On the Saturday morning of August 13, 1988, my then-girlfriend Initia Durley and I were asleep when the telephone awoke us both from a deep slumber. Sleepily, Initia turned over and answered. “Oh my God, for real?” she screamed, sitting-up in the bed. “Damn, that’s a shame. All right, all right, I’ll call you later.” After she hung-up the phone, she took a deep breath as I stared at her wondering what the hell was going on. For a minute, Initia said nothing, but, after deep sigh later she blurted, “Basquiat died last night.”

“What?” I asked, though I’d heard her clearly I thought the side effects of lost sleep had affected my hearing. “What did you say?” I too sat up. “Jean-Michel Basquiat. He died last night of a heroin overdose.” Although me and B weren’t friends, I felt as though there was a death in the family, as though someone who shared my blood, was suddenly gone.

Only 27-years-old, Basquiat was scheduled to attend a Run-DMC concert with friends that evening. however, at 5:30 that afternoon, his girlfriend found him unconscious on the bedroom floor; he was pronounced dead on arrival at Cabrini Medical Center.

For a moment after hearing the news, I felt an emptiness one feels when reality becomes too real and your heroes die senseless deaths. Just a few years before, when I still lived uptown in Harlem, Basquiat became my hero the moment I saw him on the cover of the New York Times magazine in 1985. Shot by Lizzie Himmel, the picture represented everything that I wanted to be: a cool Black bohemian doing daring art, hanging tough with Andy Warhol and being celebrated for his avant-garde Blackness by the whitest motherfuckers on the planet, the suits at the New York Times.

Today marks the 28th year of his passing and, rarely does a week go by when I don’t think about his genius and how much he continues to inspire. Basquiat’s art was filled with pop culture references, musical tributes, African imaginary, strange poetry and allusions to death. Looking at his expressionistic pieces, one can also see (or feel) the musical influence in his work ranging from be-bop to hip-hop, free jazz to soul. Not only did he create with music blaring, but occasionally painted portraits of his musicians as well (with my favorite being one of Max Roach), but he also played and produced. Indeed, music was an important element in both Basquiat’s life and work.

http://www.soulhead.com/2...a-gonzales

Basquiat insinuated where Warhol just suggested. There was an edge to Basquiat's art. He had a real street sensibility, with the added depth of the myriad of inspirations taken from past artists and musicians. He had a evocatively moody visual style and his verbal style provoked with a minimal pallete of words. I recommend the film Basquiat directed by the artist Julian Schnabel and the documentary The Radient Child. While not perfect they capture an impression of the artist. His partner also published a book about him, and of course also his art. His references to Charlie Parker, Joe Louis amongst others as well as more surreal images was transformative.

But could he draw?

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https://newrepublic.com/a...k-new-wave

CynicKill said:

But could he draw?

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https://newrepublic.com/a...k-new-wave

It was more about ideas and composition and ideas than drawing. Warhol could outdraw him, but chose to stop drawing for most of his career. My analogy would be that an opera singer can technically sing better than Bob Dylan, but Dylan is more creative, and though an opera singer can sing better, there are plenty of times I would hear Dylan. An interesting article, though I don't agree with it. If Basquiat had limitations he showed what could be done with these limitations, which draws once again on the Dylan voice analogy. Was his ethnicity an issue? Yes. But like any subjective field hype and other factors such as race inevitably get drawn into it. Criticism of art is pretending that the subjective is objective when we are really just tossing a coin to decide if the emperor has new clothes, and that is the fun of it.

Basquiat was awesome! I like his love of music and his ideas of pop culture.

SAMO.