Taschen’s legendary art catalogue has just grown bigger with a new 500+ page monograph detailing the life and art of acclaimed New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Art of Storytelling, authored by Eleanor Nairne and edited by Hans Werner Holzwarth, is filled to the brim with large-scale reproductions of the late artist’s drawings, paintings and notebook pages, as well as several essays guiding the reader through Basquiat’s career in a year-by-year run-through from 1978 to his premature death at 27 in 1988.
The life and art of Jean-Michel Basquiat are the subjects of Taschen’s mammoth latest release.
The enigmatic Basquiat, who was of Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, was a seminal figure in the underground art scene of Brooklyn in the ’70s and ’80s and eternalised the possibilities of art, music and social critique in New York.
Taschen also provides readers with an in-depth analysis of the cultural revolution of which Basquiat was in the centre. Writes the publishers:
“The legend of Jean-Michel Basquiat is as strong as ever. Synonymous with New York in the 1980s, the artist first appeared in the late 1970s under the tag SAMO, spraying caustic comments and fragmented poems on the walls of the city.”
“He appeared as part of a thriving underground scene of visual arts and graffiti, hip-hop, post-punk, and DIY filmmaking, which met in a booming art world. As a painter with a strong personal voice, Basquiat soon broke into the established milieu, exhibiting in galleries around the world.”
Take a closer look at some of Basquiat’s best works below:
Via Colossal.
