Jean-Michel Basquiat

On April 10, 2020, New York rock band the Strokes released their sixth studio album, The New Abnormal. The cover art featured Basquiat’s 1981 painting “Bird on Money”.

The Brant Foundation in its Art Study Center from March 6 to May 15, 2019 hosted an extensive exhibit of Basquiat's works with free admission, where all tickets were claimed for its full six weeks in advance of the opening of the exhibit. In June 2019, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presents Basquiat's "Defacement": The Untold Story

In 2006 the Equality Forum featured Jean-Michel Basquiat during LGBT history month. A 2009 documentary film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis, was first screened as part of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was shown on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2011. Tamra Davis discussed her friendship with Basquiat in a Sotheby's video, "Basquiat: Through the Eyes of a Friend". In 2017, Sara Driver directed a documentary film, Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which had its world premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. The American Public Broadcast Service broadcast a 90-minute documentary about Basquiat in the American Masters series, entitled Basquiat: Rage to Riches, on 14 September 2018.

Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community of his time, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. Basquiat's visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle. He died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27. On May 18, 2017, at a Sotheby's auction, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and black rivulets (Untitled) set a new record high for any American artist at auction, selling for $110.5 million.

—Franklin Sirmans, In the Cipher: Basquiat and Hip Hop Culture

Everything was going along fine. Jean-Michel was making paintings, I was selling them, and we were having a lot of fun. But then one day Jean-Michel said, "My girlfriend is coming to stay with me." I was a little concerned—one too many eggs can spoil an omelet, you know? So I said, "Well, what's she like?" And he said, "Her name is Madonna and she's going to be huge." I'll never forget that he said that. So Madonna came out and stayed for a few months and we all got along like one big, happy family.

—Kellie Jones, Lost in Translation: Jean-Michel in the (Re)Mix

In the words of the Marc Mayer essay "Basquiat in History", "Basquiat speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador. We can read his pictures without strenuous effort—the words, the images, the colors and the construction—but we cannot quite fathom the point they belabor. Keeping us in this state of half-knowing, of mystery-within-familiarity, had been the core technique of his brand of communication since his adolescent days as the graffiti poet SAMO. To enjoy them, we are not meant to analyze the pictures too carefully. Quantifying the encyclopedic breadth of his research certainly results in an interesting inventory, but the sum cannot adequately explain his pictures, which requires an effort outside the purview of iconography ... he painted a calculated incoherence, calibrating the mystery of what such apparently meaning-laden pictures might ultimately mean."

Basquait and the Bayou, a 2014 show presented by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, focused on the artist's works with themes of the American South. Brooklyn Museum exhibited Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks in April–August 2015. In 2017, the Barbican Centre in London exhibited Basquiat: Boom for Real. Basquiat remains an important source of inspiration for a younger generation of contemporary artists all over the world such as Rita Ackermann and Kader Attia, as shown, for example, at the exhibition Street and Studio: From Basquiat to Séripop co-curated by Cathérine Hug and Thomas Mießgang and previously exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien (Austria) in 2010.

In a review for The Telegraph, critic Hilton Kramer begins his first paragraph by stating that Basquiat had no idea what the word "quality" meant. The criticisms to follow relentlessly label Basquiat as a "talentless hustler" and a "street-smart but otherwise invincibly ignorant" arguing that art dealers of the time were "as ignorant about art as Basquiat himself." In saying that Jean-Michel's work never rose above "that lowly artistic station" of graffiti "even when his paintings were fetching enormous prices," Kramer argued that graffiti art "acquired a cult status in certain New York art circles." Kramer further opined that "As a result of the campaign waged by these art-world entrepreneurs on Basquiat's behalf—and their own, of course—there was never any doubt that the museums, the collectors and the media would fall into line" when talking about the marketing of Basquiat's name.

