Artist Profile
Jean-Michel Basquiat
(1960–1988)
Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1988. Photo: Dmitri Kasterine
Presented in conjunction with his current AAM exhibition, Julian Schnabel’s 1996 directorial film debut Basquiat, about fellow auteur, poet, painter, and musician Jean-Michel Basquiat, remains much more than a biopic, standing instead as a heartfelt and poetic homage to a late artistic peer and friend who died prematurely at the age of twenty-seven. Hailed in his time as a prodigy by fellow artists Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, and Schnabel himself, Basquiat first achieved recognition as a driving force in the graffiti art trio known as SAMO, whose work was as confrontational as it was ubiquitous on Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the late 1970s. By the 1980s, Basquiat had begun to exhibit his singular Neo-Expressionist paintings nationally and internationally, boldly deploying an instantly recognizable style rife with provocative iconographic and textual elements harkening to his time as a street artist. Throughout his short life, he continued to confront volatile issues surrounding cultural, racial, and sexual identity through the use of an unmistakable visual language. Today, Basquiat’s revolutionary paintings and drawings remain as powerfully vital and critically alive as the dialogues they continue to spark, explore, and articulate.