Artist's Birthdays - December 22

Jean-Michel Basquiat (22 December 1960 - August 12, 1988

I hadn't intended to do another artist's B-Day post so soon, but it is Basquiat's birthday today and he deserves our attention, so this post is a homage to him.  

Starting off as a graffiti artist (pseudonym SAMO),  Basquiat became a pop icon and a cultural figure,  was active in music and film, but he is best known for his neo-expressionist paintings completed during the 1980's. A friend and artistic collaborator with Andy Warhol, he became increasingly isolated after Warhol's death in 1987 and died barely six months later of a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 at age 28.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Basquiat

Many people do not 'like' Basquiat's work, and I count myself amongst them.  However, in understanding contemporary work, liking or not liking a particular work is not the determinate criterium for appreciating the work.  The world has become highly globalized, with the center and the margins constantly redistributing across old boundaries.  Art is not labeled "western" or "primitive" any longer, and Basquiat's paintings should be viewed as culturally significant precisely because they broke barriers. His work lays claim to the increasingly diverse and dynamic flow of ideas and ways of seeing and experiencing a world grown increasingly complex. Today, the contemporary art world (Modernism, Post Modernism, Post Post Modernism etc.) is not about the West's point of view being the dominant mantra. It is about a hybrid new aesthetic in which the seeing and the communicating across all cultures uses new forms of expression.  In this way, Basquiat was a ground breaking artist, who drew from his multiplicity of backgrounds and redirected his creativity towards a new interpretation. 

Post Script In 1998, the highest money paid for an original work of Basquiat's was US$3,302,500. In 2002, Basquiat's Profit I (1982), sold for US$5,509,500 and another Basquiat piece, Untitled (1982), for US $13,522,500. In 2012, for the second year running, Basquiat was the most coveted contemporary artist at auction, with €80 m in overall sales. For more information about Basquiat, see the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) or the Wiki link above.