1960 – Born
in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn
NY, first of three children to Matilde and Gerard Basquiat.
His younger sisters are
Lisane and Jeanine. His mother is Puerto
Rican and his father a Haitian
immigrant to the US. Basquiat learned French and Spanish as well as English as
a child and read widely. He was encouraged by his mother to paint and
participate in artistic activities.
1968 –
Parents divorce. His mother suffers from bipolar disorder and is deemed unfit
to care for her children. Basquiat and his sisters move with their father to
the Midwood district of Brooklyn. Basquiat will later accuse his father, who is
said to be a heavy drinker, of physical and emotional abuse.
1976 –
Basquiat runs away from home at 16.
He sleeps on park benches on Washington
Square Park and supports himself by panhandling, drug dealing, selling
T-shirts and homemade post cards, and working in the Unique Clothing Warehouse
in the West Broadway
district of Manhattan.
He is in the end adopted by a friend of his parents and returns to school, the Edward R.
Murrow High School in Brooklyn. With a friend, Al Diaz, he began spray-painting graffiti on buildings
in Lower
Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO
(standing for “SAMe Old shit”).
1978 – Drops
out of school. In December the Village Voice
published an article on the graffiti. The SAMO project ends with the epitaph
"SAMO IS DEAD," inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings.
1979 – Basquiat
appears on the live public-access cable show TV Party
hosted by Glenn O'Brien.
He also forms the punk rock band Gray
with Vincent Gallo,
Shannon Dawson, Michael Holman, Nick Taylor and Wayne Clifford. Gray performed
at nightclubs such as Max's Kansas
City, CBGB,
Hurrah,
and the Mudd Club.
He hangs out with actress Patti Astor, and down town
figureheads David Byrne, Blondie, Madonna, John Lurie and Diego Cortez. Basquiat
starred in an underground film Downtown 81, which
featured some of Gray's recordings on its soundtrack. He also appeared in the Blondie music video "Rapture" as a
nightclub disc jockey.
1980 – In June
Basquiat participates in The Times
Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition, sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated
(Colab) and Fashion Moda.
1981 –
Basquiat is shown in February in the influential exhibition (along with Keith
Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe) on the downtown art scene “New
York/New Wave” organized by Diego Cortez at the PS1 annex of MoMA. He presents 15 paintings mixing graffiti and
children’s’ drawing: cars, planes, heads and human silhouettes. In the painting
“Cadillac Moon” he crosses out the SAMO© signature and signs next to it Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981. His work is
noticed by three important art dealers, Emilio
Mazzoli, Annina Nosei and Bruno Bischofberger. In June Rene Ricard publishes "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine, an
article which brings Basquiat to the attention of the wider art world. First
solo show a the Emilio Mazzoli gallery in Modena, Italy. The SoHo dealer Annina
Nosei invites him to participate in a group show at her gallery and also rents
to him the basement of her gallery as a studio. He begins painting on canvas.
1982 –
Basquiat moves his studio to Crosby St in SoHo. In March first solo show in New York at the Anina Nosei
gallery in SoHo. He will from now on be associated to the Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980’s alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. He briefly
dates Madonna then at the beginning of her career. He is introduced to Andy Warhol by the art dealer Bruno
Bischofberger. In November he shows his latest work at the Fun gallery in the East Village (that exhibits notably Kenny
Scharf). He leaves Annina Nosei for the Zurich-based Warhol dealer
Bischofberger who works with Mary Boone
in New York.
The words, signs and
concepts he paints are inspired by the New York streets but also books skimmed,
television or songs and conversation with friends. The fragmentary esthetic of
the hip-hop musical scene in which
he was involved, sampling and scratching also have a great impact on his work
which becomes an elaborate form of assemblage or collage. He was also greatly
impressed and inspired by classic black
American music and jazz, Billie Holliday, Dizzy Gillespie,
Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Miles Davis. Black
boxers, Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay,
1982), Joe Lewis, Jersey Joe Walcott and Jack Johnson also appear frequently in
his painting. Inspired by Rauchenberg “combine paintings” he also uses
unorthodox supports like wood planks and doors.
1983 – Shows twice
in Los Angeles at the Larry Gagosian
gallery meeting with great success. Is shown by Ernst Beyeler in Basel.
1984 – He
collaborates with Warhol and Francesco Clemente on 15 paintings shown by
Bischofberger in his gallery in Zurich.
1985 – Basquiat
appears on the cover of The New York
Times Magazine in a feature entitled "New Art, New Money:
The Marketing of an American Artist". More Basquiat/Warhol collaborative works are shown by Tony Shafrazi in
New York. The critical reception is very negative leading Basquiat to distance
himself from Warhol.
1987 – Warhol dies on 22 February. Basquiat
feels increasingly isolated and depressed and increases his heroin consumption.
1988 –
Riding
with Death is the iconic image that retrospectively is seen to
symbolize the artist’s sudden end. Basquiat tries to
stop heroin on a trip to Hawaii but dies of an overdose on his return to his
studio in New York on 12 August. He was 27 years old.
