Jean Micheal Basquiat would have turned 50 today. He died at the age of 27 in 1988 of a heroin overdose.
Jean Micheal Basquiat would have turned 50 today. He died at the age of 27 in 1988 of a heroin overdose. The short bright career of this monumental artist is significant for so many reasons; not merely for the fact he was the first Black American art star to break into the then very white art world, nor for the fact he was an instrumental voice in the early expressions of Hip Hop culture. Nor should he be remembered for the way he pioneered graffiti as art, collaborated with the great Andy Warhol, or that he dated the young Madonna…
Basquiat should be remembered for the outstanding contribution to painting’s legacy — bending words into brushstrokes — expressing rarefied landscapes of chaotic poetry that Pollack and Picasso could only have wished to have composed.
I leave the rest of this ode to the young master to Lenelle Moïse:
