Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) - Six Fifty - Artestar licensed print

Jean-Michel Basquiat photolithograph (*）
High-quality reproduction of the work “Six Fifty,” created by Basquiat in 1982.
Luxury edition on heavyweight Monte Carlo watercolor paper (300 g/m2)
Printing authorized by Artestar New York.
Copyright of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Specifications:

- Support dimensions: 40 x 39 cm
- Image dimensions: 30 x 29 cm
- Condition: Excellent (this work has never been framed or displayed and has always been stored in a professional art portfolio, so it is offered in perfect condition).

The work will be carefully handled and packed in a reinforced flat cardboard package. It will be shipped by registered mail with a tracking number, handled by the leading shipping companies (UPS DPD DHL FedEx).

Shipping will also include full insurance for the final value of the work, with a full refund in case of loss or damage, at no cost to the buyer.

(*) Jean-Michel Basquiat was the first of the three children of Matilde Andrades and Gerard Basquiat. His father was a Haitian accountant of respectable financial means, and his mother was a Puerto Rican graphic designer held in high regard in her profession. Jean-Michel grew up in a fractured family environment. His parents divorced, and as a result he had to change schools many times. He attended a private Catholic school, then a public school, and finally, at the age of 16, enrolled at City-As-School, a school for gifted teenagers, from which he was expelled for rebelliousness one year before graduating.
As a young man, he came into contact with the big-city subculture associated with drug use and street gangs. In 1977, together with Al Díaz, he entered the world of graffiti, painting on subway cars and around SoHo, the New York neighborhood where art galleries abound.
The following year, he left school one year before graduating from high school and moved out of his home to live for two years on the streets, in abandoned buildings, or with friends in Lower Manhattan, surviving by selling postcards and T-shirts that he decorated himself. He continued to make graffiti; his paintings and writings were highly poetic and philosophical, but above all satirical. The pseudonym of his alter ego, shared with Al Díaz, was SAMO (short for “Same Old shit”—that is, “the same old shit”), under which they both signed their tags and graffiti with cryptic messages. The use of this name was decisive in his life.
These murals bore inscriptions such as “SAMO saves idiots” or “SAMO puts an end to religious brainwashing, the politics of nothing, and false philosophy.” An article about SAMO’s street writing published in The Village Voice was the first indication that the art world was taking an interest in him.
The artist had several relationships that influenced his work; one of the most significant was with artist Andy Warhol.
He also had relationships with several women; one of the best known today was Madonna. Lower Manhattan was the area where they lived at the time. In 1982, they began spending more time together and going to gallery parties. One thing they had in common, she mentions in an interview: “I was a big fan of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.”
In 1988, exhibitions were mounted in Paris and New York, and in April of that year he tried to overcome his addictions and retreated to his home in Hawaii. He returned to New York in June, announcing that he had freed himself from his addictions, but on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27, he died of a heroin overdose, becoming the most successful visual artist in the history of African-descended art. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Over the course of his brief but intense artistic career, he would hold more than 40 solo exhibitions and take part in around 100 group exhibitions. Self-promotion and publicity were priorities for Basquiat, as they had previously been for Andy Warhol and Julian Schnabel.
Neo-Expressionism gradually gained ground over appropriationism, partly thanks to the economic boom that drove art prices—and painting prices in particular—to great heights, and partly thanks to the support of galleries and collectors. Critics, however, were not unanimous in their assessment, and denunciations of the Neo-Expressionist discourse’s lack of theoretical foundation were common. It was claimed that the art practiced by the Neo-Expressionists had no political or social meaning; it was merely a commodity and therefore subject to the market’s ups and downs. Neo-Expressionist painting was reduced to a consumer product and, as such, creatively discredited and vulgar.