The Odd Couple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

During his short lifetime, Jean-Michel Basquiat made a big impression on the art world. As the teenage son of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican-American mother, he began spray-painting graffiti on walls in Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s, and within a few years he emerged as a leading exponent of the Neo-Expressionism Movement that flourished in the 1980s.

When Basquiat was 19 he met the Pop artist Andy Warhol, and the two men formed a close connection. In Victor Bockris’s Warhol: A Biography, long-time Warhol assistant Ronny Cutrone describes the relationship:

It was like some crazy art-world marriage and they were the odd couple. The relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again.

In this scene from the British documentary series, State of the Art, we catch a glimpse of the two together in 1986, just a year before Warhol’s untimely death due to complications from surgery, and two year’s before Basquiet died of an overdose of heroin. He was only 27 years old.

Note: If you have problems hearing the sound, please turn your computer speakers up, and make sure the volume bar in the YouTube video (lower left) is cranked up.

Related Content:

Vintage Footage of Picasso and Jackson Pollock Painting … Through Glass

via @JesseBDylan


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