On August 12, 2014, Revelation 13:18 released the single "Old School" featuring Jean-Michel Basquiat, along with the self-titled album Revelation 13:18 x Basquiat. The release date of "Old School" coincided with the anniversary of Basquiat's death. The single received attention after American rapper and producer Jay-Z dressed up as Basquiat for halloween the same year as the release giving revelation a nod.

When he was 13, his mother was committed to a mental institution and thereafter spent her life in and out of institutions. Due to his mother's instability and family unrest, at 15 Basquiat ran away from home. He slept on park benches in Tompkins Square Park, and was arrested and returned to the care of his father within a week. Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School in the 10th grade at the age of 17 and then attended City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan, home to many artistic students who failed at conventional schooling. His father banished him from the household for dropping out of high school and Basquiat stayed with friends in Brooklyn. He supported himself by selling T-shirts and homemade post cards.

According to Franklin Sirmans, Basquiat appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Fred Hoffman hypothesizes that underlying Basquiat's self-identification as an artist was his "innate capacity to function as something like an oracle, distilling his perceptions of the outside world down to their essence and, in turn, projecting them outward through his creative acts." Additionally, continuing his activities as a graffiti artist, Basquiat often incorporated words into his paintings. Before his career as a painter began, he produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and became known for the political–poetical graffiti under the name of SAMO. On one occasion Basquiat painted his girlfriend's dress with the words "Little Shit Brown". He would often draw on random objects and surfaces, including other people's property. The conjunction of various media is an integral element of Basquiat's art. His paintings are typically covered with text and codes of all kinds: words, letters, numerals, pictograms, logos, map symbols, diagrams and more.

The authentication committee of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat was formed by the gallery that was assigned to handle the artist's estate and was dissolved in 2012. Between 1994 and 2012, it reviewed over 2,000 works of art; the cost of the committee's opinion was $100. The committee was headed by Gérard Basquiat. Members and advisers varied depending on who was available at the time when a piece was being authenticated, but they have included the curators and gallerists Diego Cortez, Jeffrey Deitch, John Cheim, Richard Marshall, Fred Hoffman and Annina Nosei (the artist's first art dealer).

In 2008 the authentication committee was sued by collector Gerard De Geer, who claimed the committee breached its contract by refusing to offer an opinion on the authenticity of the painting Fuego Flores (1983); after the lawsuit was dismissed, the committee ruled the work genuine. In early 2012, the committee announced that it would dissolve in September of that year and no longer consider applications.

Between 2007 and 2012, the price of Basquiat artwork continued to steady grow up to $16.3 million dollars. In 2013, Basquiat's piece Dustheads sold for $48.8 million at Christie's. In 2016 an untitled piece sold at Christie's for $57.3 million to a Japanese businessman and collector, Yusaku Maezawa. In 2017, Yusaku purchased Basquiat's Untitled (1982), a powerful depiction of a black skull with red and black rivulets, at auction for a record-setting US$110,487,500—the most ever paid for an American artwork and the sixth most expensive artwork sold at an auction, surpassing Andy Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) which sold in 2013 for $105 million. Maezawa's two record breaking purchases of Basquiat artworks in 2016 and 2017 total $170M USD.

In 2001 New York artist and con-artist Alfredo Martinez was charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with attempting to deceive two art dealers by selling them $185,000 worth of fake Basquiat drawings. The charges against Martinez, which landed him in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Center on June 19, 2002, involved an alleged scheme to sell fake Basquiat drawings, accompanied by forged certificates of authenticity. Until 2002, the highest amount paid for an original work of Basquiat's was US$3,302,500, set on November 12, 1998, at Christie's. In 2002, Basquiat's Profit I (1982), a large piece measuring 86.5 by 157.5 inches (220 by 400 cm), was set for auction again at Christie's by drummer Lars Ulrich of the heavy metal band Metallica. It sold for US$5,509,500. The proceedings of the auction are documented in the film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

