Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basquiat

On December 22, 1960 an original American Artist was born. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City and his name was Jean-Michel Basquiat. Due to his mother being Puerto Rican and his father Haitian, he was fluent in French, Spanish and English. When basquiat was 17 he started spray painting buildings in lower Manhattan and tagging them with his signature Samo. Samo stood for “Same ol’ Shit” and a year later Village Voice Newspaper published an article about his infamous artwork. That same year Basquiat dropped out of high school a year before he was about to graduate and moved into the city with some friends. Basquiat sold t-shirts, postcards and worked in a unique clothing warehouse to make money.

In 1980 Basquiat’s unique style started to become recognized at the Times Square show, which was a multi artist exhibition. Through the year of 1981 basquiat started to become even more popular through magazines, galleries, and being friends with other well known artist. Basquiat became great friends with Andy Warhol in 1982 and they started doing their art work together, influencing ideas into each others pieces. Their friendship continued until the death of Warhol in 1987. On February 10, 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of “The New York Times Magazine, posing for the Cathleen McGuigan article "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist,"(). He went from living on the streets to being a very popular American Artist. Gallery dealers were known to take his artwork unfinished just because his art was skyrocketing in sales. Basquiats life as a famous artist lasted less than a decade due to long drug addictions to hard drugs such as heroine and cocaine. He died on August 12, 1988 from overdosing on heroin. "The only thing the market liked better than a hot young artist was a dead hot young artist after his death his paintings sold for even more and a biography film, titled Basquiat was made in memory of him.
Basquiat was a...

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