Basquiat, basic art series

The African American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat burned bright and fast. Emerging from African American street culture and the graffiti scene of 1980s New York, he rose from the tag “SAMO” to the walls of international galleries, becoming one of the era’s defining voices before his untimely death at just 27.

Artworks by Basquiat are electric collisions of words, symbols, colors, and figures, fusing abstraction with graffiti, poetry with painting. Drawing inspiration from underground club culture, jazz, hip-hop, French poetry, African and classical art, and artistic contemporaries like Andy Warhol, Basquiat created a visual language that challenged power, racism, and inequality. His friends and early supporters were Madonna, contemporary artist Keith Haring, Blondie's Debbie Harry and costume designer Patricia Field, among others. Basquiat's work remains as raw and relevant today as it did four decades ago.

This edition captures Basquiat’s brief but transformative career with striking reproductions, sharp analysis, and Taschen’s renowned print quality. A meaningful gift for art lovers, culture-watchers, or anyone who’d love to own a Basquiat canvas but wouldn’t mind starting with the book.

Taschen’s Basic Art series is accessible, always beautifully illustrated introduction to key artists, movements, and architects, combining concise texts with rich visuals, perfect art history summaries.

• Author(s): Leonhard Emmerling
• Size: 22 x 1 x 26,5 cm and 96 pages
• Language: English
• Published: 2015