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Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self Portrait, 1984 Acrylic and oil stick on paper mounted on canvas, 38 ⅞ × 28 inches (98.7 × 71.1 cm)© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self Portrait, 1984

Acrylic and oil stick on paper mounted on canvas, 38 ⅞ × 28 inches (98.7 × 71.1 cm)
© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Macho Camacho), 1982 Acrylic and oil stick on poster, 23 × 29 inches (58.4 × 73.7 cm)© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Macho Camacho), 1982

Acrylic and oil stick on poster, 23 × 29 inches (58.4 × 73.7 cm)
© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1981 Acrylic, oil stick, and pencil on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm)© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1981

Acrylic, oil stick, and pencil on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm)
© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

About

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in 1960 in New York City, where he died in 1988. Born to a Haitian father and a Puerto-Rican mother, Basquiat left his family home in Brooklyn, New York at the age of fifteen and took to the streets. A voracious autodidact, he quickly became a denizen of the explosive and decadent New York underground scene—a noise musician who loved jazz, and a street poet who scrawled his sophisticated aphorisms in Magic Marker across the walls of downtown Manhattan, copyrighting them under the name SAMO. In 1981, he killed off this alter ego and began painting and drawing, first on salvaged materials then later on canvas and paper, and making bricolage with materials scavenged from the urban environment. From the outset he worked compulsively; his passion for words and music, his intense yet fluid energy, and the heterogeneous materials that he employed so freely imbued his work with urgency and excitement. He sold his first painting in 1981, and by 1982, spurred by the Neo-Expressionist art boom, his work was in great demand. In 1985, he was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in connection with an article on the newly exuberant international art market. In that photograph, Basquiat is a vision of cool, sprawled in a chair in an elegant three-piece suit and tie, with bunched dreadlocks and bare feet, in front of a large, bold painting—a supernova in the making.

Charismatic image aside, Basquiat was a prodigious young talent, fusing drawing and painting with history and poetry to produce an unprecedented artistic language and content that bridged cultures and enunciated alternative histories. Combining materials and techniques with uninhibited yet knowing and precise intent, his paintings maintain a powerful tension between opposing aesthetic forces—expression and knowledge, control and spontaneity, savagery and wit, urbanity and primitivism—while providing acerbic commentary on the harsh realities of race, culture, and society.

Basquiat is represented in several prominent museum collections all over the world. Major solo exhibitions include “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings 1981–1984,” Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1984; traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, through 1985); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1992; traveled to the Menil Collection, Houston; the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Alabama, through 1994); “Basquiat,” Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2005; traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, through 2006); Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland (2010; traveled to Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris); and “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” Brooklyn Museum, New York (2015). Basquiat starred in “Downtown 81,” a verité movie that was written by Glenn O’Brien, shot by Edo Bertoglio, and produced by Maripol in 1981, but not released until 2000.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Photo: James Van Der Zee, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Performance and Talk

The Writing’s on the Wall

Monday, September 11, 2023, 6pm
Grand LA, Los Angeles
kingpleasure.basquiat.com

This event has been postponed. The new date will be announced shortly.

Join the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat for an immersive experience blending performance and conversation, organized in conjunction with the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure©, on view at the Grand LA through October 15. The evening will begin at 6pm with a viewing of the exhibition, followed by a live performance at 7pm by blues poet, musician, and organizer aja monet, and concluding with a discussion between monet and the artist’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, moderated by singer Mashonda Tifrere. Delving into the profound impact of language and poetry, the audience is invited to discover the driving forces behind monet’s literary prowess and activism while decoding hidden narratives within Basquiat’s artwork.

Purchase Tickets

Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Photo: James Van Der Zee, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Larry Gagosian and Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1983

Panel Discussion

Jean-Michel and His LA Experience
With Lisane Basquiat, Tamra Davis, Larry Gagosian, Jeanine Heriveaux, and Fred Hoffman

Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 7:30pm
Grand LA, Los Angeles
kingpleasure.basquiat.com

Larry Gagosian will discuss his experiences with Jean-Michel Basquiat in Los Angeles in the early 1980s with Tamra Davis, Fred Hoffman, and Basquiat’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux in a panel conversation organized in conjunction with the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure© at the Grand LA. All speakers had a meaningful relationship with the artist between 1982 and 1984. Gagosian presented two solo exhibitions by the artist at his gallery and allowed Basquiat to stay frequently at his house in Venice Beach. Hoffmann found a studio space for Basquiat in Venice and created a suite of prints with him. Davis drove the artist, who never learned to drive, around Los Angeles and filmed him for what would become her acclaimed documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010).

