page_title: Jean-Michel Basquiat
section_title: Gallery artist: 1980–1985
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Michel Basquiat / Biography / Gallery artist: 1980–1985
caption_attribution_description: English: Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) home on 57 Great Jones Street where he lived 1983-1988, with recent plaque dedicating this historic event.
context_page_description: Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.
  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.
  Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community of his time, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. Basquiat's visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.
context_section_description: During the early 1980s, Basquiat made his breakthrough as a solo artist. In June 1980, Basquiat participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab) and Fashion Moda where he was noticed by various critics and curators. In February 1981, Basquiat participated in the New York/New Wave exhibit, curated by Diego Cortez at New York's MoMA PS1. Cortez organized Basquiat's first solo show with Emilio Mazzoli, an Italian gallerist, that opened in Modena, Italy on May 23, 1981. In December 1981, Rene Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine. During this period, Basquiat painted many pieces on found objects, such as discarded doors.
  At the time, and while dating others, Basquiat was living with his girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, who later specifically described his sexuality in Jennifer Clement's book, Widow Basquiat, 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. It was, I think, driven by intelligence. He was attracted to intelligence more than anything and to pain."
  
  In late 1981, Basquiat met Annina Nosei with his first exhibition in her gallery in a group show called Public Address with Keith Haring and Barbara Kruger among others, and he joined the Annina Nosei gallery and worked in a basement below the gallery toward his first American one-man show from March 6 to April 1, 1982. Nosei provided him with a loft to live in which also served as a studio at 101 Crosby Street. In March 1982, he painted in Modena, Italy, for his second Italian exhibition. By May 1982, he had left the Annina Nosei gallery and Bruno Bischofberger became his worldwide art dealer. That same year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever exhibit at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, where his works were exhibited alongside Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. Starting in November 1982, Basquiat worked from the ground-floor display and studio space Larry Gagosian had built below his Venice, California home. There, Basquiat commenced a series of paintings for a 1983 show, his second at Gagosian Gallery which was then in West Hollywood. He brought along his girlfriend, then-unknown aspiring 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." I was a little concerned—one too many eggs can spoil an omelet, you know? 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. So Madonna came out and stayed for a few months and we all got along like one big, happy family.
   During this time, Basquiat took considerable interest in the work that Robert Rauschenberg was producing at Gemini G.E.L. in West Hollywood, visiting him on several occasions and finding inspiration in the accomplishments of the painter.
  In 1983, at 22 years old, Basquiat was included in the Whitney Biennial, becoming the youngest artist to represent America in a major international exhibition of contemporary art. That same year, Basquiat produced a 12-inch rap single featuring hip-hop artists Rammellzee and K-Rob. Billed as Rammellzee vs. K-Rob, the single contained two versions of the same track: "Beat Bop" on the A-side with vocals, with the B-side adding an instrumental version. The single was pressed in limited quantities on the one-off Tartown Record Company label. The single's cover featured Basquiat's artwork, making the pressing highly desirable among both record and art collectors. 
  By 1984, Basquiat was showing at the Mary Boone gallery in SoHo. Basquiat often painted in expensive Armani suits; and he would even appear in public in the same paint-splattered clothes.
  A large number of photographs depic
caption: Basquiat lived from 1983 to 1988 at 57 Great Jones in downtown Manhattan, where he died. A plaque commemorating his life was placed on July 13, 2016, by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
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