- Accompanies a major double exhibition on Jean-Michel Basquiat and Egon Schiele - two artists that died too young but created masses of work over the course of a decade - at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, from 3rd October 2018 to 4th January 2019
- Comprises drawings, objects and paintings, gathered from private collections and museums all over the world

In 2018 the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, is hosting exhibitions on two of the greatest artists of the 20th century - Egon Schiele, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both exhibitions have the same curator, and are taking place at the same time. The shows illustrate exactly what it is that linked the two artists: line, and the use of expressive force.

This, the catalogue of the Basquiat exhibition, labelled "the definitive exhibition" by its curator, brings together 120 of the artist's most important masterpieces, sourced from international museums and private collections. With the astonishing radicalness of his artistic practice, Basquiat renewed the concept of art with enduring impact. This Basquiat retrospective centres on the idea of Basquiat's unique energetic line, his use of words, symbols, and how he integrates collage in his paintings, sculptures, objects, and large-scale drawings.

The catalogue includes texts by great authors, including Paul Schimmel who tells of his meeting with Basquiat in California; Francesco Pellizzi who knew Basquiat well and has not written about him for a long time; and Okwui Enwezor who talks about the Afro-American identity.

About the Author:

Dieter Buchhart is a curator and art theorist based in Vienna. He has PhD degrees in art history and restoration (science). He has curated many exhibitions in renowned international museums and art spaces, and was co-curator of the Barbican's exhibition, Basquiat: Boom for Real (21 September 2017-28 January 2018).

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Пролистать книгу Jean-Michel Basquiat: Foundation Louis Vuitton

The collaboration between the two artists, legends of the New York avant-garde, through more than a hundred of their joint works

In the spring of 2023, Fondation Louis Vuitton will be holding Basquiat x Warhol... Painting 4 hands, the most important exhibition ever devoted to the collaborative work of these two artists. The exhibition will feature more than 100 jointly signed paintings, in addition to individual works by Basquiat and Warhol, and works by other major artists (Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, etc.) in order to recreate the New York downtown art scene of the 1980s.

From 1984 to 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) and Andy Warhol (1928–1987) jointly produced about 160 paintings, some of the largest in their respective careers. A genuine artistic dialogue of style and form had developed between them that dealt equally well with crucial issues such as the integration of the African-American community into the narrative of North America, a continent where Warhol was a major manufacturer of icons.

Published to accompany an exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton from 5 April to 28 August 2023

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Пролистать книгу Basquiat x Warhol: Paintings Four Hands

This landmark volume tells the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat from the intimate perspective of his family, intertwining his artistic endeavors with his personal life, influences, and the times in which he lived, and features for the first time work from the Estate’s largely unseen and significant collection of paintings, drawings, sketches, and ephemera.

Organized by the family of Basquiat, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue feature over 200 never before and rarely seen paintings, drawings, ephemera, and artifacts. The artist’s contributions to the history of art and his exploration into our multi-faceted culture — incorporating music, the Black experience, pop culture, African American sports figures, literature, and other sources — are showcased alongside personal reminiscences and firsthand accounts providing unique insight into Basquiat’s creative life and his singular voice that propelled the social and cultural narrative that continues to this day.

Structured around key periods in his life, from his childhood and formative years, his meteoric rise in the art world and beyond, to his untimely death, the book features in-depth interviews with his surviving family members.

About the Authors:

Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux are the sisters of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and along with Nora Fitzpatrick, the artist’s stepmother, they run the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Ileen Gallagher is a curator and producer. Formerly a curator at De Young Museum in San Francisco and the Queens Museum of Art, New York, she also served as Director of Exhibitions for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland.

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Пролистать книгу Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure©

A rare and poignant compilation of photography and written anecdotes by American photographer and artist Lee Jaffe that captures his close friendship, collaboration, and travels with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as they traversed Japan, Thailand, and Switzerland in 1983. 

Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens.

Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music at a mutual friend’s art show. It was the early 1980s in New York, when the art scene was raw, complicated, and thriving, and Jaffe cultivated strong connections with cultural figures such as Basquiat, Bob Marley, and Peter Tosh. “For me, watching him [ Jean] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics,” Jaffe says. “With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place.” This beautiful volume presents snapshots of Basquiat: from the artist smiling on a bullet train to Kyoto and behind-the-scenes documentation of Basquiat creating artwork in St. Moritz, to poignant portraits that mirror his undeniable magnetism. These rare depictions of Basquiat come to life with Jaffe’s unforgettable experiences of their friendship, collaborations, and travels detailed in private written memories and anecdotes. This insightful and moving illustrated volume captures the soul of the unedited, ambitious, young artist during the height of his short yet unprecedented artistic career.  

About the Author:

Lee Jaffe is an artist, photographer, filmmaker, musician, and producer.

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Пролистать книгу Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads

Basquiat first came to prominence when he collaborated with Al Diaz to spray-paint enigmatic statements under the pseudonym SAMO©. He went on to work on collages, Xerox art, postcards, performances, and music before establishing his reputation as one of the most important painters of his generation.

Accompanying a major exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, this book opens with introductory essays from the curators, which place his practice in a wider art historical context and look at his career through the lens of performance. Six thematic chapters offer new research, with essays from poet Christian Campbell on SAMO©; curator Carlo McCormick on New York / New Wave; writer Glenn O’Brien on the downtown scene; academic Jordana Moore Saggese on Basquiat’s relationship to film and television; and music scholar Francesco Martinelli on Basquiat’s obsession with jazz.

This insightful new survey also features extended captions, rare archival material, and extensive photography, demonstrating how Basquiat’s legacy remains more powerful and relevant than ever today.

About the Author:

Dieter Buchhart is an art critic for Kunstforum International and the author of Keith Haring: The Political Line

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Пролистать книгу Basquiat: Boom for Real

Brilliant Basquiat. An unprecedented insight into Basquiat’s art and work

A condensed edition of the best-selling Basquiat monograph. Pristine reproductions of Basquiat’s seminal paintings, drawings, and notebook sketches, as well as texts by editor Hans Werner Holzwarth and curator and art historian Eleanor Nairne, bring us up close and personal to a legend synonymous with 1980s New York.

The legend of Jean-Michel Basquiat is as strong as ever. Synonymous with 1980s New York, 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.

Basquiat’s expressive style was based on raw figures and integrated words and phrases. His work is inspired by a pantheon of luminaries from jazz, boxing, and basketball, with references to arcane history and the politics of street life—so when asked about his subject matter, Basquiat answered “royalty, heroism and the streets.” In 1983 he started collaborating with the most famous of art stars, Andy Warhol, and in 1985 was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. When Basquiat died at the age of 27, he had become one of the most successful artists of his time.

First published in an XXL edition, this unprecedented insight into Basquiat’s art is now available in a compact, accessible volume in celebration of TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. With pristine reproductions of his most seminal paintings, drawings, and notebook sketches, it offers vivid proximity to Basquiat’s intricate marks and scribbled words, further illuminated by an introduction to the artist from editor Hans Werner Holzwarth, as well as an essay on his themes and artistic development from curator and art historian Eleanor Nairne. Richly illustrated year-by-year chapter breaks follow the artist’s life and quote from his own statements and contemporary reviews to provide both personal background and historical context.

The editor:

Hans Werner Holzwarth is a book designer and editor specializing in contemporary art and photography. His TASCHEN publications include Collector’s Editions like Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Ai Weiwei, and the David Hockney SUMO A Bigger Book, as well as monographs like the XXL-sized Jean-Michel Basquiat and survey books such as Modern Art and Art Now! Vols 3 and 4.

The author:

Eleanor Nairne is a curator at the Barbican Art Gallery. She has worked on a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions and publications, including Basquiat: Boom for Real (2017) and Imran Qureshi: Where the Shadows are so Deep (2016). Prior to the Barbican, she was curator of the Artangel Collection at Tate. She is a regular catalogue essayist, a writer for frieze, and a previous Jerwood Writer in Residence.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Life lines. The 80s art star who put poverty, power, and racism on the wall

An icon of 1980s New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) first made his name under the graffiti tag "SAMO", before establishing his studio practice and catapulting to fast fame at the age of 20. Although his career lasted barely a decade, he remains a cult figure of artistic social commentary, and a trailblazer in the mediation of graffiti and gallery art.

Basquiat's work drew upon diverse sources and media to create an original and urgent artistic vocabulary, biting with critique against structures of power and racism. His practice merged abstraction and figuration, poetry and painting, while his influences spanned Greek, Roman, and African art, French poetry, jazz, and the work of artistic contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly. The results are vivid, visceral mixtures of words, African emblems, cartoonish figures, daubs of bold color, and beyond.

