Basquiat: An Artist's Fast Life

Sunday Morning Visits A Retrospective Of The 80s Art Legend

(CBS) 
"And it's like yesterday. There's Jean-Michel sitting on the ground. His artwork on the wall being held by a string, a rope." He recalls his son saying, "Papa, you do not understand it, but it's my life. And one day I'm going to be very famous."

By high school, Jean-Michel dropped out, left home, and set out on his own. Soon after, he starred in "Downtown 81," a movie loosely based on his life as an artist at the dawn of a new New York scene.

One shot features Basquiat spray-painting the cryptic street poetry that earned him a local following as SAMO (for "same old, same old").

"They were always where there was going to be a great party some night. Suddenly there’s a SAMO graffiti on the wall next to the entrance to that private party. He knew where stuff was happening," says Mayer.

"He was included in a group show of young New York artists from all the boroughs and it was called the Times Square Show," says Mayer, "and he was singled out as one of the most interesting of the artists in that show by the critics." He was 19 or 20.

In the world of art, the rest of Basquiat’s story has taken on a life of its own: his overnight success, his electric charisma, and his heavy drug use. He dated Madonna, and became best pals with artist Keith Haring. Was he homeless? Maybe. It’s the stuff of legend.

In the 1996 movie Basquiat, David Bowie plays Andy Warhol in his first encounter Basquiat. Warhol supposedly agreed to buy some art from him, but tries to haggle him down from $10 to $5.