In the early 1970’s Basquiat became one of New York’s famed underground graffiti-artists using the tag SAMO on buildings and subway stations in Brooklyn and the Bronx. With gaining attention and fame, he announced to the world at a party in Soho that he was the artist. SAMO, was in fact not Basquiat working on his own. His partner was fellow artist Al Diaz, who had attended the same high school in 1976 and were close friends. Seventeen-year-old Basquiat explained to NYC’s Village Voice, an American publication focused on culture, that, “This city is crawling with uptight, middle-class pseudos’ trying to look like the money they don’t have. Status symbols – it cracks me up. People should live more spiritually, man. But we can’t stand on the sidewalks all day screaming at people to clean up their acts, so we write on walls.”

As a 19-year-old high school dropout and struggling artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat went to The Whitney Museum of Modern Art to see an exhibit of Cy Twombly’s work that would ultimately change his life. He said that Twombly taught him that he could scratch things off a canvas. Scratching the surface with words, names, graffiti and numbers, became his art form. Crossing out words, repeating words, using poetry, mythology, and scribbles took his graffiti to a new creative art form. Art critic Jerry Saltz wrote, “In this genesis moment, he took Twombly’s speed of history and amped it up to the speed of life.” It transformed the young artists imagination and his connection to poetry that was a major influence in his favourite artist’s work. Basquait was known to work with a book of Twombly’s paintings opened beside him. His favourite was ‘Apollo and The Artist’ with Apollo written across it. Twombly’s barbed lotus that appears in many of his works is echoed in Basquiat’s now famous signature motif, a three-pointed crown. Art historians believe the symbol was used to “depict him as a king with great ambition” while others believe it represented ‘the poet, the musician, the great boxing champion’.

To make money, Basquiat printed T-shirts and postcards to sell to tourists. A chance meeting with one of his idols, Andy Warhol, would change his life. He had spotted him through a window at a New York restaurant and took the opportunity to introduce himself and show him some new postcards. Warhol bought two. He was so impressed that he took Basquiat under his wing. At the time, Italian art dealer Annina Nosei had set him up in a basement studio at her Prince Street Gallery and he was well on his way to becoming an important artist, but it was Warhol, 32 years his senior, that would accelerate his fame and become a much-needed father-figure in his life. He introduced him to the international art world, dealers, and influential clients. Warhol also helped keep Basquiat off drugs for quite a long time and create a stable period in his life. It was during this period he and Madonna became an iconic couple in 1983, at a time where they were both starting to make a name for themselves. They only dated for a few months but remained close friends until his death. Basquiat and Warhol continued to work closely together, sometimes on one canvas. In 1985 they collaborated on a show that received a lot of attention in the art world. It was successful for both, but jealousy and rivalry ultimately broke up their close relationship. On his own, Basquiat became more reclusive, and his heroin addiction returned. After Warhol’s unexpected death from a routine gall bladder surgery in 1987, he struggled with guilt and grief.

From the young age of 21, Basquiat was well on his way to becoming a millionaire. Although he resisted being labelled as a Black artist, he was connected to the Black experience. He explored issues of racism, politics, poverty, homelessness, and class struggles. In his professional career he created over six hundred paintings and fifteen hundred drawings. At the early age of 27, less than two years after the death of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat died of an accidental heroin overdose. His father Gerard who had never shown any love or interest in his son, took control over his estate and ultimately became a very wealthy man by the time he died in 2013.

Basquiat was complex. He loved simple things in life like eating croissants, listening to jazz, reading poetry, and books about his favourite artists - Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Pablo Picasso. He also loved buying Armani suits only to paint in them. He suffered from imposter syndrome yet had become one of the top artists working in New York City. He was obsessed with fame and money, but refused to have a bank account.

On August 2^nd, 1988, the world lost a great artist who broke cultural barriers. New York artist Keith Haring created a piece to memorialize his best friend entitled “A Pile of Crowns” depicting a towering pile of Basquiat’s trademark symbol. Sadly only two years later Keith Haring would pass away at the age of 31 from AIDS related complications. Three great artists, Warhol, Basquiat and Haring, eternally connected have left an indelible mark on American art.