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Warhol on Basquiat: A voyeuristic glimpse into their artistic relationship
A new book, containing hundreds of Andy Warhol’s previously unpublished photographs, documents his friendship and collaboration with fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
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Your support makes all the difference.Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s complex relationship captivated the art world then and now.
At a time when Warhol was already world famous and the elder statesman of New York cool, Basquiat was a downtown talent rising rapidly from the graffiti scene.
Together, they forged an electrifying personal and professional partnership.
As a prolific documentarian of his own world, Warhol extensively photographed and wrote of his friendship with Basquiat, all played against the backdrop of 1980s downtown New York City. It reveals not only the emotional depth of their relationship but also its ambiguities, extremities, and complexities.
Produced in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s estate, a new book chronicles the duo’s relationship in hundreds of previously unpublished photographs of Basquiat along with a dynamic cast of characters from Madonna to Grace Jones, Keith Haring to Fela Kuti.
The shots are accompanied by entries from the legendary Andy Warhol Diaries, selected collaborative artworks, and extensive ephemera. Touching, intimate, and occasionally sardonic, Warhol on Basquiat is a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of two of modern art’s brightest stars.
Warhol’s unexpected death in 1987 took its toll on Basquiat, who was found dead from a heroin overdose the following year, aged 27.
In 2017 his painting Untitled, a 1982 picture of a skull in oil stick, acrylic and spray paint, was sold for $110.5m (£85m). It broke the record for the most expensive at auction work of any US artist, as well as becoming the salesroom record for a black artist.
“He’s afraid he’s just going to be a flash in the pan and I told him not to worry. He wouldn’t be.” – The Andy Warhol Diaries
You can purchase ‘Warhol on Basquiat: The Iconic Relationship Told in Andy Warhol’s Words and Pictures’ here
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