Fred Hoffman

Jean Michel Basquiat

Marc Mayer

Celebrating the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, this volume features reproductions of his work, including rarely-seen pieces from private collections. It offers new perspectives on Basquiat's achievements, exploring them in the contexts of his key influences, and explores many individual works in detail.

Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

"This major undertaking represents the first full-scale, single-author study of Basquiat’s art. The book focuses on all major themes and subjects of both paintings and works on paper. Having been intimately familiar with Basquiat’s work for over 35 years, Fred Hoffman has now undertaken in-depth analysis and interpretation of over 150 works by the artist. The author brings to light many historical and cultural sources and traditions informing Basquiat’s work; as well as the artist’s relationship to important modernist painters including Picasso, Matisse, De Kooning, Rauschenberg and Warhol. This book introduces significant new information on Basquiat’s life and art. For the first time, the author shares many previously unknown facts and stories about the artist." -- Publisher's website.

The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat

The first book on the drawings and works on paper of this legendary cult artist. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name, Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing is the first book on the Schorr Collection of Basquiat's works on paper. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was barely out of his teens when he rocketed to the center of New York's art scene; he was 27 when he died of a heroin overdose. A friend of Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, and always controversial, Basquiat is now established as a major contemporary painter whose unique work continues to enthrall. Herbert and Lenore Schorr began collecting the work of Basquiat in 1981, before his first New York exhibition. During the artist's seminal years of 1982-83, the Schorrs acquired several of his most important paintings, but in contrast to virtually every other early collector, the Schorrs also pursued and acquired a great number of works on paper both directly from the artist and from his first dealer. Their collection demonstrates the focus and ambition that the artist invested in the medium of drawing.

Fred Hoffman

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