“I wanted to be a star not a gallery mascot” ( Negrón-Muntaner 124). Jean-Michel Basquiat is known as one of the most influential street artists. He revolutionized the traditions of street life, clubs, graffiti and fine art. His work represented the foregrounded issue of race in a traditionally white-dominated art world. Spanish–Caribbean culture, reading, jazz and blues, and black heroes were just a few of Basquiat’s early influences. These mix of influences can only happen in a city like New York City. It is the home to immigrants from all over the world. One quarter if its 8 million residents are hispanic or latino. As he grew as an artist, the list of his influences got longer. Andy Warhol and Julian Schnabel played important roles in the Basquiat’s road to fame, Schnabel was his mentor and Warhol was his idol (Bossy 16). His mixed media works reflected the influences of art history, autobiography, black history, politics, and pop culture. During Basquiat’s rise to fame he began to feel used and as a “pet”, this was the beginning of his lashouts, irresponsibility, and drug abuse (Bossy 16). Basquiat skyrocketed to fame in the 1980s, becoming one of the hottest new artists in the then white-hot, drug- and money-drenched art world of New York’s SoHo District. In 1983, the Whitney Museum of American Art included him in its prestigious Biennial Exhibition. In 1985, the New York Times Magazine put the ultra-hip celebrity artist on its cover according to an article in the Courant (McNally). Just like Basquiat had influences, he became other artists’ influences like Alec Monopoly and Keith Haring. HIs legacy is still strong among today’s contemporary artists, who continue to admire his creative spontaneity, his intelligence and the raw beauty of his paintings. Basquiat, craved stardom at a young age, but would eventually ‘burn out’ like his heroes.
Basquiat worked in New York City, the melting pot of different cultures. There are highly diverse groups that come from Native American, African, Caribbean, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Hispanic art heritage is really prominent. There are author talks to art exhibitions, from Latin jazz concerts to flamenco lessons. The Hispanic population grew by 8 percent over the last decade and now has a 29 percent share of the city total according to the 2010 census. The Hispanic population continues to diversify – Puerto Ricans (31%), Dominicans (25%), Mexicans (13%) – the fastest growing group in the city, followed by Ecuadorians, and Colombians (United States Census). The Bronx has the largest Hispanic population in the city, which now constitutes 54% of all persons in that borough, this is where Basquiat grew up and where his influences come from. Manhattan lost Hispanics between 2000 and 2010, a decline of about 4 percent, while The Bronx and Queens increased by 15 and 10 percent, this shows how the hispanic community keeps on growing in New York City. Basquiat’s culture and neighborhood is one of his biggest influences for his art.
Basquiat had many influences. A few were the Spanish-Caribbean culture of his mother, his faith which was very big in his family, literary works, music such as jazz and blues, and to black heroes from American boxer Joe Walcott to Toussaint-Louverture who is known as the liberator of Haiti. Despite his street image, he had a good life growing up for that he was in the middle class (Negrón-Muntaner 117). One can see how a child will come out based on how the individual’s parents are and how they raise the child. Basquiat’s father, Gerard, was known as well-dressed, hard-working, tough-minded, and ambitious. He set examples for Jean Michel of style, heart, and drive (David etal. 255). Basquiat’s mother spoke Caribbean Spanish to him and he would respond in Spanish, this influenced his paintings because he would generally put spanish text. She would take Jean-Michel to see museums and the paintings in them. As early of the age of six, he already had a card that identified him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum. (David etal. 255). Children inherit their qualities from their parents, Jean-Michel learned confidence and toughness through his father. From his mother he learned how to place this toughness in a creative presence (David etal. 255). Basquiat owes recognition to his mother for opening his eyes that medicine connects with texts and drawings. Basquiat, generally, in his artwork would depict body parts in his work after readings from Gray’s Anatomy. It was at an early age when he discovered his influences, as early as eight years old. Then as a teenager it was the start to his career being a graffiti artist. The movement was known as SAMO (same old shit). He would write public poetry and aphorisms on walls across the power corridors of Manhattan during the late 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s there was a rise to a New York queer-inflected, multiethnic urban culture (Negrón-Muntaner 115). This created new forms in music, the visual arts, and dance. According to the curator and art consultant Jeffrey Deitch, it “was an era of greater sexual openness to different cultures, and interchange between races.” (Negrón-Muntaner 115) He would strategically place these worlds outside art galleries or on the pathways of influential people. Basquiat had no filter that he would even include writing that critiqued the white about greed and white privilege. He would make art because it made him feel free of a devalued racial identity and able to secure him a safer place in the world. His main goal was to be recognized beyond the label of being identified as “big black artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat is identified as a major American artist. He has courage and is full of powers of self-transformation. The courage, means not being afraid to fail, transforms paralyzing self-conscious “predicaments of culture” into confident “ecstasies of cultures recombined.” (David etal. 265).
