JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
A piece of Horacio Cordero with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lenox Gallery, 1984, New York
"As an exhibiting painter, Basquiat was informed by the same process of distillation in both his work’s content and its stylistic strategy. His paintings proclaimed the existence of a more basic truth locked within a given event or thought. As his career unfolded, the young artist applied the same intense scrutiny previously reserved for the world around him to the emotional and spiritual aspects of his own being.
Beginning in the early part of 1981, when he was barely twenty years of age, Basquiat went through what would be a defining period in his career. Homing in on the possibilities implicit in drawing from his own life experiences as a means of addressing larger human concerns, he produced five key works over an eighteen-month period: Untitled (Head) (1981), Acque Pericolose (1981), Per Capita (1981), Notary (1983), and La Colomba (1983). These works not only offer insight into this period in Basquiat’s career but reveal the depth of his concern for portraying spiritual experience. Though much has been written about the artist’s almost mythic persona and his role in revitalizing the New York art world in the early 1980s, little discussion has focused on the works’ irrefutable power to transcend the individual and address broader issues and universal themes."
source:
http://www.basquiat.com/artist.htm#
Jean-Michel Basquiat & Andy Warhol
"Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is a 2010 documentary film about Jean-Michel Basquiat. It is based on footage which director Tamra Davis took when they met in 1985. "
Wikipedia