Age, Biography, and Wiki
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York. He began his artistic journey in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist in New York City, eventually transitioning to a more traditional art form. His work often explored themes like wealth, poverty, and social justice.
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| Date of Birth | 22 December 1960 |
| Age | 64 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Sagittarius |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 12 August, 1988 |
| Died Place | New York City, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Basquiat was reported to be about 6 feet tall. There is limited information available on his exact weight.
Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al Diaz, writing enigmatic epigrams all over Manhattan, particularly in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop culture. By the early 1980s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in Documenta in Kassel, Germany. At 22, he became one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his artwork in 1992.
Art critics have also compared Basquiat's work to the emergence of hip-hop during the same era. "Basquiat's art—like the best hip-hop—takes apart and reassembles the work that came before it", said art critic Franklin Sirmans in a 2005 essay, "In the Cipher: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Culture".
In 2019, the Brant Foundation in New York, hosted an extensive exhibition of Basquiat's works with free admission. All 50,000 tickets were claimed before the exhibition opened, so additional tickets were released. In June 2019, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presented Basquiat's "Defacement": The Untold Story. Later that year, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne opened the exhibition Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines. In 2020, the Lotte Museum of Art mounted the first major exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat in Seoul. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibited Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation from October 2020 to July 2021.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Basquiat was in a notable relationship with Madonna, the famous American singer and actress. Their relationship was a significant part of his late life.
Matilde instilled a love for art in her young son by taking him to local art museums and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Basquiat was a precocious child who learned to read and write by the age of four. His mother encouraged her son's artistic talent and he often tried to draw his favorite cartoons. In 1967, he started attending Saint Ann's School, a private school. There he met his friend Marc Prozzo and together they created a children's book, written by Basquiat at the age of seven and illustrated by Prozzo.
In 1968, at the age of seven, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street. His arm was broken and he suffered several internal injuries, which required a splenectomy. While he was hospitalized, his mother brought him a copy of Gray's Anatomy to keep him occupied. After his parents separated that year, Basquiat and his sisters were raised by their father. His mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital when he was ten and thereafter spent her life in and out of institutions. By the age of eleven, Basquiat was fluent in French, Spanish and English, and an avid reader of all three languages.
Basquiat's family resided in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Boerum Hill and then in 1974, moved to Miramar, Puerto Rico. When they returned to Brooklyn in 1976, Basquiat attended Edward R. Murrow High School. He struggled to deal with his mother's instability and rebelled as a teenager. He ran away from home at 15 when his father caught him smoking cannabis in his room. He slept on park benches at Washington Square Park and took LSD. Eventually, his father spotted him with a shaved head and called the police to bring him home.
In May 1978, Basquiat and Diaz began spray painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan. Working under the pseudonym SAMO, they inscribed poetic and satirical advertising slogans such as "SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD." In June 1978, Basquiat was expelled from City-As-School for pieing the principal. At 17, his father kicked him out of the house when he decided to drop out of school. He worked for the Unique Clothing Warehouse in NoHo while continuing to create graffiti at night. On December 11, 1978, The Village Voice published an article about the SAMO graffiti.
Around this time, Basquiat lived in the East Village with his girlfriend Alexis Adler, a Barnard biology graduate. He often copied diagrams of chemical compounds borrowed from Adler's science textbooks. She documented Basquiat's creative explorations as he transformed the floors, walls, doors and furniture into his artworks. He also made postcards with his friend Jennifer Stein. While selling postcards in SoHo, Basquiat spotted Andy Warhol at W.P.A. restaurant with art critic Henry Geldzahler. He sold Warhol a postcard titled Stupid Games, Bad Ideas. In October 1979, at Arleen Schloss's open space called A's, Basquiat showed his SAMO montages using color Xerox copies of his works. Schloss allowed Basquiat to use the space to create his "MAN MADE" clothing, which were painted upcycled garments. In November 1979, costume designer Patricia Field carried his clothing line in her upscale boutique on 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Field also displayed his sculptures in the store window.
Basquiat sold his first painting, Cadillac Moon (1981), to Debbie Harry, lead singer of the punk rock band Blondie, for $200 after they had filmed Downtown 81 together. He also appeared as a disc jockey in the 1981 Blondie music video "Rapture", a role originally intended for Grandmaster Flash. At the time, Basquiat was living with his girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, who financially supported him as a waitress.