This book presents Basquiat’s short but prolific career, his unique style, and his profound engagement with ever-relevant issues of integration and segregation, poverty and wealth.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:

 - a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
 - a concise biography
 - approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Over seventy works from museums and private collections trace out the meteoric career of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), “enfant terrible” of the art world who quickly became the symbol of the New York multiethnic culture of the Eighties.

With essays by Achille Bonito Oliva, Henry Geldzahler, Richard D. Marshall, Jeffrey Hoffeld, Bruno Bischofberger, and Luciano Caprile, a catalogue of Basquiat’s works (edited by Luca Marenzi) and his biography (by Gaia Regazzoni), the monograph accompanying the Lugano exhibition retraces the entire artistic development of this legendary figure, called by some the “Jimi Hendrix of art” or the “Boy-King”, providing readers with an in-depth view of one of the preeminent figures in the Twentieth-century international art scene.

The tragic victim perhaps of his own inner fire, which consumed the proudly mixed-race and errant artist at the youthful age of 27, Basquiat made his entrance into the art world with graffiti work signed SAMO©, and became a protagonist of the US graffiti movement in the late Seventies alongside Keith Haring. In the early Eighties, after his participation in collective exhibitions at alternative galleries that sought to give visitors a full panorama of the current New York art and cultural scene, Basquiat was officially launched into the art world as a painter at the tender age of 21, thanks to an article written by the critic René Ricard who compared him to masters such as Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet.

Basquiat was one of the few emerging artists to experience not only immediate international fame but also the at times impetuous requests to exhibit his works in the most notable New York art galleries — and soon thereafter, all over the world. Intelligent, curious and full of a lust for life, Basquiat broke with tradition and blazoned his cruel truths about the true perils of modern life: money, drugs, sex, adulation, oppression and racism. The rebel artist incorporated a great variety of elements into his work, from symbols of mass culture, jazz legends and famous black sports heroes and musicians to the skeletons and skulls evoking his fascination with death.
His creations are a fusion of symbols, words and colours. His colours are not those of a painting on an easel created with studied art, they are the colours of life, the colours of the street, both brilliant and faded, overlaid like torn posters that don’t hide what lies beneath.

The chronological presentation of the selected works includes some fifty paintings, twenty drawings, collaborations done with Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente, and canvases commissioned by Bruno Bischofberger of Zurich, Basquiat’s exclusive European representative. Basquiat would establish a fundamental bond with Warhol, and the death of the master of Pop Art in 1987 would leave a great void in his life.

The catalogue concludes with previously unpublished photographs by the noted Lugano film director, Edo Bertoglio. A number of these were taken during the shooting of the film “New York Beat” later renamed “Downtown 81”, in which Basquiat plays the lead role of a nineteen-year-old unknown artist trying to survive in the churning artistic and musical circles of downtown New York in the early Eighties.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was only twenty-seven when he died in 1988, his meteoric and often controversial career having lasted for just eight years. Despite his early death, Basquiat's powerful œuvre has ensured his continuing reputation as one of modern art's most distinctive voices. 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 shrewdly observed and biting.

This bestselling book, now available in a compact edition, celebrates Basquiat's achievements in the contexts of the key influences on his art. It not only re-evaluates the artist's principal works and their meaning but also explains what keeps his painting relevant today.

- Unabridged compact edition of a critically acclaimed book, featuring spectacular reproductions of Basquiat's work
- Examines many of Basquiat's individual works in detail, with particular reference to his working methods and technique

American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) quickly became one of art history’s most luminescent personalities; his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Madonna, as well as his tragic death at the age of twenty-seven, are the stuff of legend.

This retrospective publication traces the artist’s unique career and pinpoints his important position in art history. Basquiat’s works are marked by the kind of intensity and energy that also determined the course of his brief life. In just eight years - comparable to the career of Egon Schiele - Basquiat not only managed to create an extensive oeuvre but also to establish new figurative and expressive elements alongside Conceptual and Minimal Art. At the age of twenty-one, he became the youngest artist ever to be invited to the documenta, while his work also anticipated that of Germany’s Junge Wilde movement and the art of the nineties.

The artist’s most inspired works in one volume.

