NEW YORK, May 1, 2005
Basquiat: An Artist's Fast Life
Sunday Morning Visits A Retrospective Of The 80s Art Legend
-
-
In this 1985 image provided by the Brooklyn Museum, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is shown surrounded by his work. (AP/Brooklyn Museum)
-
Pop artists Andy Warhol, left, and Jean-Michel Basquiat pose in front of their collaborative paintings in 1985. Warhol painted the company logos and Basquiat added dashes of color and commentary. (AP)
-
This image provided by the Brooklyn Museum is the 1982 work "Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump," by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. (AP)
-
-
Photo Essay Basquiat The work of the late New York anti-establishment artist.
A kid already rich and famous by the time he landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine at age 24, mocking his success by appearing barefoot in an Armani suit.
Then he was dead.
At New York’s Brooklyn Museum, two floors of paintings almost scratch the surface of the universe that was Jean-Michel Basquiat.
You walk in and the place is shaking.
"There’s energy. There’s vibration. He really understands color," says Marc Mayer, a curator of what has been called "one of the major museum shows of the year." Adds Mayer, "I have never seen acrylic painting where the color is so strong."
It was art by its own rules: anti-establishment, spontaneous, childlike, bold, and flippant. It earned Basquiat an almost immediate following, especially among the young.
"When I was 24, he was the one," says Mayer. "He was the master."
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born December 1960 in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father was Haitian, and his mother Puerto Rican. Often depressed, she was periodically institutionalized. The marriage ended in divorce. The drawing, says his father, Gerard Basquiat,started by age 4. By the age of 9, it was an obsession.
From the beginning, says his father, art was his son’s main passion.
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