In November 1982, Basquiat's solo exhibition opened at the Fun Gallery in the East Village. Among the works exhibited were A Panel of Experts (1982) and Equals Pi (1982). In early December 1982, Basquiat began working at the Market Street studio space art dealer Larry Gagosian had built below his Venice Beach, California home. In Los Angeles, he frequented the Whisky a Go Go and Tail o' the Pup with his friend artist George Condo. There, he commenced a series of paintings for a March 1983 show, his second at the Gagosian Gallery in West Hollywood. He was accompanied by his girlfriend, then-unknown singer Madonna. Gagosian recalled: "Everything was going along fine. Jean-Michel was making paintings, I was selling them, and we were having a lot of fun. But then one day Jean-Michel said, 'My girlfriend is coming to stay with me.' ... So I said, 'Well, what's she like?' And he said, 'Her name is Madonna and she's going to be huge.' I'll never forget that he said that."
Basquiat took considerable interest in the work that artist Robert Rauschenberg was producing at Gemini G.E.L. in West Hollywood. He visited him on several occasions and found inspiration in his accomplishments. While in Los Angeles, Basquiat painted Hollywood Africans (1983), which portrays him with graffiti artists Toxic and Rammellzee. He often painted portraits of other graffiti artists—and sometimes collaborators—in works such as Portrait of A-One A.K.A. King (1982), Toxic (1984), and ERO (1984). In 1983, he produced the hip-hop record "Beat Bop" featuring Rammellzee and rapper K-Rob. It was pressed in limited quantities on his Tartown Inc. imprint. He created the cover art for the single, making it highly desirable among both record and art collectors. In March 1983, at 22 years old, Basquiat became one of the youngest artists to participate in the Whitney Biennial exhibition of contemporary art. Paige Powell, an associate publisher for Interview magazine, organized a show of his work at her friend's New York apartment in April 1983. Shortly after, he began a relationship with Powell, who was instrumental in fostering his friendship with Warhol. In August 1983, Basquiat moved into a loft owned by Warhol at 57 Great Jones Street in NoHo, which also served as a studio.
For what would be his last exhibition on the West Coast, Basquiat returned to Los Angeles for his show at the Gagosian Gallery in January 1986. In February 1986, Basquiat traveled to Atlanta, Georgia for an exhibition of his drawings at Fay Gold Gallery. That month, he participated in Limelight's Art Against Apartheid benefit. In the summer, he had a solo exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg. He was also invited to walk the runway for Rei Kawakubo again, this time at the Comme des Garçons Homme Plus fashion show in Paris. In October 1986, Basquiat flew to Ivory Coast for an exhibition of his work organized by Bruno Bischofberger at the French Cultural Institute in Abidjan. He was accompanied by his girlfriend Jennifer Goode, who worked at his frequent hangout, Area nightclub. In November 1986, at 25 years old, Basquiat became the youngest artist given an exhibition at Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany.
During their relationship, Goode began snorting heroin with Basquiat since drugs were at her disposal. She said: "He didn't push it on me, but it was just there and I was so naïve." In late 1986, she successfully got herself and Basquiat into a methadone program in Manhattan, but he quit after three weeks. According to Goode, he did not start injecting heroin until after she ended their relationship. In the last 18 months of his life, Basquiat became something of a recluse. His continued drug use is thought to have been a way of coping after the death of his friend Andy Warhol in February 1987.
Despite attempts at sobriety, Basquiat died at the age of 27 of a heroin overdose at his home on Great Jones Street in Manhattan on August 12, 1988. He had been found unresponsive in his bedroom by his girlfriend Kelle Inman and was taken to Cabrini Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Basquiat is buried at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. A private funeral was held at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on August 17, 1988. The funeral was attended by immediate family and close friends, including Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, Glenn O'Brien, and Basquiat's former girlfriend Paige Powell. Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch delivered a eulogy.
