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

Jean-Michel Basquiat Lithography (*)
High-quality reproduction of the work “Six Fifty,” created by Basquiat in 1982.
Luxury edition on Monte Carlo high-grade 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
- Ink blot dimensions: 30 x 29 cm
- Condition: Excellent (this work has never been framed or exhibited, and has always been stored in a professional art folder, therefore offered in perfect condition).

The work will be carefully handled and packaged in a reinforced flat cardboard package. The shipment will be certified with a tracking number, operated by top transport companies (UPS DPD DHL FedEx).

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

(*) Jean-Michel Basquiat was the eldest of the three children of Matilde Andrades and Gerard Basquiat. His father was a financially solid Haitian accountant and his mother a Puerto Rican graphic designer of great prestige in her field. Jean-Michel grew up in a torn family environment; his parents divorced and, because of this, he had to change schools many times. He studied at a private Catholic school, later at a public school, and finally, at 16, he entered City-As-School, an educational center for gifted teenagers, from which he was expelled, for rebelliousness, a year before graduating.
In his youth he entered the urban 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 in the SoHo areas, a New York neighborhood where art galleries thrived.
A year later he left school a year before graduating from high school and left home to live for two years on the streets, in abandoned buildings, or with his friends in Lower Manhattan, surviving by selling postcards and T-shirts he decorated himself. He continued to devote himself to graffiti; his paintings and writings had a strong poetic and philosophical charge, but above all satirical. The pseudonym of his shared alter ego with Al Díaz was SAMO (short for “Same Old Shit,” i.e., “the same old crap,” with which they 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 ends religious brainwashing, the politics of nothingness, and false philosophy.” An article about SAMO’s street writing published in The Village Voice was the first sign that the art world was taking an interest in him.
The artist had several relationships that influenced his work, one of the most significant being with artist Andy Warhol.
Likewise, on a personal level, he was involved with several women, one of the most well-known today being Madonna. Lower Manhattan was the area where they lived at that time; it was in 1982 when they began to spend more time together and go to gallery parties. A common thread they shared, she mentions in an interview: “I was a big fan of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.”
In 1988, exhibitions were installed in Paris and New York, and in April of that year he tried to overcome his addictions and moved to his home in Hawaii. He returned to New York in June, announcing that he had freed himself from the 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 Afro-descendant art. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Throughout his brief but intense artistic career, he would hold more than 40 solo exhibitions and participate in around 100 group shows. Self-promotion and publicity appeals were prioritizing factors for Basquiat, as they had been for Andy Warhol or Julian Schnabel before him.
Neo-expressionism gradually surpassed appropriationism, in part thanks to the economic strength that propelled art prices to new heights, especially painting, and in part thanks to the support of gallery owners and collectors. However, critical reception was not unanimous in its assessment, and there were frequent accusations that neo-expressionist discourse lacked theoretical grounding. It was argued that the art practiced by neo-expressionists carried no political or social meaning; it was merely merchandise and, therefore, subject to market fluctuations. Neo-expressionist painting was reduced to a consumer product and, as such, a creatively disqualified and vulgar fact.