Jean-Michel Basquiat: The life and work behind the legend
Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, NYC
He took the s art world by storm – and then at just 27, he was gone. Alastair Sooke looks back at the short life and stunning work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Everybody loves the story of a prodigy. As a teenager, Van Dyck exhibited tremendous facility with a paintbrush in Rubens’s studio. In , the year-old Picasso announced himself with preternatural self-confidence in a blazing self-portrait inscribed “Yo – Picasso”. These rank among the most exciting moments in the history of art.
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So does the meteoric rise of the ultimately ill-starred American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who mesmerised New York’s hard-boiled art world during the ’80s, and is now the subject of a new retrospective containing around artworks at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
He wore paint-spattered Armani suits with his pockets stuffed full of hundred-dollar
John basquiat paintings!