Jean-Michel Basquiat — artist and art world provocateur — took New York City by storm with his powerful and complex works that relentlessly engaged with charged sociopolitical issues, including race, police brutality, and structural inequity. In this important volume, devoted to an exhibition at the Brant Foundation in their newly opened Manhattan outpost featuring the artist’s key works, Basquiat’s art returns to its East Village roots, contextualized for the first time in decades in the very neighborhood that served as one of his greatest inspirations.

Dieter Buchhart, noted Basquiat scholar and curator, brings together one hundred of the artist’s most important works, focusing on the best examples of the many subjects that informed Basquiat’s work, from jazz, anatomy, sports figures, comics, classical literature, the African diaspora, and art history. The exhibition partially restages three of the artist’s critical early shows, including an exhibition of the artist’s paintings and drawings of heads at Robert Miller Gallery; his most important canvases from Gagosian Gallery’s 1982 show in Los Angeles; and Basquiat’s solo show at Fun Gallery in the East Village. Buchhart also considers in-depth the artist’s so-called stretcher bar paintings, in which the normally hidden wooden supports for stretched canvases are exposed, works that have yet to be explored at length by scholars. In so doing, Buchhart offers a critical assessment of the enduring importance and legacy of the artist’s work.

© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

About the Author:

Dieter Buchhart is a curator and art theorist based in Vienna. He has PhD degrees in art history and restoration science. He has curated many exhibitions in renowned international museums and art spaces, and has published nearly ten books on the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Defying constructed binaries between high and low art

Art and Objecthood illuminates the role of found objects and unconventional materials in the oeuvre of world-renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. His creative fervor saw no bounds, he painted and drew on everything around him—from chairs to refrigerators, but also on items he encountered on the street: discarded windows and doors, mirrors, wood boards, and subway tiles. Interweaving art and life, these three-dimensional works are not only integral to New York’s cultural landscape in the 1980s but are also symbols of Basquiat’s engagement with, and transformation of, the reality around him. This publication presents new scholarship by leading Basquiat scholars and art historians and is the first comprehensive survey to explore Basquiat’s use of found objects and unorthodox supports and their role in addressing issues of social inequality, political thresholds, and racial boundaries in the United States.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988, New York City) is known for his raw gestural style of painting. His distinct approach was characterized by a rich fusion of text, symbols, and imagery. He was one of the first African American artists to achieve major international acclaim, and is celebrated for his prolific, albeit short artistic career.

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-American, African, and Aztec cultural histories; and shows how Basquiat incorporated into his work classical themes and contemporary icons — from athletes to musicians. What becomes clear is how, even as a young man, Basquiat had a profound understanding of the artist’s role in art history, and of his position as a young Black artist in a world of racism, suppression and social injustice.

This book helps readers decode Basquiat’s unique lingua franca, an intoxicating body of work brimming with social commentary that was in turns incisive, angry, comic, hip, and heartbreaking, and that remains powerful and meaningful today.

About the Authors:

Dieter Buchhart is an international guest curator and Basquiat specialist.
Antonia Hoerschelmann is Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Klaus Albrecht Schröder is Director of the Albertina in Vienna.

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Пролистать книгу Jean-Michel Basquiat: Of Symbols and Signs

The present publication is dedicated to the expressive self-portraits by Jean-Michel Basquiat and covers his lifelong intensive study of the self. In Basquiat’s œuvre the self-portrait, one of the major subjects of art history, occupies a central position that has not been examined to date.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s self-portraits are regarded as being among the most important of his radical creative works. In addition to some 50 specific portraits of himself, we can also see his series of likenesses of African-American men as concealed reproductions of the artist. Not least because Basquiat, who was affected himself by everyday racism, identified with his heroes, saints and martyrs as he portrayed them. Thus his major topics from identity, discrimination and prejudice to capitalism, the market and oppression are all to be found in these key works.

Jean-Michel Basquiat | Xerox is the first concentrated examination of the extraordinary body of work that the artist created using Xerox copies as his principal medium and compositional focal point.

These immersive, collaged Xerox paintings epitomize Basquiat’s extraordinary capacity for visual language. Their raw, allover compositions incorporate recycled and transformed signs and markings from the artist’s everyday experiences ― including motifs from his earlier artworks. The intricate web of content in this series presages the copy-paste sampling characteristic of the subsequent Internet and post-Internet generations, positioning Basquiat as a pioneer of the pre-digital age.