- Ronald Ávila-Claudio – @ronaldavilapr
- BBC News World
image source, Getty Images
It was 1978 and Andy Warhol, already an established star at the time, was with art critic Henry Geldzahler at a restaurant in Soho, New York.
A young black man spots them from outside and decides to approach with some postcards designed by himself in his hands. The king of pop art buys him one, his companion rejects the teenager and calls him a brat.
That daring young man of 17 years, named Jean Michel-Basquiat, just three years following the meeting, he would become an important figure of art in the city of skyscrapers. And in less than a decade he would be as internationally recognized as Warhol admired him.
Today, almost 30 years following his untimely death in 1988, he is the most sought-following black artist in history.
His paintings, which through “primitive” strokes present important historical events, often related to urban culture and the reality of the black and Latino community, sell for millions of dollars.
In 2018, his work “Untitled” (1982)which shows a colorful skull painted with thick lines, was auctioned by Sotheby’s for US$110.5 million, the highest number achieved by an American artist at that time.
image source, Getty Images
This work, titled “Untitle 1982”, was auctioned for US$110.5 by Sotheby’s.
Basquiat, who born on December 22, 1960 Born to a Haitian-American father and a mother of Puerto Rican descent, he went from living on the streets to achieving success without ever formally attending art school. He didn’t even finish high school.
For some, like the director of the Pérez Museum in Miami, Franklin Sirmanswho has curated several exhibitions on the artist, is “a genius of our time”.
“I would say that he is one of the most famous artists on the planet. His works are not only unique pieces of art, but they have the ability to translate the problems and concerns of the time in a contemporary sense, and in a very deep historical sense” , said the also writer in an interview with BBC Mundo
Basquiat was irreverent both personally and artistically, who created a style outside of any paradigm, with an enormous desire to be recognized, and who admired stars like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who, due to things in life, died like him at the age of 27 because of a drug overdose.
a boy from brooklyn
Jean Michel-Basquiat began drawing on the sheets of paper that his father, Gerard, an accountant, would bring home from the office. While his mother, who also drew, constantly took him to see exhibits at places like the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.
image source, Getty Images
Jean Michel-Basquiat died in 1988, at just 27 years old, but leaving an enormous collection of works that now sell for millions of dollars.
It is well documented that she was the person who inspired him to pursue his artistic career. In 1969, for example, Basquiat was hit by a car and suffered multiple fractures. When he was admitted to the hospital, she gave him a copy of the book “Gray’s Anatomy”, which would become an inspiration for his later anatomical drawings.
“I have said that my mother gave me all the primary things. Art comes from her,” said the artist himself regarding Matilde Andradas, in an interview in 1986.
But following his parents’ divorce and several moves, including a short stay in Puerto Rico, Basquiat became a rebellious young man who constantly ran away from home. And at 17 he was expelled for misconduct from New York City-As-School.
It was in this place where he met a partner, Al Diazwith whom he started a graffiti project called SAMO, an acronym for Same old shit (“The same shit as always”, in Spanish).
SAMO was more than anything conceptual art, in which both artists wrote philosophical poems on the walls of New York City.
“He didn’t have a gallery, so he made the subways and the walls next to the art galleries in Soho and lower Manhattan his own gallery,” says Sirmans.
Basquiat’s notoriety in the artistic world began following the newspaper The Village Voice reviewed SAMO’s work in 1978, although the concept would die a year later.
image source, Getty Images
“Goat” is a Basquiat piece from Sotheby’s that in 2017 had a value of between US$7 million and US$9 million.
However, the painter began a dazzling solo career, which began when he was invited to participate in the Time Square Show (1980), an influential group show curated and managed by the same artists who exhibited there, including the likes of Keith Haring and Jenny Holzer.
By 1981, he already had one-man shows and his pieces were selling for thousands of dollars. At 24, Basquiat’s works were occupying spaces in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and were acquired by important collectors. They also traveled to places as diverse as the Ivory Coast or Germany.
“I think his work is so popular around the world because it speaks to different classes and demographics. His life speaks to diverse people in a way that the lives of other artists, whatever their auction sales levels, They don’t. They’re not as interesting as human beings,” Sirmans told BBC Mundo.
His art, which encompasses hundreds of paintings, graphics and interventions on objects, is dotted with urban elements, as well as loaded with repeated symbols, such as skulls or crowns, for which historians offer multiple meanings, and which are now part of popular culture.
image source, Getty Images
“Untitle 1984” contains a crown, one of the symbols that the painter repeats the most in his works.
Basquiat’s creations appear in the work of other artists, on t-shirts, various objects and even movies. He is also referenced in songs by contemporary artists, such as Jay Z’s “BBC” or Kanye West’s “That’s My Bitch”, to name a few.
The relationship with Warhol and the cost of fame
The reviews of the time regarding Basquiat not only describe his enormous talent and the large sales of his creations, but also that the young artist attended the most exclusive parties and cocktails in New York and related to important figures.
He was, for example, Madonna’s partner in 1982, when the singer was just beginning her colossal career.
He also met and became a close friend of the man he met at the age of 17: Andy Warhol. They both admired and influenced each other’s work. In 1985 they opened a major joint show, marking Warhol’s return to painting following years of experimenting with other media.
image source, Getty Images
In the New York of the 80s, plastic artists were something like rock stars besieged by the press. Basquiat and Warhol were part of this select group that constantly attended parties and cocktail parties. In the photo they appear with the model Tina Chow.
“Jean-Michel made me paint differently, that’s a good thing,” Warhol wrote in his diary in 1984.
However, the collaboration received strong negative reviews in the press, something that affected their relationship and made them distance themselves.
But a 1988 New York Times note points out that the author of Campbell’s Soups was one of the people who warned Basquiat the most regarding his excessive use of drugs, a problem that marked his career.
In the same note Basquiat was described as a prodigy, but also as someone who constantly acted in an “erratic” way, distracted by the weight of fame.
What is certain is that he also faced the complex art world of his day, in which he was one of the few black people to have achieved such a level of “success”. Some claim that art dealers offered him drugs in exchange for his paintings and he was even called Andy Warhol’s “pet” in a review.
image source, Getty Images
“Hollywood Africans” is a piece that Basquiat created in 1983.
“He was a precocious genius, making works for a world that didn’t necessarily understand him,” says Sirmans.
On August 12, 1988, following having tried several times to rehab his addiction, Basquiat was found dead at 54 Great Jones Street in New York. He was only 27 years old and that’s how his legend began.
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
