NYC Exhibit

Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Boricua in Basquiat: Reflections on Jean Michel Basquiat's Afro-Latino Lexicon May 6, 2005 Hunter College Ida K. Lang Theatre North Bldg. 4th Floor 6:30-8:30 pm Panelists: Kellie Jones, Yale University and co-curator, Basquiat, The Brooklyn Museum of Art Franklin Sirmans, co-curator, Basquiat, The Brooklyn Museum of Art Fred Braithwaite, a/k/a Fab 5 Freddy, Writer, filmmaker and original host of Yo! MTV Raps Frances Negron, Columbia University, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, author of Boricua Pop Raquel Rivera, Tufts University, author of New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone Moderator: Yasmin Ramirez , Center for Puerto Rican Studies View PDF of exhibit

Brooklyn Museum of Art

Take 2 or 3 to Eastern Parkway stop

Through June 5, 2005
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th & 5th Floor Open Wed-Sun.

For more info:
www.brooklynmuseum.org
(718) 501-6307

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican-American mother. At an early age, he showed a precocious talent for drawing, and his mother enrolled him as a Junior Member of the Brooklyn Museum when he was six. Basquiat first gained notoriety as a teenage graffiti poet and musician. By 1981, at the age of twenty, he had turned from spraying graffiti on the walls of buildings in Lower Manhattan to selling paintings in SoHo galleries, rapidly becoming one of the most accomplished artists of his generation. Astute collectors began buying his art, and his gallery shows sold out. Critics noted the originality of his work, its emotional depth, unique iconography, and formal strengths in color, composition, and drawing. By 1985, he was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine as the epitome of the hot, young artist in a booming market. Tragically, Basquiat began using heroin and died of a drug overdose when he was just twenty-seven years old.

This exhibition gathers together more than one hundred of Jean-Michel Basquiat's finest works, including many that have never been shown in the United States. It is organized chronologically, with special sections highlighting Basquiat's interest in music, language, and Afro-Caribbean imagery, along with his use of techniques such as collage and silkscreen.

The exhibition seeks to demonstrate not only that Basquiat was a key figure in the 1980s, but also that his artistic accomplishments have significance for twentieth-century art as a whole. Basquiat was the last major painter in an idiom that had begun decades earlier in Europe with the imitation of African art by modern artists such as Picasso and Matisse. Inspired by his own heritage, Basquiat both contributed to and transcended the African-influenced modernist idiom.

Related Events

May 1, 3 p.m.: Music Off the Walls, Uptown/Downtown
May 7, 6 p.m.-8 p.m.: World Music, "Audio Graffiti"
May 7, 6 p.m.: Gallery Talk
May 7, 7 p.m.: Gallery Talk
May 7, 7 p.m.: Film, Downtown 81
May 7, 8 p.m.: Gallery Talk, GalleryTalk with Fab 5 Freddy
May 7, 9 p.m.-11 p.m.: Dance Party
May 14, 3 p.m.-5 p.m.: Hands-On Art, Afternoon Groove
May 22, 3 p.m.: Movies @ the Museum, Basquiat on Film