Jean-Michel Basquiat

"The Offs: First Record" original first printing, 1984, featuring offset printed artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

• After Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).
• Includes the original record.
• Offset lithograph on vinyl record jacket, vinyl record.
• This work is presented unframed.

This is from the original first edition, first printing/pressing produced during Basquiat's lifetime. Included is the original double-sided insert (or mail catalog) issued solely with the very first pressing. Back cover displays credit to Basquiat for his cover art.

The second of only two record covers designed by Basquiat during his lifetime. Originally from San Francisco, The Offs had moved to NY and soon started handing out at The Mudd Club & Max's Kansas City. Basquiat, a fan of the band, created what looks like a hollow skeleton defined by the artist's signature thorn crown. In his classic repetitive style, Basquiat repeats the bands name three times in the composition, finishing off with the album's title at the base.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s dramatic life and iconic paintings—which variously feature obsessive scribbling, enigmatic symbols and diagrams, and iconography including skulls, masks, and the artist’s trademark crown—make him one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. The self-taught painter embraced graffiti before committing to a studio practice. He found a mentor and friend in Andy Warhol, who helped the young artist navigate the 1980s New York art world. Across his oeuvre, Basquiat drew on his own Caribbean heritage; a convergence of African American, African, and Aztec cultural histories; classical themes; and pop cultural figures including athletes and musicians. The immediacy and intellectual depth of his paintings won him widespread acclaim both before and after his untimely death at the age of 27. Basquiat’s paintings now belong in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others

LP Show" 2003, New York, NY - MOMA / Exit Art Vinyl - Records and Covers by Artists" in 2005 in Bremen's Neues Museum Weserburg; in 2006 in Barcelona, Spain, and 2007 in Porto, Portugal.

Glenn O'Brien's The Beat in "Interview Magazine" May, 1985: O'Brien reviews the album and references Basquiat's cover art.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music (Buchhart, Bessières, Desmarais).

Angela Holm in "NY Arts Magazine" March/April, 2008. Angela Holm & Wu Ziru in "Art Today" February, 2008.

Taschen Art Record Covers (pg. 108)