Taken up by Haring and Warhol, the youthful Basquiat became an emblematic figure for those who wanted to change the critical vocabulary of art to reflect the pop cultural impact of comic books, mass advertising and food packaging. When money came to dominate Basquiat's life, he became addicted to heroin which fuelled severe attacks of paranoia exacerbated by the conviction that he was the victim of art dealers. It was drugs which contributed to his death at the tragically early age of 27, after a decade of turbulent, existential iconoclasm.
For the full story - click the title
Irish Art
Snippets of interest to lovers of Art. News about Irish Artists or otherwise. The odd rant...
Monday
Urban Wild Child
Basquiat is the New York artist who symbolises the madness and the greed of Manhattan in the 1980s. He began his career as an underground - and defiantly enigmatic - graffiti artist with self-styled works of SAMO ('same old shit'), then moved rapidly into the cultish downtown mainstream with explosive, self-taught canvases expressive of urban alienation, the African-American predicament and mortality.
Taken up by Haring and Warhol, the youthful Basquiat became an emblematic figure for those who wanted to change the critical vocabulary of art to reflect the pop cultural impact of comic books, mass advertising and food packaging. When money came to dominate Basquiat's life, he became addicted to heroin which fuelled severe attacks of paranoia exacerbated by the conviction that he was the victim of art dealers. It was drugs which contributed to his death at the tragically early age of 27, after a decade of turbulent, existential iconoclasm.
For the full story - click the title
Irish Art
Taken up by Haring and Warhol, the youthful Basquiat became an emblematic figure for those who wanted to change the critical vocabulary of art to reflect the pop cultural impact of comic books, mass advertising and food packaging. When money came to dominate Basquiat's life, he became addicted to heroin which fuelled severe attacks of paranoia exacerbated by the conviction that he was the victim of art dealers. It was drugs which contributed to his death at the tragically early age of 27, after a decade of turbulent, existential iconoclasm.
For the full story - click the title
Irish Art
