Brooklyn-born painter Jean-Michel Basquiat came out of New York’s vibrant downtown scene of the late 1970s to become one of the most influential and internationally renowned artists of the late 20th century. His street art and Neo-Expressionist works on canvas and paper as well as on random objects and surfaces are characterized by visually striking and psychologically powerful combinations of anatomical diagrams, charged words and cryptic phrases, numerals, pictograms, commercial graphic art, allusions to African history and African-American pop culture, as well as stick figures and maps. Born of Afro-Caribbean parents on 22 December 1960, Basquiat was exposed to art by his mother and some of his teachers but received no formal art education. After dropping out of high school and leaving home in 1976, he attracted attention with the enigmatic graffiti he created under the name SAMO, befriending artists and downtown luminaries and beginning to paint and draw with more focused effort. A first public group show in a vacant Times Square building in June 1980 eventually led to his first solo exhibition in 1982. Success among the contemporary art-loving public was immediate, while critics both lauded Basquiat as a genius and derided him as a product of the newly booming market. In the mid-1980s, the artist collaborated on several works with the most famous artist of the time, Andy Warhol. He died of a heroin overdose on 12 August 1988. The influence of Basquiat’s complex aesthetic on subsequent generations of artist remains incalculable. His works can be found in museum collections around the world including The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. According to Sotheby’s Mei Moses index, the average compound annual return for works by Basquiat resold at auction between 2003 and 2017 was 17.4%, and 96.5% of 171 such works increased in value.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Special%20Feature=Signed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first edition</a> of a <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Jean-Michel%20Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jean-Michel Basquiat</a> exhibition catalog, from the exhibition at the Gallery Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich from January 19th to February 16th, 1985.<ul><li>Jean Michel Basquiat (American).</li><li>Zurich: Bischofberger Editions, 1985.</li><li>12 full-page color plates (one folding) and a photographic portrait of Basquiat by Jeannette Montgomery.</li><li>Number 173 of an edition of 1000 hand-signed and numbered by Basquiat.</li><li>Hardcover.</li></ul> “Jean-Michel, contrary to what you might think, absolutely did not consider himself a ‘Graffiti Artist.’ He had always seen himself as a Fine Artist, and his influences ranged from Leonardo Da Vinci to Abstract Expressionists like Cy Twombly and Franz Kline” (John Seed). In January 1985, Basquiat enjoyed his first one-artist show, at the Bischofberger Gallery in Zurich. This is the commemorative book of 12 paintings from that show." Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene. His spray-painted crowns and scribbled words referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. The gestural marks and expressive nature of his work not only aligned him with the street art of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, but also the Neo-Expressionists Julian Schnabel and David Salle. “If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence,” he said of his process. “It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.” Born on December 22, 1960 in Brooklyn, NY, Basquiat never finished high school but developed an appreciation for art as a youth, from his many visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art with his mother. His early work consisted of spray painting buildings and trains in downtown New York alongside his friend Al Diaz. The artist’s tag was the now infamous pseudonym SAMO. After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works. At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. In 2017, after having set Basquiat’s auction record the previous year with a $57.3 million purchase, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa surpassed it, buying the artist’s Untitled (1982) at Sotheby's for $110.5 million. This set a new record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist's work. Today, Basquiat's works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others.

Signed Jean-Michel Basquiat Exhibition Catalog

Basquiat executed this one line poem circa 1982 while living with a noted Gray bandmate.<ul><li>Single page removed from notebook.</li><li>The line reads: "SOME BORING HARBOR / CAMERAS MILD SUSPENCE."</li><li>Ink on paper.</li><li>Obtained directly from a prominent Basquiat Gray band member whose typewritten prose appears on the reverse.</li><li>Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from the aforementioned.</li></ul> Here, Basquiat begins to play with the idea of beginning a screenplay, with the work’s empty space and liner notes leaving us to surreally fill in the blanks. The work further echoes Basquiat’s one-line street poems during his (earlier) SAMO period and famed notebook entries, not to mention his interest in beat poetry and fragmented prose scenarios mirroring the style and influence of William S. Burroughs. During the very early part of his career, Basquiat also experimented with screenwriting.

