Jean-Michel Basquiat

This 1999 exhibition catalogue assembles more than a hundred paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat alongside recollections from artists and critics who knew him, and it captures a career that lasted less than a decade yet reshaped American painting.

Published by Charta in Milan for an exhibition at the Museo Revoltella in Trieste, the bilingual English and Italian volume was edited by curator Luca Marenzi. It pairs critical essays with an interview and a detailed chronology of Basquiat's life. Contributions come from artist Keith Haring, frequent collaborator Francesco Clemente, and curator Henry Geldzahler, each writing from direct experience of the artist and his work. The book is printed as a softcover quarto, matching the scale of the exhibition it documents.

Basquiat began as a graffiti writer under the tag SAMO before turning to painting in the early 1980s, drawing on jazz, boxing, and Black history to build a vocabulary apart from the era's other Neo-Expressionists. His collaborations with Andy Warhol and Clemente placed him at the center of New York's art world. He died in 1988 at twenty-seven, and catalogues built from testimony of people who worked alongside him, like this one, remain a primary record of that brief career.