A public memorial was held at Saint Peter's Church on November 3, 1988. Among the speakers was Ingrid Sischy, who as the editor of Artforum got to know Basquiat well and commissioned a number of articles that introduced his work to the wider world. Basquiat's former girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk recited sections of A. R. Penck's "Poem for Basquiat" and his friend Fab 5 Freddy read a poem by Langston Hughes. The 300 guests included musicians John Lurie and Arto Lindsay, Keith Haring, poet David Shapiro, Glenn O'Brien, and members of Basquiat's former band Gray.
In his short but prolific career, Basquiat produced around 1,500 drawings, around 600 paintings, and many sculpture and mixed media works. He drew constantly and often used objects around him as surfaces when paper was not immediately at hand. Since childhood, he produced cartoon-inspired drawings when encouraged by his mother's interest in art, and drawing became a part of his expression as an artist. He drew in many different media, most commonly ink, pencil, felt-tip or marker, and oil-stick. He sometimes used Xerox copies of fragments of his drawings to paste onto the canvases of larger paintings.
A poet as well as an artist, words featured heavily in his drawings and paintings, with direct references to racism, slavery, the people and street scene of 1980s New York, black historical figures, famous musicians, and athletes, as his notebooks and many important drawings demonstrate. Often Basquiat's drawings were untitled, and as such, to differentiate works, a word written within the drawing is commonly in parentheses after Untitled. After Basquiat died, his estate was controlled by his father Gérard Basquiat, who also oversaw the committee that authenticated artworks, and operated from 1994 to 2012 to review over 2000 works, the majority of which were drawings.
A major reference source used by Basquiat throughout his career was the book Gray's Anatomy, which his mother had given him while he was in the hospital when he was seven. It remained influential in his depictions of human anatomy, and in its mixture of image and text as seen in Flesh and Spirit (1982–83). Art historian Olivier Berggruen situates in Basquiat's anatomical screen prints Anatomy (1982) an assertion of vulnerability, one which "creates an aesthetic of the body as damaged, scarred, fragmented, incomplete, or torn apart, once the organic whole has disappeared. Paradoxically, it is the very act of creating these representations that conjures a positive corporeal valence between the artist and his sense of self or identity."
Finally, Basquiat’s relationship with hip-hop culture further enriches his aesthetic of blackness. His collaborations with artists from the hip-hop generation, such as Fab 5 Freddy and Lady Pink, emphasize the fusion of neo-expressionism with the rhythmic, improvisational qualities of hip-hop. This synthesis of art and music positions Basquiat as a figure who not only represented blackness but actively participated in shaping its cultural expression during the 1980s. His works, much like the art of graffiti, blur the lines between high art and street culture, reinforcing the legitimacy of non-traditional forms of black expression.
The first retrospective of his work was held by the Baghoomian Gallery in New York from October to November 1989. His first museum retrospective, Jean-Michel Basquiat, was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York from October 1992 to February 1993. The show was sponsored by AT&T, MTV and Basquiat's former girlfriend Madonna. It subsequently traveled to the Menil Collection in Texas; the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama, from 1993 to 1994. The exhibition's catalog was edited by Richard Marshall and included several essays from different perspectives. In 1996, Madonna sponsored an exhibition of his work at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
Since Basquiat's death in 1988, the market for his work has developed steadily—in line with overall art market trends—with a dramatic peak in 2007 when, at the height of the art market boom, the global auction volume for his work was over $115 million. Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie's, is quoted describing Basquiat's market as "two-tiered ... The most coveted material is rare, generally dating from the best period, 1981–83." Until 2002, the highest amount paid for an original work of Basquiat's was $3.3 million for Self-Portrait (1982), sold at Christie's in 1998. In 2002, Basquiat's Profit I (1982) was sold at Christie's by drummer Lars Ulrich of the heavy metal band Metallica for $5.5 million. The proceedings of the auction were documented in the 2004 film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.
The authentication committee of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat was formed by the Robert Miller Gallery, the gallery that was assigned to handle Basquiat's estate after his death, in part to wage battle against the growing number of fakes and forgeries in the Basquiat market. The cost of the committee's opinion was $100. The committee was headed by Basquiat's father Gérard Basquiat. Members varied depending on who was available at the time when a piece was being authenticated, but they have included the curators and gallerists Diego Cortez, Jeffrey Deitch, Annina Nosei, John Cheim, Richard Marshall, Fred Hoffman, and publisher Larry Warsh.