Handwritten One Line Poem

A hand-<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signed</a> 1986 <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?locale=en&amp;Book%20Type=Signed%2520and%2520Inscribed&amp;query=Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basquiat</a> catalog published on the occasion of Jean-Michel Basquiat Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover: 28th of November, 1986, to the 25th January, 1987.<ul><li>After Jean Michel Basquiat.</li><li>Hanover: Kestner-Gesellschaft, 1986.</li><li>Approximately 100 pages.</li><li>Featuring 60 works by a then 25 year old Basquiat, Kestner is widely remembered as Basquiat’s last major exhibition during his lifetime. -</li><li>Signed and inscribed to ‘Hans’ on the interior title page.</li><li>With full-page images of over 30 Basquiat paintings, in addition to several in collaboration with Andy Warhol.</li><li>Text in German.</li><li>Bound in stiff wraps.</li></ul> Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene. His spray-painted crowns and scribbled words referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. The gestural marks and expressive nature of his work not only aligned him with the street art of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, but also the Neo-Expressionists Julian Schnabel and David Salle. “If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence,” he said of his process. “It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.” Born on December 22, 1960 in Brooklyn, NY, Basquiat never finished high school but developed an appreciation for art as a youth, from his many visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art with his mother. His early work consisted of spray painting buildings and trains in downtown New York alongside his friend Al Diaz. The artist’s tag was the now infamous pseudonym SAMO. After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works. At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. In 2017, after having set Basquiat’s auction record the previous year with a $57.3 million purchase, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa surpassed it, buying the artist’s Untitled (1982) at Sotheby's for $110.5 million. This set a new record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist's work. Today, Basquiat's works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others.

Kestner-Gesellschaft Exhibition Catalog Signed by Basquiat

A <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Jean-Michel%20Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jean-Michel Basquiat</a> illustrated <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/collectibles/vintage-poster" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">poster</a> for the “Ikonoklast Panzerism versus Tricnology” lecture with Rammellzee, at Squat Theater, New York, October 30th, 1982:<ul><li>After Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>Illustrated by Basquiat for a one-night benefit organized by Basquiat assistant, Stephen Torton with New York graffiti and downtown art scene legends: Rammellzee, A-One, Koor Bone, Toxic (Toxic C One), Jean-Michel Basquiat, DJ High Priest (Nick Taylor), Fab 5 Fred Brathwaite; with special guests: Frosty Freeze, and Diego Cortez.</li><li>Offset lithograph.</li><li>This work is presented framed.</li></ul>

Basquiat Rammellzee ‘Ikonoklast Panzerism versus Tricnology’ Poster

Basquiat illustrated and printed this flyer for his band Gray in 1980.<ul><li>Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>Unsigned from an edition of unknown size.</li><li>Xerox printed on paper.</li><li>Accompanied by a letter of provenance.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> Executed similarly in the manner of his well-documented Anti-Product Cards of the period, Basquiat draws over a found image, then employs his famous William Burroughs-style "cut-up" technique, completing the piece by abstractly scrawling the word "Gray" above. First called Channel 9, then Test Pattern, the Basquiat co-founded group settled on the name "Gray" after Basquiat's fondness for the textbook Gray's Anatomy. Gray was an experimental New York Noise band defined by jazz improvisation, spoken word poetry, sound looping and everything in between. Gray members included co-founder Michael Holman, Nick Taylor, Shannon Dawson, Wayne Clifford and eventually Vincent Gallo. "Jean-Michel did all the posters for the band" (see Fretz, Basquiat A Biography p.40), and the group most notably played the likes of historic downtown clubs such as CBGB, The Mudd Club, Squat Theater and Hurrah's. The late Glenn O'Brien once noted that Basquiat approached music as a "Picasso-Charlie Parker-Miles Davis" collage. Basquiat, who played clarinet, synthesizer and a number of hybrid instruments, once said of Gray, "We were trying to be incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful." A description much in line with the nature of his art going forward. Based on the nature of how "Gray" is written, it's likely Basquiat was influenced by the mysterious religious-zealot-turned-urban-legend/street artist famous for key scratching "Pray" on hundreds of New York City building doors and phone booths in a similar style.

Gray Band Flyer

A hand-drafted flyer by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=jean%20michel%20basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basquiat</a> for a performance by his close friend, John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards at Squat Theater in New York, December 1, 1979.<ul><li>Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>Ink on paper.</li><li>Unsigned.</li><li>Accompanied by a letter of provenance.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> John Lurie was considered one of Basquiat’s closest friends; and has been a significant and prolific member of the New York downtown art and cultural scene since the 1970s. Lurie had a role in the Basquiat film Downtown 81 and starred in Jim Jarmusch’s pioneering independent films&nbsp;Stranger Than Paradise&nbsp;and&nbsp;Down by Law. His jazz-punk band&nbsp;The Lounge Lizards&nbsp;were at the forefront of the late-1970s New York ‘No-wave’ music scene. At its founding, the band consisted of John Lurie and Evan Lurie, guitarist&nbsp;Arto Lindsay, bassist Steve Piccolo, and percussionist&nbsp;Anton Fier. Though partly inspired by jazz, John Lurie said he used guitarists in the band "to foil the music when it gets too jazzlike.”