In 1991, poet Kevin Young produced a book, To Repel Ghosts, a compendium of 117 poems relating to Basquiat's life, individual paintings, and social themes found in the artist's work. He published a "remix" of the book in 2005. In 1995, writer Jennifer Clement wrote the biography Widow Basquiat, based on the narratives' reconstructions told to her by Suzanne Mallouk. In 2005, poet M. K. Asante published the poem "SAMO", dedicated to Basquiat, in his book Beautiful. And Ugly Too. In 2017, the biography Radiant Child told Basquiat's life from the perspective of a young prodigy and it won the Caldecott Medal. In 2019, illustrator Paolo Parisi wrote the graphic novel Basquiat: A Graphic Novel, following Basquiat's journey from street-art legend SAMO to international art-scene darling, up until his sudden death.

Following his return from a trip to Hawaii in the last year of his life, Keith Haring reports meeting with Basquiat who was glad to tell Haring that he had finally kicked his dependence on drugs. Despite attempts at sobriety, he died on August 12, 1988, of a heroin overdose at his art studio on Great Jones Street in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. He was 27 years old.

Basquiat was interred in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, where Jeffrey Deitch made a graveside speech. Among those speaking at Basquiat's memorial held at Saint Peter's Church on November 3, 1988, was Ingrid Sischy who, as the editor of Artforum in the 1980s, got to know the artist well and commissioned a number of articles that introduced his work to the wider world. Suzanne Mallouk recited sections of A. R. Penck's "Poem for Basquiat" and Fab 5 Freddy read a poem by Langston Hughes. The 300 guests included musicians John Lurie and Arto Lindsay; artist Keith Haring; poet David Shapiro; Glenn O'Brien, a writer; Fab 5 Freddy; and members of the band Gray, which Basquiat led in the late 1970s. In memory of the late artist, Keith Haring created Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat (1988). In his memorial words for Basquiat, Haring stated: "He truly created a lifetime of works in ten years. Greedily, we wonder what else he might have created, what masterpieces we have been cheated out of by his death, but the fact is that he has created enough work to intrigue generations to come. Only now will people begin to understand the magnitude of his contribution".

By 1986, Basquiat had left the Annina Nosei gallery and was showing at the Mary Boone gallery in SoHo. On February 10, 1985, he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a feature titled "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist". In spite of his artistic success in this period, his emotional instability continued to haunt him and caused him to begin to use heroin frequently. Many of his peers speculated that his heroin use was a means of coping with the demands of his newfound fame, the exploitative nature of the art industry, and the pressures of being a black man in the white-dominated art world.

In 1983, Basquiat produced a 12-inch rap single featuring hip-hop artists Rammellzee and K-Rob. Billed as Rammellzee vs. K-Rob, the single contained two versions of the same track: "Beat Bop" on the A-side with vocals, with the B-side adding an instrumental version. The single was pressed in limited quantities on the one-off Tartown Record Company label. The single's cover featured Basquiat's artwork, making the pressing highly desirable among both record and art collectors. A large number of photographs depict a 2–3 year collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat from 1983 and 1985 which included Olympic Rings (1985), in which Warhol made some Olympic five-ring symbols rendered in the original primary colors and which Basquiat stylized with his graffiti style. Basquiat often painted in expensive Armani suits; and he would even appear in public in the same paint-splattered clothes.

According to Andrea Frohne, Basquiat's painting Untitled (History of the Black People, 1983) "reclaims Egyptians as African and subverts the concept of ancient Egypt as the cradle of Western Civilization". At the center of the painting, Basquiat depicts an Egyptian boat being guided down the Nile River by Osiris, the Egyptian god of the earth and vegetation. On the right panel of the painting appear the words "Esclave, Slave, Esclave". Two letters of the word "Nile" are crossed out and Frohne suggests that, "The letters that are wiped out and scribbled over perhaps reflect the acts of historians who have conveniently forgotten that Egyptians were black and blacks were enslaved." On the left panel of the painting Basquiat has illustrated two Nubian-style masks. The Nubians historically were darker in skin color, and were considered to be slaves by the Egyptian people. Throughout the rest of the painting, images of the Atlantic slave trade are juxtaposed alongside images of the Egyptian slave trade centuries before. The sickle in the center panel is a direct reference to the slave trade in the United States, and slave labor under the plantation system. The word "salt" that appears on the right panel of the work refers to the Atlantic slave trade, as salt was another important commodity traded at that time.

