Jean-Michel Basquiat - Dieter Buchhart

Hatje Cantz - <p>Comprehensive retrospective in celebration of the artist's fiftieth birthday.</p> <p>American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) quickly became one of art history’s most luminescent personalities; his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Madonna, as well as his tragic death at the age of twenty-seven, are the stuff of legend.This retrospective publication traces the artist’s unique career and pinpoints his important position in art history.</p> <p>Basquiat’s works are marked by the kind of intensity and energy that also determined the course of his brief life. In just eight years&amp;horbar;comparable to the career of Egon Schiele&amp;horbar;Basquiat not only managed to create an extensive oeuvre, but also to establish new figurative and expressive elements alongside Conceptual and Minimal Art. At the age of twenty-one, he became the youngest artist ever to be invited to the documenta, while his work also anticipated that of Germany’s Junge Wilde movement and the art of the nineties.</p> <p>Exhibition schedulde: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, May 9–September 5, 2010</p>