Jean-Michel Basquiat

    Basquiat is a New York Native and very well know modern artist who reached the height of his success during the 80's. Many young artist now-a-days love him and his legacy lives on. If you haven't already please watch the documentary about his life and career: Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, it is available here on Hulu.com

    At 15 years old, the artist ran away from home and became a staple of New York City's underground arts scene. He began as a graffiti artist under the SAMO pseudonym, making critical and ironic quips with semi-coherent jabs such as "SAMO©… 4 THE SO-CALLED AVANT-GARDE." It wasn't long before Basquiat turned to painting, keeping his knack for re-appropriation, rhythm and aggression firmly intact. (Huffingtonpost.com)

 

  Soon Basquiat's abstract painting style became a staple. He was very popular on Downtown Manhattan's art scene and his paintings were highly demanded. Years after his untimely death his fame skyrocketed and doesn't seem like its dying down.
     My reason for posting about Jean-Michel, despite his talent and impact on artists like myself, is that a new exhibition has opened at the Gagosian Gallery, examining over 50 of his works. Jean-Michel Basquiat will show until April 6 at the Gallery in New York.

Featuring over fifty works from public and private collections, the exhibition spans Basquiat’s brief but meteoric career, which ended with his death at the age of twenty-seven. Thirty years after Larry Gagosian first presented his work in Los Angeles, twenty years after the first posthumous survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1992–93), and eight years after the Brooklyn Museum of Art retrospective (2005), viewers will have a fresh opportunity to consider Basquiat’s central role in his artistic generation as a lightning rod and a bridge between cultures. (http://www.gagosian.com)

image courtesy of Huffingtonpost.com

I am certainly looking forward to seeing the exibit and I hope I can take hundreds of photos, I will definitely be blogging about it. To see more about this at Huffington Post and Gagosian.com