Description
Basquiat – Galerie Fabien Boulakia rare book, bilingual English-French, 1990.
This book on Jean-Michel Basquiat is a rare piece! Published in 1990 by Galerie Fabien Boulakia and Dernier Terrain Vague, it presents 43 color reproductions of drawings and paintings by the artist, as well as poems and handwritten texts. These boards are accompanied by texts by Greg Tate, Jane Rankin-Reid, Remo Guidiari, Sylvie Philippon, Philippe Piguet, Jane Rankin Reid, Nicolas Bourriaud, followed by an interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat by Henry Geldzahler: “From Subway to Soho (also in English and French). Black and white portraits of Basquiat introduce the texts. This 88-page book also includes biographical and bibliographical notes.
All texts are in French and English. The graphics are very interesting and follow the art of Basquiat. This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition of Basquiat’s work at the Fabien Boulakia gallery in Paris, which took place from September 27 to November 3, 1990.
This copy was protected by a velum and is in very good condition.
Note that the dust cover and blank first page show very light wear from age, but the book itself is in very good condition.
13″ x 9-3/8″ x 3/8″. (33cm x 24cm x 1cm)
88 pages
Bilingual English/French
Published by Dernier terrain vague (1990) and Galerie Fabien Boulakia.
ISBN: 2-86219-047-0
To learn more about Jean-Michel Basquiat, please visit the official site.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al Diaz, writing enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the early 1980s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in Documenta in Kassel. At 22, he was one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his artwork in 1992.
Basquiat’s art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the Black community, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. His visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.
Since Basquiat’s death at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose in 1988, his work has steadily increased in value. In 2017, Untitled, a 1982 painting depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, sold for a record-breaking $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased.
Source Wikipedia.
Other out-of-print or rare art books on the Art Motion:
Burroughs/Haring: Apocalypse (bilingual edition)
Philippe Favier: Parisiana