Basquiat had romantic relationships with many women, including singer Madonna. Although he never publicly identified as bisexual, a few of his friends have stated that he had sexual relationships with men. Basquiat's former girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk described his sexual interest as "not monochromatic. It did not rely on visual stimulation, such as a pretty girl. It was a very rich multichromatic sexuality. He was attracted to people for all different reasons. They could be boys, girls, thin, fat, pretty, ugly ... He was attracted to intelligence more than anything and to pain."
Basquiat's estate was administered by his father, Gerard Basquiat, until his passing in 2013. It is now run by his sisters, Jeanine Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat. His work had a significant impact on the street art and hip hop scene, and has been noted as an influence on a range of contemporary artists including Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Halim Flowers.
In 1998, journalist Phoebe Hoban published the unauthorized biography Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art. In 2000, author Jennifer Clement wrote the memoir Widow Basquiat: A Love Story, based on the narratives told to her by Basquiat's former girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk.
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death in 1988, Basquiat's net worth was estimated to be around $10 million. However, since then, his artwork has become incredibly valuable, with some pieces selling for over $100 million at auction. Despite his passing, Basquiat's art continues to generate substantial revenue posthumously.
Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism.
Art critic Franklin Sirmans analyzed that Basquiat appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. His social commentary was acutely political and direct in its criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle. He also explored artistic legacies from wide sources, including an interrogation of the classical tradition. Art historian Fred Hoffman hypothesizes that the underlying of Basquiat's self-identification as an artist was his "innate capacity to function as something like an oracle, distilling his perceptions of the outside world down to their essence and, in turn, projecting them outward through his creative act", and that his art focused on recurrent "suggestive dichotomies" such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. Before his career as a painter began, Basquiat produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and became known for his political–poetical graffiti under the name of SAMO. He often drew on random objects and surfaces, including other people's clothing. The conjunction of various media is an integral element of his art. His paintings are typically covered with codes of all kinds: words, letters, numerals, pictograms, logos, map symbols, and diagrams.
Career, Business, and Investments
Basquiat's career was marked by his transition from street art to gallery exhibitions. His unique style, which blended graffiti with traditional painting techniques, made him a pioneer in the art world. Basquiat's fame was established during the vibrant art market of the 1980s, with his work being highly sought after by collectors.
In the mid-1980s, Basquiat was earning $1.4 million a year and he was receiving lump sums of $40,000 from art dealers. Despite his success, his emotional instability continued to haunt him. "The more money Basquiat made, the more paranoid and deeply involved with drugs he became," wrote journalist Michael Shnayerson. Basquiat's cocaine use became so excessive that he blew a hole in his nasal septum. A friend claimed that Basquiat confessed he was on heroin in late 1980. Many of his peers speculated that his drug use was a means of coping with the demands of his newfound fame, the exploitative nature of the art industry, and the pressures of being a black man in the white-dominated art world.
Basquiat primarily used texts as reference sources. A few of the books he used were Gray's Anatomy, Henry Dreyfuss' Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci published by Reynal & Company, and Burchard Brentjes' African Rock Art, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson.
Biographer Phoebe Hoban wrote on Basquiat's first sexual experiences, which were with men. When Basquiat was a minor in Puerto Rico he was orally raped by a barber dressed in drag, then he got involved with a deejay. Art critic Rene Ricard, who helped launch Basquiat's career, said that Basquiat was into everything and had "turned tricks" in Condado when he lived in Puerto Rico. As a teenager, Basquiat told a friend that he worked as a prostitute on 42nd Street in Manhattan when he ran away from home. Andy Warhol said Basquiat had refused to go with him and Keith Haring to Rounds, a gay hustler bar, because it brought back bad memories of when he was hustling.
In 2021, luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co. partnered with American singer Beyoncé and rapper Jay-Z to promote the company's "About Love" campaign. The campaign incorporated Tiffany's recently acquired painting, Equals Pi (1982), by Basquiat. The painting heavily features a color close to the company's signature robin egg blue. The campaign was met with criticism from the artist's friends and colleagues.
Social Network
Basquiat did not have a social network in the modern sense, as he passed away before the widespread use of social media. However, his legacy continues to be celebrated through various art platforms and social media channels promoting his work.
Heads and skulls are significant focal points of many of Basquiat's most seminal works. Heads in works like Untitled (Two Heads on Gold) (1982) and Philistines (1982) are reminiscent of African masks, suggesting a cultural reclamation. The skulls allude to Haitian Vodou, which is filled with skull symbolism; the paintings Red Skull (1982) and Untitled (1982) can be seen as primary examples. In reference to the potent image depicted in Untitled (Skull) (1981), art historian Fred Hoffman writes that Basquiat was likely "caught off guard, possibly even frightened, by the power and energy emanating from this unexpected image." Further investigation by Hoffman in his book The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat reveals a deeper interest in the artist's fascination with heads that proves an evolution in the artist's oeuvre from one of raw power to one of more refined cognizance.
Basquiat's diverse cultural heritage was one of his many sources of inspiration. He often incorporated Spanish words into his artworks like Untitled (Pollo Frito) (1982) and Sabado por la Noche (1984). Basquiat's La Hara (1981), a menacing portrait of a white police officer, combines the Nuyorican slang term for police (la jara) and the Irish surname O'Hara. The black-hatted figure that appears in his paintings The Guilt of Gold Teeth (1982) and Despues De Un Pun (1987) is believed to represent Baron Samedi, the spirit of death and resurrection in Haitian Vodou.
A second recurrent reference to Basquiat's aesthetics comes from the artist's intention to share, in the words of gallerist Niru Ratnam, a "highly individualistic, expressive view of the world". Art historian Luis Alberto Mejia Clavijo believes Basquiat's work inspires people to "paint like a child, don't paint what is in the surface but what you are re-creating inside. Musician David Bowie, who was a collector of Basquiat's works, stated that "he seemed to digest the frenetic flow of passing image and experience, put them through some kind of internal reorganization and dress the canvas with this resultant network of chance."
Art critic Rene Ricard wrote in his 1981 article "The Radiant Child":"I'm always amazed at how people come up with things. Like Jean-Michel. How did he come up with the words he puts all over everything, his way of making a point without overstating the case, using one or two words he reveals a political acuity, gets the viewer going in the direction he wants, the illusion of the bombed-over wall. One or two words containing a full body. One or two words on a Jean-Michel contain the entire history of graffiti. What he incorporates into his pictures, whether found or made, is specific and selective. He has a perfect idea of what he's getting across, using everything that collates to his vision."Curator Marc Mayer wrote in the 2005 essay "Basquiat in History":"Basquiat speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador. We can read his pictures without strenuous effort—the words, the images, the colors and the construction—but we cannot quite fathom the point they belabor. Keeping us in this state of half-knowing, of mystery-within-familiarity, had been the core technique of his brand of communication since his adolescent days as the graffiti poet SAMO. To enjoy them, we are not meant to analyze the pictures too carefully. Quantifying the encyclopedic breadth of his research certainly results in an interesting inventory, but the sum cannot adequately explain his pictures, which requires an effort outside the purview of iconography ... he painted a calculated incoherence, calibrating the mystery of what such apparently meaning-laden pictures might ultimately mean."
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa purchased Untitled (1982), depicting a devil-like figure, for $57.3 million at Christie's in 2017. He sold the painting for $85 million at Phillips in 2022. Maezawa also purchased Basquiat's Untitled (1982), a powerful depiction of a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, for a record-setting $110.5 million in May 2017. It is the second highest price ever paid at an auction for artwork by an American artist.
In 2018, Flexible (1984) sold for $45.3 million, becoming Basquiat's first post-1983 painting to surpass the $20 million mark. In June 2020, Untitled (Head) (1982), sold for $15.2 million; a record for a Sotheby's online sale and a record for a Basquiat work on paper. In July 2020, Loïc Gouzer's Fair Warning app announced that an untitled drawing on paper sold for $10.8 million, which is a record high for an in-app purchase. Earlier that year, American businessman Ken Griffin purchased Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982) for upwards of $100 million from art collector Peter Brant. In March 2021, Warrior (1982) sold for $41.8 million at Christie's in Hong Kong, which is the most expensive Western work of art sold at auction in Asia. In May 2021, In This Case (1983) sold for $93.1 million at Christie's in New York. Later that year, Donut Revenge (1982) sold for $20.9 million at Christie's in Hong Kong. In 2022, Sugar Ray Robinson (1982) sold for $32.6 million at Christie's in New York. In 2023, El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) (1983) sold for $67.1 million at Christie's, and Self-Portrait as a Heel (Part Two) (1982) sold for $42 million at Sotheby's in New York.
