rammellzee and Toxic amid phrases invoking racist stereotypes and the entertainment industry. *Horn Players* (1983) pays tribute to jazz musicians Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Another 1983 work, *Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart)*, responds to the death of a young Black artist after an encounter with New York transit police.

His references were wide-ranging, but they were not interchangeable decoration. Names, dates and repeated words could direct a viewer toward a specific musician, athlete or historical account. In *Irony of Negro Policeman* (1981), for example, a uniformed figure and the painting’s title confront questions of race and authority. Basquiat’s use of such subjects made Black figures central to work exhibited in an art world that had often excluded them.

Basquiat participated in the 1983 Whitney Biennial and later made paintings with Andy Warhol. Their joint works were exhibited at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1985. The partnership was one part of a career that advanced remarkably quickly but lasted less than a decade. Basquiat died in Manhattan on August 12, 1988, at age 27, from a heroin overdose.

Interest in his work continued after his death. In 2017, his 1982 painting *Untitled*, featuring a large skull-like head, sold at Sotheby’s for $110.5 million. The sale marked a new auction record for his work.