Larry Gagosian and Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, 1983

Tetsuya Ishida, Untitled (Planting Trees), 2000 © Estate of Tetsuya Ishida

Art Fair

West Bund Art & Design 2021

November 12–14, 2021, booth A102
West Bund Art Center, Shanghai
westbundshanghai.com

Gagosian is pleased to participate in the eighth edition of West Bund Art & Design. The gallery will present works by Balthus, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Glenn Brown, Helen Frankenthaler, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Nam June Paik, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Spencer Sweeney, Zao Wou-Ki, and Zeng Fanzhi, among others.

To receive a pdf with detailed information on the works, please contact the gallery at inquire@gagosian.com.

Tetsuya Ishida, Untitled (Planting Trees), 2000 © Estate of Tetsuya Ishida

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Museum Exhibitions

Installation view, El eco de Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, October 2, 2023–March 31, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Rebecca Warren, © Richard Prince. Photo: Pablo Asenjo, courtesy Museo Picasso Málaga

On View

El eco de Picasso

Through March 31, 2024
Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain
museopicassomalaga.org

Organized as part of Picasso Celebration 1973–2023, a series of international exhibitions and events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, The Echo of Picasso focuses on his influence on twentieth-century art. The exhibition places Picasso’s practice in dialogue with work by more than fifty artists, including Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Thomas Houseago, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Cy Twombly, Tom Wesselmann, and Franz West.

Installation view, El eco de Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, October 2, 2023–March 31, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Rebecca Warren, © Richard Prince. Photo: Pablo Asenjo, courtesy Museo Picasso Málaga

Derrick Adams, Woman in Grayscale (Alicia), 2017 © Derrick Adams Studio

On View

Giants
Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys

Through July 7, 2024
Brooklyn Museum, New York
www.brooklynmuseum.org

Giants, the first major exhibition of the Dean Collection, owned by musical icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys, showcases a focused selection from the couple’s world-class holdings and spotlights works by Black diasporic artists. Expansive in their collecting habits, the Deans, both born and raised in New York, champion a philosophy of “artists supporting artists.” “Giants” refers to the renown of legendary artists, the impact of canon-expanding contemporary figures, and some of the monumental works in the collection. Work by Derrick Adams, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Titus Kaphar, and Deana Lawson is included.

Derrick Adams, Woman in Grayscale (Alicia), 2017 © Derrick Adams Studio

Installation view, Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure©, Grand LA, Los Angeles, March 31, 2023–January 1, 2024. Artwork © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York 

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Jean-Michel Basquiat
King Pleasure©

March 31, 2023–January 1, 2024
Grand LA, Los Angeles
kingpleasure.basquiat.com

Organized and curated by the family of Jean-Michel Basquiat, this exhibition of more than two hundred never-before-seen and rarely shown paintings, drawings, and artifacts tells Basquiat’s story from an intimate perspective, intertwining his artistic endeavors with his personal life, influences, and the times in which he lived. Immersive environments showcase Basquiat’s contributions to the history of art and his explorations of multifaceted cultural phenomena—including music, pop culture, and the Black experience—providing insight into his creative life and his singular voice. This exhibition has traveled from the Starrett-Lehigh Building, New York.

Installation view, Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure©, Grand LA, Los Angeles, March 31, 2023–January 1, 2024. Artwork © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York 

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The Inner Island

April 28–November 4, 2023
Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France
www.fondationcarmignac.com

This exhibition, which features more than eighty works by fifty artists, presents visitors with new, unknown worlds floating outside familiar geographies and temporalities. The artists included break away from reality, bringing to life fictional, mental, and abstract islands. Work by Harold Ancart, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Simon Hantaï, Roy Lichtenstein, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

See all Museum Exhibitions for Jean-Michel Basquiat