In March 1982, he painted in Modena, Italy, for his second Italian exhibition. Starting in November, Basquiat worked from the ground-floor display and studio space Larry Gagosian had built below his Venice, California home. There, Basquiat commenced a series of paintings for a 1983 show, his second at Gagosian Gallery which was then in West Hollywood. He brought along his girlfriend, then-unknown aspiring singer Madonna. Gagosian recalls,

In late 1981, Basquiat met Annina Nosei with his first exhibition in her gallery in a group show called Public Address with Keith Haring and Barbara Kruger among others, and he joined the Annina Nosei gallery and worked in a basement below the gallery toward his first American one-man show from March 6 to April 1, 1982. At the time, and while dating others, Basquiat was living with his girlfriend (from 1981 to 1983), Suzanne Mallouk, who later specifically described his sexuality in Jennifer Clement's book, Widow Basquiat, as: "... not monochromatic. It did not rely on visual stimulation, such as a pretty girl. It was a very rich multichromatic sexuality. He was attracted to people for all different reasons. They could be boys, girls, thin, fat, pretty, ugly. It was, I think, driven by intelligence. He was attracted to intelligence more than anything and to pain."

Basquiat's art focused on recurrent "suggestive dichotomies", such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. A middle period from late 1982 to 1985 featured multi-panel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and imagery. The years 1984–85 were also the main period of the Basquiat–Warhol collaborations, even if, in general, they were not very well received by the critics. A major reference source used by Basquiat throughout his career was the book Gray's Anatomy, which his mother had given him while he was in the hospital aged seven. It remained influential in his depictions of internal human anatomy, and in its mixture of image and text. Other major sources were Henry Dreyfuss' Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and Burchard Brentjes' African Rock Art.

During the early 1980s, Basquiat made his breakthrough as a solo artist. In June 1980, Basquiat participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab) and Fashion Moda where he was noticed by various critics and curators. In particular Emilio Mazzoli, an Italian gallerist, saw the exhibition and invited Basquiat to Modena (Italy) to have his world first solo show, that opened on May 23, 1981. In December 1981, Rene Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine. At this time, Basquiat painted many pieces on found objects, such as discarded doors.

The first public showing of Basquiat's paintings and drawings was in 1981: New York/New Wave, at PS1 in Long Island City, brought together by Mudd Club co-founder and curator Diego Cortez. It was a group show that included pieces by William Burroughs, David Byrne, Keith Haring, Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe. The article in Artforum magazine entitled Radiant Child written by Rene Ricard after seeing the show at PS1, brought Basquiat to the attention of the art world. In 1984 Basquiat immortalised Ricard in two drawings, Untitled (Axe/Rene) and Rene Ricard, representing the tension that existed between them.

Heads and skulls are seen as significant focal points of many of Basquiat's most seminal works. Two pieces, Untitled (Scull/Skull, 1981) and Untitled (Head, 1982), held by the Broad Foundation and Maezawa Foundation, respectively, can be seen as primary examples. In reference to the potent image depicted in both pieces, Fred Hoffman writes that Basquiat was likely, "caught off guard, possibly even frightened, by the power and energy emanating from this unexpected image." Further investigation by Fred Hoffman of pieces like Masonic Lodge 1983 and Untitled (1983) in his book The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat reveals a deeper interest in the artist's fascination with heads that proves an evolution in the artist's oeuvre from one of raw power to one of more refined cognizance.

