Eleanor Nairne

This book allows an unprecedented insight into Basquiat’s art, with pristine reproductions of his most seminal paintings, drawings and notebook sketches. 

• Eleanor Nairne (British).
• Edited by Hans Werner Holzwarth (German).
• Köln: Taschen, 2021.
• 500 pages.
• Hardcover.

A central figure in the ’80s art scene, Jean-Michel Basquiat skyrocketed to fame, known for his iconographic crowns, skulls and stick figures as part of the Neo-Expressionist movement. 

Basquiat was born in 1960 in Park Slope to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, who encouraged his artwork as a child. When his mother was institutionalized, Basquiat rebelled and joined the graffiti nightlife scene of the Lower East Side, selling postcards and upcycling painted clothing at Patricia Field. 

Basquiat started receiving attention for his SAMO graffiti tag, but after being dubbed “the radiant child” by Rene Ricard in Artforum, the world took notice. He was one of the youngest artists to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial as well as Germany’s documenta, where his paintings were displayed alongside works by Warhol, Richter and Twombly. His themes focused on wealth and poverty as well as Black history, slavery and Jim Crow, which he expressed through merging words with collages and codes, drawing images both menacing and ironic. Basquiat worked and lived on Great Jones in a studio owned by his friend Andy Warhol. Dying from a heroin overdose in 1988, Basquiat’s prolific output has had a lasting impact, discussed by generations to come.