Basquiat's Defacement - (Paperback)

About the Book

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Basquiat's "Defacement": the untold story at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 21-November 6, 2019.

Book Synopsis

Police brutality, racism, graffiti and the art world of the early-1980s Lower East Side converge in one painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat painted Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart) on the wall of Keith Haring's studio in 1983 to commemorate the death of a young black artist who died from injuries sustained while in police custody after being arrested for allegedly tagging a New York City subway station. Defacement is the starting point for the present volume, which focuses on Basquiat's response to anti-black racism and police brutality. Basquiat's "Defacement" The Untold Story explores this chapter in the artist's career through both the lens of his identity and the Lower East Side as a nexus of activism in the early 1980s, an era marked by the rise of the art market, the AIDS crisis and ongoing racial tensions in the city.

Texts by Chaédria LaBouvier, Nancy Spector, J. Faith Almiron and Greg Tate are supplemented by commentary from artists and activists such as Luc Sante, Carlo McCormick, Jeffrey Deitch, Kenny Scharf, Fred Braithwaite and Michelle Shocked, who were part of this episode in New York City's history, which parallels today's urgent conversations about state-sanctioned racism. Basquiat's painting is contextualized by ephemera related to Stewart's death, including newspaper clippings and protest posters, samples of artwork from Stewart's estate and work made by other artists in response to Stewart's death and the subsequent trial, including pieces by Haring, Andy Warhol, David Hammons, George Condo and Lyle Ashton Harris.

Review Quotes

["Basquiat's 'Defacement' The Untold Story"] brilliantly portrays the artist's response to police brutality.-- "Financial Times"

Deeply moving [...] Takes Jean-Michel Basquiat's deeply personal and rarely exhibited painting made the week of Stewart's death as its starting point, opening a conversation about police brutality that transcends the time in which the work was made.--Miss Rosen "Vice"

The book examines Basquiat's exploration of black identity, his protest against police brutality, and his singular language of empowerment--and is an urgent reminder of the work that must be done to banish state-sanctioned racism.--Lucy Rees "Galerie"

["Basquiat's 'Defacement' The Untold Story"] argues for a fresh look at the impact of the racial tension of the 1980s on Basquiat and his peers.--Siddhartha Mitter "New York Times"

[Basquiat's 'Defacement' The Untold Story] is a small but timely and often surprising powerhouse of a historical show.--Peter Schjeldahl "New Yorker"

{...] does exactly what art should do: tell us a story we don't want to hear but need to, about the racist brutality so prevalent in American life.--Sam Ben-Meir "Jacobin"

Basquiat's pieces [demonstrate] a particular violence against black lives that is at once structural, historical, ongoing, and futuristic.--Johanna Almiron "Lit Hub"