The sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfor­tu­nate aspects: not just his pre­ma­ture death, but also the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of his work and per­sona in the years lead­ing up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eight­ies in part because he could be tak­en as an unfil­tered voice of the street, craft­ing his out­sider-artis­tic visions on pure, untu­tored impulse. But despite gen­uine­ly hav­ing come from a poor, trou­bled back­ground — and lived accord­ing to what seems to have been a strong anti-aca­d­e­m­ic incli­na­tion — Basquiat’s pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment was much more seri­ous and delib­er­ate than many of his buy­ers could have imag­ined.

“At the begin­ning of his career, Basquiat went out and bought two books,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Make Art Not Con­tent video above, “two books that would inform all of his work.” One was Hen­ry Drey­fuss’ Sym­bol Source­book: An Author­i­ta­tive Guide to Inter­na­tion­al Graph­ic Sym­bols, which “would end up pro­vid­ing source mate­r­i­al for almost all of the 1,500 draw­ings and 600 paint­ings that he left behind.”

The oth­er was Robert Far­ris Thomp­son’s Flash of the Spir­it: Afro-Amer­i­can Art & Phi­los­o­phy, which gave him a “guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy” to get him past the inevitable artis­tic road­blocks: he could always return to “the under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black art in the estab­lished art world,” and “when you have a mes­sage, art comes out of you eas­i­ly.”

But Basquiat also had the advan­tage of being able to work very quick­ly indeed, which is what brought him to the atten­tion of Andy Warhol: “When one of the most pro­lif­ic artists of all time is jeal­ous of your speed, you know you’re doing some­thing right.” Think­ing too much inter­rupts your flow, but if you cre­ate as fast as you can, thoughts won’t have a chance to intrude. And remem­ber, “most of the flow that you will have while mak­ing art will come from all the things you are doing when you are not mak­ing art.” Sad­ly, Basquiat died before the age of the inter­net — but if he had­n’t, you can bet he’d be spend­ing his down­time absorb­ing some­thing more inter­est­ing than social media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Chaot­ic Bril­liance of Jean-Michel Basquiat: From Home­less Graf­fi­ti Artist to Inter­na­tion­al­ly Renowned Painter

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

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

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

15 years old (1896)

It’s pos­si­ble to look at Pablo Picas­so’s many for­mal exper­i­ments and peri­od­ic shifts of style as a kind of self-por­trai­ture, an exer­cise in shift­ing con­scious­ness and try­ing on of new aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ties. The Span­ish mod­ernist made a career of sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­tures, announce­ments to the world that he was going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of artist now, and every­one had bet­ter catch up. Even in his most abstract peri­ods, his work radi­at­ed with an emo­tion­al ener­gy as out­sized as the man him­self.

18 years old (1900)

Picasso’s ani­mus and vital­i­ty even per­me­ate his least invit­ing paint­ing, Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon, a broth­el scene with five geo­met­ri­cal women, two with African and Iber­ian masks; “a paint­ing of nudes in which there is scarce­ly a curve to be seen,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, “elbows sharp as knives, hips and waists geo­met­ri­cal sil­hou­ettes, tri­an­gle breasts.” The 1907 self-por­trait of Picas­so at age 25 (below) comes from this peri­od, when the artist began his rad­i­cal Cubist break with every­thing that had gone before.

20 years old (1901)

An old­er ver­sion Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon con­tained a male fig­ure, “a stand-in for the painter him­self.” Even when he did not appear, at least not in a final ver­sion, in his own work, Picas­so saw him­self there: his moods, his height­ened per­cep­tions of real­i­ty as he imag­ined it.

The somber Blue Peri­od paint­ings, with their mood­i­ness and “themes of pover­ty, lone­li­ness, and despair,” cor­re­spond with his mourn­ing over the sui­cide of a friend, Cata­lan artist Car­los Casage­mas. The Picas­so in the 1901 por­trait fur­ther up looks gaunt, bro­ken, decades old­er than his 20 years. In the 1917 draw­ing fur­ther down, how­ev­er, the artist at 35 looks out at us with a haughty, smooth-cheeked youth­ful gaze.

24 years old (1906)

Dur­ing this time, as World War I end­ed, he had begun to design sets for Diaghilev’s famed Bal­lets Russ­es, where he met his wife, bal­le­ri­na Olga Khokhlo­va, and moved in com­fort­able cir­cles, though he was him­self des­per­ate for mon­ey. Each por­trait deliv­ers us a dif­fer­ent Picas­so, as he sheds one mask and puts on anoth­er. Trac­ing his cre­ative evo­lu­tion through his por­trai­ture means nev­er mov­ing in a straight line. But we do see his demeanor soft­en and round pro­gres­sive­ly over time in his por­traits. He seems to grow younger as he ages.

25 years old (1907)

The severe youth of 15, fur­ther up, brood­ing, world-weary, and already an accom­plished draughts­man and painter; the grim­ly seri­ous roman­tic at 18, above—these Picas­sos give way to the wide-eyed matu­ri­ty of the artist at 56 in 1938, at 83, 89, and 90, in 1972, the year before his death. That year he pro­duced an intrigu­ing series of eclec­tic self-por­traits unlike any­thing he had done before. See these and many oth­ers through­out his life below.

35 years old (1917)

56 years old (1938)

83 years old (1965)

85 years old (1966)

89 years old (1971)

90 years old (June 28, 1972)

90 years old (June 30, 1972)

90 years old (July 2, 1972)

90 years old (July 3, 1972)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

15-Year-Old Picas­so Paints His First Mas­ter­piece, “The First Com­mu­nion”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Update: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has put online 492,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images of artis­tic works. Even bet­ter, the muse­um has placed the vast major­i­ty of these images into the pub­lic domain, mean­ing they can be down­loaded direct­ly from the museum’s web­site for non-com­mer­cial use. When you browse the Met col­lec­tion and find an image that you fan­cy, just look at the low­er left-hand side of the image. If you see an “OA” icon and the words “pub­lic domain” (as shown in the exam­ple below), you’re free to use the image, pro­vid­ed that you abide by the Met’s terms.

In mak­ing this col­lec­tion avail­able online, the Met joined oth­er world-class muse­ums in putting large troves of dig­i­tal art online. Wit­ness the 88,000 images from the Get­ty in L.A., the 125,000 Dutch mas­ter­pieces from the Rijksmu­se­um, the 50,000 artis­tic images from the Nation­al Gallery, and the 1.9 mil­lion images from the British Muse­um.

It takes a lit­tle patience. But once you start surf­ing through the Met’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, you can find and down­load images of some won­der­ful mas­ter­pieces. We’ve embed­ded a few of our favorite picks. At the top, you will find the 1874 paint­ing “Boat­ing,” by Édouard Manet. In the mid­dle, Rem­brandt’s “Self-Por­trait” from 1660. At the bot­tom, a 1907 pho­to­graph by Alfred Stieglitz called “The Steer­age.” And that’s just start­ing to scratch the sur­face.

Hap­py rum­mag­ing. And, when you have some free time on your hands, you should also check out anoth­er open ini­tia­tive from the Met. The muse­um has also put 500+ free art books online. You can learn about them here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014. We have updat­ed it to reflect some of the changes made in the Met col­lec­tion over the past decade.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam Has Dig­i­tized 818,000 Works of Art, Includ­ing Famous Works by Rem­brandt and Ver­meer

Down­load 50,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Down­load 50,000 Art Books & Cat­a­logs from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions