This exciting, color-filled retrospective monograph offers new insights into Basquiat’s unique visual language and helps illuminate messages about political and social issues that feel as urgent today as they did a half-century ago.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s symbolic, complex, and often emotionally charged work made a huge impact on the 1980s downtown New York City art scene. And though his all-too-brief career ended when he died at age 27, Basquiat left behind an enormous legacy—not only in the number of works he produced, but also in the messages he encoded around political, social, racial, and cultural issues.
This exciting book shows how Basquiat used an intricate network of signs and symbols to challenge the very system that made him a darling of the art world. It traces his inspiration from cartoons, children’s drawings, and advertising as well as his own Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage; discusses the influence of African-America
