Beyond the Canvas: The Forgotten History of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his Legacy in Black History.

Basquiat’s Life Beyond his Artwork and What Led to his Devastating Death at 27.

Katz Paniagua, Staff Writer

February 26, 2025

A renowned Puerto Rican/Haitian American artist from the 1980s. | Princeton University Press

Click here to Check out “Growing Up With Jean-Michel Basquiat | I Was There” by VICE on YouTube!

Jean-Michel Basquiat first gained attention for his graffiti under the name “SAMO” in New York, where he was born on December 22, 1960, specifically in Brooklyn. He began by selling sweatshirts and postcards showcasing his artwork on the streets before his art career actually took off. He was known for collaborating with popular artists of that time, such as Andy Warhol, with whom he soon developed a long-lasting friendship with. Basquiat passed away at only 27 years old, with an estimated net worth of $10 million attached to his name and legacy. To wrap up 2025’s Black History Month, we remember Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose powerful artwork still influences the world today. His work, which explored themes like race, identity, and the struggles many people in his community faced, challenged the art world and broke barriers for future generations of Black artists after him. How do you think a young Puerto Rican/Haitian American artist from 1980s Brooklyn would become so successful? Do you believe collaborations would truly inspire his art? How do you predict Basquiat would enter the professional art world?

His Upbringing…

Born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, alongside his two sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, his Afro-Latino heritage greatly influenced his artwork from a young age. Basquiat was a self-taught artist and began drawing at an early age on sheets of paper his father brought home from the office, working as an accountant. Basquiat’s mother also strongly encouraged him to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. Unfortunately, at only 8 years old, Basquiat got hit by a car. His mother bought him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy to read while he was recovering He barely had any friends while growing up as well, and spent his days drawing or frequently visiting a Brooklyn art museum with his mother.

Image taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-kYompsyLU.

His Career…

Under the pseudonym “SAMO”, meaning “same old s***”, he worked alongside a highschool friend, Al Diaz, while tagging subway trains and buildings all over lower Manhattan with cryptic aphorisms in 1978. He also incorporated the crown motif symbol he created with his graffiti, which was a simple drawing of a crown that Italian artist Francesco Clemente described as having “three peaks, for his three royal lineages: the poet, the musician, the great boxing champion. Jean measured his skill against all he deemed strong, without prejudice as to their taste or age.” It was Basquiat’s unique way of celebrating Black people in his artwork.

A year prior, Basquiat dropped out of highschool a year before he was set to graduate. In order to make an income, he sold sweatshirts and postcards showcasing his artwork there in New York. When it came to his art, things like speaking Spanish while growing up, visiting galleries, music his father played, and deaths of young black artists he looked up to played a great role in creating his artwork.

In 1979, Gray was formed by Basquiat and filmmaker Michael Holman, alongside Vincent Gallo, Shannon Dawson, and Wayne Clifford (Justin Thyme) as members and contributors to the band. As previously mentioned, Basquiat named his band after the book his mother gave him when he was 8 years old. The experimental band was a cultural reset for the 70s and 80s New York, participating in the No Wave movement. The movement emerged in Downtown New York City with strong elements of punk rock, jazz, funk, dissonance, and various other aesthetics in its music. In February of 1981, Basquiat participated in the New York/New Wave exhibit at New York’s PS1, and shortly after, in May, he had his first solo show in Modena, Italy. After Gray performed at the Mudd Club in the summer of the same year, Basquiat left the band to focus on being an artist. After his departure, the members also went their separate ways.

During the early 1980s, poet, painter, actor, and art critic Rene Ricard discovered Basquiat because of his graffiti, and wanted to help him grow in the professional art world. Ricard, born in Boston, Massachusetts, moved to New York after seeing an Andy Warhol painting. Andy Warhol, a popular American artist, met Basquiat two years later in 1982, and soon began a friendship full of artistic collaborations. Their first collaborative project was with Clemente. The project was done by mailing each artist an unfinished canvas, each taking turns adding their own twist to the work, and this kept going on until each canvas was successfully completed. Warhol and Basquiat were inspired by numerous sources, including, but not limiting to, books, magazines, newspapers, television, advertisements, medical diagrams, and more. Their collaborations show the stark contrast between their artistic styles and creative perspectives.

His career coincided with the emergence of a new art movement called Neo-Expressionism that featured concepts like random objects or human anatomy in vivid colors and rough expressions. That same year, he gained traction after nearly 3 years of struggling after participating in a group show that art dealer Annina Nosei invited him to. His artwork and style received very good criticism, which caused Basquiat to sell his first painting, Cadillac Moon (1981), to Debbie Harry, a lead singer from the punk band Blondie, for $200. Basquiat’s paintings would soon become extremely popular with the public. People paid as much as $50,000 for an original painting of his, without any hesitation.

At age 22, he was the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial Museum. On his own, he continued to exhibit around the country and the rest of the world. This year was probably one of his toughest yet because of the death of Michael Stewart, an aspiring black artist killed by New York City Transit Police in September of 1983 for allegedly doing graffiti at the subway, where any evidence of the graffiti was not found. He painted Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart) (1983) in response to the unfortunate incident of police brutality. In 1986, he traveled to Africa for a show in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. That same year, 25 year old Basquiat exhibited nearly 60 paintings at the Kestner-Gesellschaft Gallery in Hanover, Germany — becoming the youngest artist to ever showcase his work there. Other iconic artwork of his are Untitled (Skull), Untitled (Head), and Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face).

Who were his Lovers?