Basquiat John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards Hand-Drafted Music Flyer

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=jean%20michel%20basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basquiat</a> created this flyer on the occasion of a performance by his band, Test Pattern (later renamed to <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=basquiat%20gray&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gray</a>), at the much fabled downtown art space, “A’s", December 5th, 1979, at 330 Broome Street, New York.<ul><li>After Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>Published by the artist, 1979.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> A much historical work, notably exhibited and catalogued as part of the 2017 Basquiat London Boom for Real exhibition at the Barbican Center and more recently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MBAM) &amp; Paris Philharmonic. Basquiat's unique squiggly line, signature vertically spaced "E", use of random technical information, and text, sometimes crossed out, is already apparent in this most seminal early work. Basquiat playfully includes, then crosses his name out on the mid lower left alongside fellow band members. From Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography, Fretz, 2010:“Jean-Michel did all the posters for his band. One of the early public performances was in December 1979 at A’s, a loft at 330 Broome Street... Arleen Schloss, the owner, also let Jean-Michel stay there at times and use it as a studio for his “MAN MADE” clothing… [The hand-drawn poster for the gig] is done in his recognizable style, with strange arrows and notations added underneath. Some of the words are crossed out, and there is a dotted line of ink splashed through the middle of the page. A photocopied micro-cassette finishes off the look, suggesting some kind of sound, but not conventional music.”

Basquiat Test Pattern Concert Flyer

Basquiat illustrated and printed this flyer for his band Gray for the occasion of Gray with DNA at the legendary CBGB club on March 22, 1980.<ul><li>Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>Unsigned from an edition of unknown size.</li><li>Xerox printed on paper.</li><li>Accompanied by a letter of provenance.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> Here, Basquiat, in a surreal, film-noir like pattern, employs his own printed fingerprints in the design to suggest a forthcoming Gray performance as a crime-scene waiting to happen, with "GRAY" very discreetly written within one of the fingerprints. A uniquely personal and very striking insight into Basquiat’s own musical history.

<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Basquiat</a> created this impossibly rare printed flyer to advertise a band performance within his feature acted <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/collectibles/vintage-poster/film" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">film</a>: Downtown 81 / New York Beat in 1980.<ul><li>After Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988).</li><li>The flyer with text and imagery by Basquiat, promotes a segment performance by Kid Creole and the Coconuts at The Rock Lounge: 285 West Broadway, New York, December 15th, 1980.</li><li>Offset printed flyer.</li><li>Accompanied by a letter of provenance.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul> A much historical work, much notably exhibited and cataloged as part of, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music (October 2022 - February 2023) &amp; sister show at the Paris Philharmonic (March - July 2023). ‘In 1980, writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a graffiti innovator and noise music artist who’d just begun to exhibit his paintings, hit the streets of lower Manhattan to make a movie about the bombed-out bohemia they lived and breathed. Left unfinished due to assorted legal and financial issues until it was fully assembled for release in 2000,&nbsp;Downtown 81&nbsp;follows Basquiat, a naturally compelling screen presence, as he tries to hawk a painting (one of the artist’s own first works) while hustling for a place to sleep. So what was meant to be a document of its time instead became a window into a long-lost world of life on the margins and creative ferment—and it feels especially potent today, when NYC had transformed into an artless ghost town, before escalating racial injustices brought people back to the streets. The film features appearances by John Lurie, Fab 5 Freddy, and Debbie Harry; musical performances by DNA, James White and the Blacks, and Kid Creole and the Coconuts; and, most remarkable of all, a portrait of a more innocent Manhattan in all its mangy glory.’ (Metrograph)

Downtown 81 / New York Beat Movie Music Performance Poster

A portfolio of photographs taken of Basquiat by Nicholas Taylor.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 9 photographs.</li><li>Nicholas Taylor (American, b. 1953).</li><li>Photographs taken in 1979, printed in 2014.</li><li>Part of a limited edition of 10, plus 3 artist proofs.</li><li>Each work hand-signed and numbered by Taylor.</li><li>Featured within is a photo taken by Basquiat of Taylor with his faced bandaged.</li><li>Photogravure on Hahnemühle Bütten 350g paper.</li><li>Each is presented matted.</li></ul> While Basquiat often provided glimpses into his conflicted character through his own art, Taylor’s photograph offers an intimate, and perhaps more honest, portrait from the outside. The clever exploration of light and dark reveals the dichotomies that divided the artist; both his fragile and playful, tender and brazen sides are unveiled at only 19 years old. A soft glow is cast across Basquiat’s face, communicating a tenderness and affection that only a close friend could capture.

Portfolio of Jean-Michel Basquiat Photographs

A memorial announcement card for the services honoring <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Jean-Michel%20Basquiat&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jean-Michel Basquiat</a> after his passing in August of 1988.<ul><li>Post-marked on the reverse.</li><li>Offset printed announcement card.</li><li>This work is presented unframed.</li></ul>

Jean-Michel Basquiat Memorial Card

Catalog for the exhibition In Your Face with a signed drawing by Kenny Scharf.<ul><li>Kenny Scharf (American).</li><li>Keith Haring (American).</li><li>Jean-Michel Basquiat (American).</li><li>New York: Malca Fine Art, 1997.</li><li>80 pages.</li><li>Signed by Kenny Scharf in black marker on the interior, alongside a hand-drawn Scharf character.</li><li>Softcover.</li></ul> In Your Face was a 1997 exhibition that featured the work of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

In Your Face, Exhibition Catalog Featuring Warhol, Basquiat, and Scharf (signed with drawing by Scharf)

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