Basquiat freely voiced his feelings about being black and being an artist, but society mixed both terms. It was hard to pull away from this because at the time he was surrounded by one of the most hostile cultural environments for racialized people which is known as high art. All Basquiat wanted was to become famous and have everything in his hands from praise to luxury. According to the writer Patricia Bosworth, “Basquiat maintained that all he wanted was to be famous. He could learn how to draw later.” (Negrón-Muntaner 118).
Basquiat would go beneath the surface through the art he produced. “He confronts the anatomy of the city at its racial, linguistic, and cultural cutting edges. He gives you influences in conflict, and casts them into coherence. And we are the ones who benefit, not he, destroyed by one of the more virulent “disease cultures” of the streets, heroin.” (David etal. 256). Basquiat’s art style was a unique one and due to this it helped him monetize his image. He did not only work with street art, he did mixed media as well. His works influences were of art history, autobiography, black history, politics, and pop culture. He would include personal signs and symbols that appeared as nonsense but instead they commented on the contemporary urban culture. Basquiat would usually blend and what was traditional and best in his cultural experience, like jazz and blues and opera, with what was exciting in the popular culture. In Italian, a work of 1983, Basquiat shows the blend of different cultures. Here Jean-Michel achieves reconciliation, not only of brilliant greens and pinks but different idioms as well. Body-oriented legends—human anatomy coming through—are stated in English (TEETH, DIAGRAM OF THE HEART PUMPING BLOOD), Latin (CORPUS), Spanish (SANGRE), and Portuguese (SANGUE) (David etal. 256). Like most artists, Basquiat had his own motifs. He used the three pointed crown, as seen in Untitled K(1982) and the transparent man in Flexible (1984). In K Basquiat paints his crown with gilt and surrounds it with a cluster of dollar signs and a copyright marks to fireshadow about fabulous and rich futures (David etal. 267). The icon of the crown appears as Basquiat’s quintessential answer to a question once posed by Henry Geldzahler, “What is your subject matter?” and Basquiat replied. “Royalty, heroism, and the streets.” (David etal. 261). Most of the people in his paintings are persons of color. Basquiat did this because he noted that, “I didn’t see many paintings with black people in them.” (David etal. 267). Basquiat’s first public exhibition was in 1981 at the Times Square Show and in 1982, he had his first one-person show, this shows how rapidly he rose to fame (Bossy 16). When fame came into Basquiat’s life it came all too fast that it was short lived. The behaviors he began to show foreshadow the difficulties he would encounter in the future. Basquiat continuously began to feel like a pet. He turned to drugs as a getaway. The more he worked, the more he fed the art market; the more money he made, the more drugs he purchased (Negrón-Muntaner 124). It was ironic how the thing he loved to the the most caused him to spiral down. The art he would create made him feel free of a devalued racial identity and helped secure himself in a safer place in a world ( Negrón-Muntaner 117). This did not last a long time as the drugs began to take part of a large part of his life. Basquiat was no longer viewed as an artist but more as a brand. He was often referred to as a “colored” artist. Basquiat has is studied as an African American artist and is also known as the most financially successful Black visual artist in history. Today, some of his paintings are sold for up to $57.3 million. This painting was sold to Japanese fashion mogul (Martinez). Besides turning to heroin he showed no order in his life and a nomad behavior. The nomad behavior came to define his artistic persona. Unfortunately towards the end of his career he began to see himself as a person who had to perform for people who were white and saw Basquiat as a lower person. “They set it up for me so I’d have to make eight paintings in a week, for the show the next week…. I made them in this big warehouse there, Annina, Mazzoli, and Bruno were there…. It was like a factory, a sick factory…. I hated it.”, this is an example of the behavior Basquiat had towards the end in producing art. During this time Bassquiat began to have erratic behavior which was noted as a symptom of individual mental instability. Another behavior that showed this instability was how Basquiat would have no control over his money. He was known to literally throw his money “out the window”, like giving dollar bills to the homeless people. Basquiat would do this instead of being a responsible adult and pay taxes or keep accounting of his earnings to know how much wealth he has accumulated Basquiat’s assistant John Seed would tell say that, “Once I told him that he needed to make investments, and that he ought to get a stockbroker so that if his career burned out he would have something. He was dumbfounded, and carefully explained that there was absolutely no need for him to plan for the future.” (Negrón-Muntaner 123) Basquiat would valorize himself through materialistic ways. He would purchase what was seen as the “best” and most expensive. “He always appreciated expensive things,” wrote Jennifer Clement, “as if consuming them would make him valuable. Basquiat’s motto was to live in the moment. He spent most of his earnings on himself,friends, drugs, and women. Even though he seems to always be surrounded by company, due to his instability it was hard for him to maintain his friendships. “Couldn’t maintain a single emotional bond—whether it was to friends, lovers, or art dealers.” Biographer Phoebe Hoban noted. It also had to due with the drugs. As time progressed Basquiat was realizing how were his real friends and who were just his friend for convenience. He began to realize this as many people began to steal and money and art. Soon after this Basquiat began to distance himself from his everyday life and still preserved the joy of painting.