Around the late 1970s, Basquiat was dating his longtime girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, who was financially supporting him as a waitress during those years. In an excerpt from her friends book, Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement, on Mallouk’s perspective in their relationship, Mallouk described his sexuality as “… not monochromatic. It did not rely on visual stimulation, such as a pretty girl. It was a very rich multichromatic sexuality. He was attracted to people for all different reasons. They could be boys, girls, thin, fat, pretty, ugly. It was, I think, driven by intelligence. He was attracted to intelligence more than anything and to pain. He was very attracted to people who silently bore some sort of inner pain as he did, and he loved people who were one of a kind, people who had a unique vision of things.” You could say that their relationship was very complicated, especially with Basquiat’s use of snorting crack during the nighttime, while “picking up boys or girls at the Mudd Club and disappears for days.” During the daytime, he “brushes Suzanne’s hair for hours,” while spoiling each other with wine and expensive material possessions, acting like their relationship wasn’t crumbling apart. After their breakup in 1983, Basquiat began snorting heroin and getting severely addicted to it as the years went on. Mallouk would go over to his apartment and said that she “would beg him to get help and he just couldn’t do it. He threw the TV at me. People would stop me on the street, saying Jean-Michel is in a really bad way, he has spots all over his face, he looks really out of it, you need to go and help him… It was pretty common knowledge that he was not well.”

Soon after Mallouk’s and Basquiat’s break up, he went on to date the then-unknown singer, Madonna. Their relationship lasted for only a few months before it ended due to Basquiat’s excessive use of heroin and Madonna focusing on her newfound career. They met during a party in New York City, and instantly connected with each other. During their relationship, both rising in popularity and fame, they bonded by their creative passions and inspired each other through their work. After Madonna’s and Basquiat’s breakup, in an interview, Madonna explained that Basquiat demanded her to give him back the paintings he gifted her during their relationship, to then paint them fully black as a way to symbolize their breakup. “He was an incredible and deeply talented man. I loved him,” Madonna said, years after the end of their short-lived relationship.

Famous Quotes:

“Jean-Michel got me into painting differently, so that’s a good thing.” – Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, 1984
“It was like some crazy-art world marriage and they were the odd couple. The relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again.” – Warhol’s assistant Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol: The Biography, 198
“Jean-Michel and Andy achieved a healthy balance. Jean respected Andy’s philosophy and was in awe of his accomplishments and mastery of color and images. Andy was amazed by the ease with which Jean composed and constructed his paintings and was constantly surprised by the never-ending flow of new ideas. Each one inspired the other to outdo the next. The collaborations were seemingly effortless. It was a physical conversation happening in paint instead of words…” – Keith Haring, Painting the Third Man, 1988

“I am not a black artist, I am an artist.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn’t see many paintings with black people in them.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I’m not a real person. I’m a legend.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I’d think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix… I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“Believe it or not, I can actually draw.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I wanted to build up a name for myself.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“Some days I can’t get an idea, and I think, ‘Man, I’m just washed up,’ but it’s just a mood.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“The more I paint the more I like everything.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I’ll do some great, awful painting about her.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I start a picture and I finish it.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy. I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat
“The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat

Death at 27…

As Basquiat grew numbers in popularity, so did his personal ongoing struggles. In February of 1987, Andy Warhol died at the age of 58, which made Basquiat very despondent, knowing that one of friends and collaborators was no longer with him. In 1988, Basquiat planned on revisiting Ivory Coast, to visit a Senufo village. He also mentioned that he was going to get sober and clean in Hawaii, while setting up a tequila business. After isolating himself from loved ones, they became increasingly concerned by his excessive drug use. Only a few months later, he returned from Hawaii, claiming that he was indeed sober. To no one’s surprise, he was not. At just 27 years old, on August 12th, 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in his 6,600 square foot Great Jones Street apartment located in New York City.

The story goes that he was doing drugs during the day, and was eventually dragged out to a Bryan Ferry after show party at a club by his girlfriend Kelle Inman at the time, according to Anthony Haden-Guest in an article published in Vanity Fair the same year. They went back home to Basquiat’s apartment while he was nodding off. Kevin Bray, a friend of Basquiat, wrote him a note that read “I DON’T WANT TO SIT HERE AND WATCH YOU DIE.” After reading it out loud to Basquiat, they all left his apartment. Inman went back to his apartment the following day at 5:30pm, and found him dead in his bedroom. After his death, most sources claim that Basquiat had an estimated net worth of around $10 million. Basquiat’s sisters took over the management of his estate after the death of their father in 2013.

Basquiat’s Impact

After getting to know Basquiat a bit more outside of just his artwork, has your opinion on his character changed? Did your perspective on expressionism art change at all? Do you believe Basquiat’s artwork helps represent his community and people? As we remember Jean-Michel Basquiat for his great efforts and outstanding work in Black History Month, it’s clear that his work was more than just something to glance at – it was a powerful form of self-expression and activism. His ability to capture his own struggles and the culture of his community while challenging societal norms at the time showed how deeply rooted his art was in both personal and cultural struggles. Basquiat’s legacy goes beyond his fame or net worth, serving as a symbol of Black excellence, resilience, and the importance of speaking your mind through art. Thank you for following along and do not forget to click the comment button on the right-hand side to share your opinions and critiques on this matter! Tune in for more Beyond the Canvas articles.

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About the Contributor

Katz Paniagua, Staff Writer

Hello! I’m Katz, a Freshman here at Doherty Memorial High School!

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Beyond the Canvas: The Forgotten History of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his Legacy in Black History.

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