Another of Basquiat's pieces, Irony of Negro Policeman (1981), is intended to illustrate how he believes African-Americans have been controlled by a predominantly Caucasian society. Basquiat sought to portray that African-Americans have become complicit with the "institutionalized forms of whiteness and corrupt white regimes of power" years after the Jim Crow era had ended. This concept has been reiterated in additional Basquiat works, including his titled Created Equal. However Basquiat found the idea of the “negro policeman” specifically ironic. The hat that frames the head of the Negro policeman resembles a cage, and represents what Basquiat believes are the constrained independent perceptions of African Americans at the time, and how constrained the policeman's own perceptions were within white society. Basquiat drew upon his Haitian heritage by painting a hat that resembles the top hat associated with the gede family of loa, who embody the powers of death in Vodou. However, Kellie Jones, in her essay Lost in Translation: Jean-Michel in the (Re)Mix, posits that Basquiat's "mischievous, complex, and neologistic side, with regard to the fashioning of modernity and the influence and effluence of black culture" are often elided by critics and viewers, and thus "lost in translation." The art historian Olivier Berggruen situates in Basquiat's anatomical screen prints, titled Anatomy, an assertion of vulnerability, one which "creates an aesthetic of the body as damaged, scarred, fragmented, incomplete, or torn apart, once the organic whole has disappeared. Paradoxically, it is the very act of creating these representations that conjures a positive corporeal valence between the artist and his sense of self or identity."

Major exhibitions of Basquiat's work have included Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings 1981–1984 at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1984), which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 1985; the two exhibits at Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (1987, 1989). The first retrospective to be held of his work was the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 1992 to February 1993. It subsequently traveled to the Menil Collection, Houston; the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, from 1993 to 1994. The catalog for this exhibition, was edited by Richard Marshall and included several essays of different perspectives. Another exhibition, Basquiat, was mounted by the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 2005, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. From October 2006 to January 2007, the first Basquiat exhibition in Puerto Rico took place at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR), produced by ArtPremium, Corinne Timsit and Eric Bonici.

Notable private collectors of Basquiat's work include David Bowie, Mera and Donald Rubell, Lars Ulrich, Steven A. Cohen, Laurence Graff, John McEnroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Swizz Beatz, Jay-Z, and Johnny Depp. Basquiat sold his first painting in 1981, and by 1982, spurred by the Neo-Expressionist art boom, his work was in great demand. Basquiat was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1985 which was unprecedented for any young African-American artist. Since Basquiat's death in 1988, the market for his work has developed steadily—in line with overall art market trends—with a dramatic peak in 2007 when, at the height of the art market boom, the global auction volume for his work was over $115 million. Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie's, is quoted describing Basquiat's market as "two-tiered. ... The most coveted material is rare, generally dating from the best period, 1981–83."

Basquiat starred in Downtown 81, a vérité movie written by Glenn O'Brien and shot by Edo Bertoglio in 1981, but not released until 1998. In 1996, eight years after the artist's death, a biographical film titled Basquiat was released, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat. David Bowie played the part of Andy Warhol. Schnabel was interviewed during the film's script development as a personal acquaintance of Basquiat. Schnabel then purchased the rights to the project, believing that he could make a better film.

Other members of Gray included Shannon Dawson, Michael Holman, Nick Taylor, Wayne Clifford and Vincent Gallo, and the band performed at nightclubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah and the Mudd Club. In 1980, Basquiat starred in O'Brien's independent film Downtown 81, originally titled New York Beat.That same year, Basquiat met Andy Warhol at a restaurant. Basquiat presented to Warhol samples of his work, and Warhol was stunned by Basquiat's "mystique and allure." The two artists later collaborated. Downtown 81 featured some of Gray's recordings on its soundtrack. Basquiat also appeared in the 1981 Blondie music video "Rapture," in a role originally intended for Grandmaster Flash, as a nightclub disc jockey.