Basquiat revolutionized the world of street art. Today, there are so many famous artist like Alec Monopoly and Keith Haring. Like Basquiat, these artists all have a message that they try to get out. Alec Monopoly came to the spotlight in 2008 during the economic crisis ( Forbes Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle). He began to paint variations of the monopoly man around LA, which was ironic at the time because the monopoly man is known for money. Alec Monopoly says that his work was a social commentary on capitalism, consumerism, corporate greed, and the scandals that were occurring like the arrest of Bernie Madoff. His fame was overnight, he recalls it, “I was playing Monopoly and watching the news, and I saw Bernie Madoff being arrested. And it hit me, it was like a light bulb and, that night, I started a canvas of a Monopoly guy that I never finished. It’s a Monopoly guy half-painted, and I went out on the street and just started tagging the Monopoly guy. The response was so quick. It was picked up on the Internet and in magazines, so I just went crazy with it.” Monopoly names Salvador Dalí as an inspiration to his practice, as well as pioneering graffiti artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Keith Haring is another street artist who was working around the time that Basquiat was. Like Basquiat and Alec Monopoly, Haring, spread messages through his work. Both Basquiat and Haring began their public art careers by writing on public surfaces (Negrón-Muntaner 127). His work was about birth, death, sex and war, it was very fitting for the period in which he lived and worked, which was the 1980s. Haring’s main goal was to raise awareness through his art for AIDS. Hs works also showed his drug addiction problems. Keith Haring himself died of AIDS in 1990 at age 32. His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and others around the world, similar to where Basquiat’s art is found. Keith Haring & Basquiat are generally perceived as “the most original artists of the new decade”(Negrón-Muntaner 127).
Unfortunately Basquiat lived a short lived life. He died of a heroin overdose in the year of 1988 at the age of twenty. Basquiat was taken to his lowest point when his mentor and good friend Andy Warhol died of a drug overdose as well. It was rumored that they were lovers. His legacy is still strong today. Basquiat played an important role in the rise of Punk Art and Neo-Expressionism. He left ninety five paintings and nine hundred works on paper at the time of his death. Basquiat’s idols lived a life similar life and that was a early death. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who also died of drug overdoses at the age of 27, and the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, who had similarly battled with heroin addiction. Basquiat craved stardom at a young age and eventually burned out. His legacy is still strong especially among today’s contemporary artists. He is most admired for his creative spontaneity, intelligence,and the raw beauty of his paintings. Basquiat literally rocketed to fame and riches but he did everything too fast which caused him to go down. His art is displayed all over the world like in the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of Art and he is also the subject of numerous biographies and documentaries.
Jean Michel Basquiat best represents the mix of cultural influences in New York City in the 1980s. He was able to mix high art and street art into one, he changed the narrow gap with elite art establishments. He began as a graffiti artist who would place his work strategically by art galleries and where influential people would usually pass by. Basquiat had skill and this is what brought him to the top. He voiced his feelings about being black and being an artist in the most diverse city in the world. Basquiat’s influences came from his cultural background. Being afro-caribbean descent he had cultural elements in his works as well as anatomical ones. His passion began at a young age where he would usually go to art museums with his mother and read books like Gray’s Anatomy. Basquiat’s Unfortunately, this quick rise to fame had a come down. Basquiat, like most of his influencers got caught up in the drugs and eventually died from a heroin overdose. Today, his influence is very prominent on society and other artists.