Book Description
A stunningly designed landmark publication celebrating the astonishing work of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), whose meteoric and often controversial career lasted for only eight years until his death at the age of twenty-seven. Basquiat features spectacular reproductions of Basquiat’s work, including many rarely exhibited pieces from private collections and offers fresh new perspectives on Basquiat’s achievements, explored in the contexts of the key influences on his work, including Picasso, Matisse and Twombly; the development of hip-hop culture; and the emergence of a multicultural society. Explores many of Basquiat’s individual works in detail, with particular reference to his working methods and techniques and accompanies a major travelling exhibition. This is an indispensable book that will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art.
About the Author
Marc Mayer, formerly Deputy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, is Director of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. He is a noted critic and curator of contemporary art.
Basquiat FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat lived to the age of only twenty-seven. His meteoric career as an artist had lasted no more than eight years. The one-time teenage runaway and high-school dropout was first included in a group exhibition in 1980, and almost immediately knew considerable success, enjoying his first solo exhibition just two years later. Basquiat quickly became a notable figure on the international art scene, mixing with dealers and artists. Among these was Andy Warhol, with whom he established a close working relationship." "Borrowing from graffiti and street imagery, cartoons, mythology and religious symbolism, Basquiat's drawings and paintings explore issues of race and identity, providing social commentary that is both shrewdly observed and biting. Characterized by their intensely personal nature and the raw, almost aggressive handling of paint, these works have an enduring power to move and to confound." Viewing the heady world of the 1980s art scene from the beginning of a new century, we are able to look at Basquiat's achievements with increasing objectivity. Rather than explore his persona, this book aims to demonstrate the lasting quality of Basquiat's work itself, as well as its uniqueness within modern art. It strives not only to reevaluate his principal works, but also to explain Basquiat's continuing interest as a major painter.
SYNOPSIS
A stunningly designed landmark publication celebrating the astonishing work of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), whose meteoric and often controversial career lasted for only eight years until his death at the age of twenty-seven
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
This catalog was produced to accompany a traveling exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work, scheduled to appear at the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Houston's Museum of Fine Arts consecutively from now until February 2006. In addition to reproductions of a generous number of the artist's paintings and drawings-few of which are in public collections-the book includes four essays by noted curators and scholars of contemporary American art exploring the meaning and importance of Basquiat's body of work 16 years after the artist's untimely death at age 27. Editor Mayer, director of the Musee d'art contemporain de Montr al, emphasizes identifying seminal works and evaluating Basquiat's oeuvre as a coherent contribution to the unfolding history of American art, adding to the more biographical approaches taken in earlier volumes on the artist, e.g., Richard D. Marshall and others' Jean-Michel Basquiat (1995). Suitable for public and academic libraries.-Kathryn Wekselman, MLn, Cincinnati Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Art & Photography
Book Info