A poet as well as an artist, words featured heavily in his drawings and paintings, with direct references to racism, slavery, the people and street scene of 1980s New York including other artists, and black historical figures, musicians and sports stars, as his notebooks and many important drawings demonstrate. Often Basquiat's drawings were untitled, and as such to differentiate works a word written within the drawing is commonly in parentheses after Untitled, such as with Untitled (Axe/Rene). After Basquiat died of an overdose at the age of 27, his estate was controlled by his father Gérard Basquiat, who also oversaw the committee which authenticated artworks, and operated from 1993 to 2012 to review over 1000 works, the majority of which were drawings.

Basquiat's first public exhibition in June 1980 was in the group effort The Times Square Show (with David Hammons, Jenny Holzer, Lee Quiñones, Kenny Scharf and Kiki Smith among others), held in a vacant building at 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, New York. In late 1981, Basquiat joined the Annina Nosei gallery in SoHo; his first one-person exhibition was in 1982 at that gallery. By then, he was showing regularly alongside other Neo-expressionist artists including Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. He was represented in Los Angeles by the Gagosian gallery and throughout Europe by Bruno Bischofberger.

In 1979, Basquiat appeared on the live public-access television show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien, and the two started a friendship. Basquiat made regular appearances on the show over the next few years. That same year, Basquiat formed the noise rock band Test Pattern—which was later renamed Gray—which played at Arleen Schloss's open space, "Wednesdays at A's." In October 1979, at the same club, Basquiat showed his SAMO montages using color Xerox copies of his works.

Basquiat's transition from being homeless and unemployed to becoming a prosperous artist took place in a short space of time. By 1980, he would be selling a single painting for up to $25,000. In 1976, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz began spray painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO. The designs featured inscribed messages within his Untitled works such as "Plush safe he think... SAMO [sic]" and "SAMO as an escape clause." In 1978, Basquiat worked for the Unique Clothing Warehouse in their art department at 718 Broadway in NoHo, and at night he continued using the pseudonym "SAMO," painting his original graffiti art on neighborhood buildings. Unique's founder Harvey Russack discovered Basquiat painting a building one night, they became friends, and he offered him a day job. On December 11, 1978, The Village Voice published an article about the graffiti. When Basquiat and Diaz ended their friendship, the SAMO project ended with the epitaph "SAMO IS DEAD," inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings in 1979.

In September 1968, at the age of seven, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street. His arm was broken and he suffered several internal injuries; he eventually underwent a splenectomy. While he was recuperating from his injuries, his mother brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to keep him occupied. This book would prove to be influential in his future artistic outlook. His parents separated that year and he and his sisters were raised by their father. The family resided in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, for five years, then moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1974, where Basquiat studied at Saint John's School in Condado. After two years, they returned to New York City.

His father, Gérard Basquiat, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and his mother, Matilde Basquiat, who was of Puerto Rican descent, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Matilde instilled a love for art in her young son by taking him to art museums in Manhattan and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Basquiat was a precocious child who learned how to read and write by the age of four and was a gifted artist. His teachers, including artist José Machado, noticed his artistic abilities, and his mother encouraged her son's artistic talent. By the age of 11, Basquiat was fully fluent in French, Spanish and English. In 1967, Basquiat started attending Saint Ann's School, an arts-oriented exclusive private school. There he met his friend Marc Prozzo; together they created a children's book, written by Basquiat and illustrated by Prozzo. Basquiat became an avid reader of Spanish, French, and English texts and a good athlete, competing in track events.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (French: [ʒɑ̃ miʃɛl baskija] ; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960, shortly after the death of his older brother, Max. He was the second of four children of Matilde Basquiat (née Andrades) (July 28, 1934 – November 17, 2008) and Gérard Basquiat (1930 – July 7, 2013). He had two younger sisters: Lisane, born in 1964, and Jeanine, born in 1967.