In 2005, poet M. K. Asante published the poem "SAMO", dedicated to Basquiat, in his book ''Beautiful. And Ugly Too''. The children's book Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, written and illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, was released in 2016. The picture book won the Caldecott Medal in 2017. In 2019, illustrator Paolo Parisi wrote the graphic novel Basquiat: A Graphic Novel, following Basquiat's journey from street-art legend SAMO to international art-scene darling, up until his death.
Education
Basquiat was largely self-taught. He did not attend formal art school, instead developing his skills through his early involvement in street art and graffiti.
In the 10th grade, he enrolled at City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan, home to many artistic students who found conventional schooling difficult. He would skip school with his friends, but still received encouragement from his teachers, and began to write and illustrate for the school newspaper. He developed the character SAMO to endorse a faux religion. The saying "SAMO" had started as a private joke between Basquiat and his schoolmate Al Diaz, as an abbreviation for the phrase "Same old shit." They drew a series of cartoons for their school paper before and after using SAMO©.
In 1979, Basquiat appeared on the live public-access television show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien. Basquiat and O'Brien formed a friendship and he made regular appearances on the show over the next few years. Eventually, he began spending time writing graffiti around the School of Visual Arts, where he befriended students John Sex, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring.
In April 1979, Basquiat met Michael Holman at the Canal Zone Party and they founded the noise rock band Test Pattern, which was later renamed Gray. Other members of Gray included Shannon Dawson, Nick Taylor, Wayne Clifford and Vincent Gallo. They performed at nightclubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah and the Mudd Club.
In a 1997 review for The Daily Telegraph, art critic Hilton Kramer begins by stating that Basquiat had no idea what the word "quality" meant. He relentlessly criticized Basquiat as a "talentless hustler" and "street-smart but otherwise invincibly ignorant", arguing that he "used his youth, his looks, his skin colour and his abundant sex appeal to win an overnight fame that proved to be his undoing" and that art dealers of the time were "as ignorant about art as Basquiat himself." In saying that Basquiat's work never rose above "that lowly artistic station" of graffiti "even when his paintings were fetching enormous prices", Kramer argued that graffiti art "acquired a cult status in certain New York art circles." He further opined, "As a result of the campaign waged by these art-world entrepreneurs on Basquiat's behalf—and their own, of course—there was never any doubt that the museums, the collectors and the media would fall into line" when talking about the marketing of Basquiat's name.
Basquiat's first public exhibition was at The Times Square Show in New York in June 1980. In May 1981, he had his first solo exhibition at Galleria d'Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena. In late 1981, he joined the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York, where he had his first American one-man show from March 6 to April 1, 1982. In 1982, he also had shows at the Gagosian Gallery in West Hollywood, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, and the Fun Gallery in the East Village. Major exhibitions of his work have included Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings 1981–1984 at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in 1984, which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 1985. In 1985, the University Art Museum, Berkeley hosted Basquiat's first solo American museum exhibition. His work was showcased at Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover in 1987 and 1989.
In 2018, a public square in the 13th arrondissement of Paris was named Place Jean-Michel Basquiat in his memory. For the 2020–21 NBA season, the Brooklyn Nets honored Basquiat with their City Edition uniform and a court design inspired by his art. In 2021, the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation funded a Basquiat educational arts program developed in partnership between the Brooklyn Nets, the New York City Department of Education and the Fund for Public Schools. The Nets used a white version of the Basquiat City Edition uniform for the 2022–23 NBA season.
In August 2014, Revelation 13:18 released the single "Old School" featuring Jean-Michel Basquiat, along with the self-titled album Revelation 13:18 x Basquiat. The release date of "Old School" coincided with the anniversary of Basquiat's death. In 2020, New York rock band the Strokes used Basquiat's painting Bird on Money (1981) as the cover art for their album The New Abnormal.
