Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Virtual Tour

You can now explore the Brant Foundation’s 2019 Basquiat exhibition online

Connect to the internet and be transported to New York City. The Brant Foundation has created an immersive virtual tour of the inaugural exhibition of their East Village space. The exhibition, titled Jean-Michel Basquiat, comprises four floors filled with 70 works–created from 1980 to 1987–by the radical underground graffiti artist who went on to become a global sensation.

Born in 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Jean-Michel Basquiat grew up in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, Basquiat frequented the city’s museums and galleries and was encouraged by his mother to create his own works. When Basquiat was hit by a car aged eight, his mother brought a copy of Gray's Anatomy to the hospital. From that moment on, her son developed a fascination with anatomy, inspiring the bodily imagery–in particular skulls, sinew, and guts–that would feature heavily in his work.

By the age of 17, Basquiat, along with his friend Al Diaz, was creating graffiti art all over Lower Manhattan. Each statement and symbol was signed with the graffiti tag, SAMO. Eventually, the project ended, and Basquiat took to the streets of SoHo writing, "SAMO IS DEAD." After dropping out of high school and leaving home, the young artist had to support himself by selling hand-painted postcards and t-shirts.

By 21, Basquiat was painting full-time, fashioning canvases out of pieces of wood that he would find on the street. He would use oilstick, crayon, acrylic, spray paint, and pencil, and pulled quotes from menus, textbooks, and comic books to create works that both reimagined historical scenes while presenting critiques of present-day life. In June of 1980, Basquiat's art was publicly exhibited for the first time in a show sponsored by Colab (Collaborative Projects Incorporated) along with the work of Jenny Holzer, Lee Quinones, Kenny Scharf, Kiki Smith, Robin Winters, John Ahearn, Jane Dickson, Mike Glier, Mimi Gross, and David Hammons.

While the artist’s life was cut short by a heroin overdose at the age of 27, in less than a decade, Basquiat produced over 1000 paintings and more than 2000 drawings. He explored issues relating to colonization, the African Diaspora, racial inequality and representation, and his experience of the streets in early seminal works such as Arroz con Pollo (1981), Price of Gasoline in the Third World (1982), Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers) (1982), Hollywood Africans (1983), and In Italian (1983).

His paintings have immortalized heroes such as jazz legend Charlie Parker and boxers Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis. In Irony of a Negro Policeman (1981), Per Capita (1981), and Untitled (Boxer) (1982), Basquiat tackled systematic racism and resistance, reflecting on modern oppression and exploitation of Black Americans. He was a radical innovator who transformed everyday objects, including discarded windows and doors, refrigerators, clothing, and old boards, and incorporated them into his art.

"We hope that launching this initiative will help further dialogue around Basquiat’s lasting impact, his inspirations, and the social and political commentary embedded in his works. Basquiat’s complex oeuvre has established him as one of the most important innovators in modern art, even thirty years after his death," says the Brant Foundation.

Click here to take a tour of the Brant Foundation’s 2019 exhibition, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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