Jean Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988)
Related: 1980s - Rammellzee (musical connection) - graffiti - American art
Biography
Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 - August 12, 1988) was an American artist born in Brooklyn, New York. He gained fame, first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a highly successful avant-garde artist in the international art scene of the 1980s. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Basquiat [Mar 2006]
Biography
Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. It developed as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. The popularity of the style, or partially even the style itself, was created by aggressive marketing and media promotion by the art dealers and galleries. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-expressionism [Mar 2006]
See also: expressionism
Films
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Downtown 81 (1981) - Edo Bertoglio [Amazon US]
- Basquiat (1996) - Julian Schnabel [Amazon US]
In his writing and directorial debut, Julian Schnabel's film Basquiat depicts the life of graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a.k.a. SAMO, and the turbulent period from the late 1970s to 1988, as his life was catapulted into fame and notoriety. As Jean-Michel's work gained favorable attention from New York's elite art community, he went from a street punk living in a cardboard box to the first black artist to succeed in the all-white dominated art world. Tony Award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright does a brilliant job portraying a man tortured by self-doubt and thoughts of suicide, struggling to survive and be acknowledged as an artist. The film's use of dreamlike imagery and rhythmic pace tells the story from the perspective of Jean-Michel's eyes as he manages to "float" through relationships and gallery showings, until his impending death in 1988 from a heroin overdose. Brimming with talent, the film also stars David Bowie as pop-artist Andy Warhol, Michael Wincott as poet Rene Ricard, and many others, including Gary Oldman, Benicio del Toro, Dennis Hopper, Paul Bartel and Courtney Love. --Michele Goodson for amazon.com