At many a book­store and art gallery gift shop, you will find copies of writer and artist Java­ka Steptoe’s Radi­ant Child, a young person’s intro­duc­tion to Jean-Michel Basquiat. The book has deserved­ly won a Calde­cott Medal and the praise of adult read­ers who find as much or more to admire in it as their kids do. A sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing short biog­ra­phy, it hits many of the major notes in Basquiat’s for­ma­tive years: His Brook­lyn child­hood and Hait­ian and Puer­to Rican her­itage; his love for his encour­ag­ing moth­er and heart­break at her insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in a men­tal hos­pi­tal; his child­hood spent in New York art gal­leries plan­ning to be a famous artist, and his keen inter­est in anato­my text­books, jazz, and black his­to­ry….

But for a seri­ous­ly deep immer­sion in the artist’s his­to­ry and devel­op­ment, you will want to con­sult a new 500-page book from TASCHEN, Jean-Michel Basquiat XXL. Writ­ten by cura­tor Eleanor Nairne and edit­ed by Hans Wern­er Holzwarth, the “over­sized hard­cov­er,” notes This is Colos­sal,” is filled with large-scale repro­duc­tions of the artist’s draw­ings, paint­ings, and note­book pages. Sev­er­al essays guide the read­er year-by-year through Basquiat’s artis­tic career, from 1978 to his untime­ly death in 1988.”

The ten years the book cov­ers pro­vide enough mate­r­i­al for two or three vol­umes, and also hap­pen to tell the sto­ry of a cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion in which Basquiat was at the cen­ter, as TASCHEN writes:

The leg­end of Jean-Michel Basquiat is as strong as ever. Syn­ony­mous with New York in the 1980s, the artist first appeared in the late 1970s under the tag SAMO, spray­ing caus­tic com­ments and frag­ment­ed poems on the walls of the city. He appeared as part of a thriv­ing under­ground scene of visu­al arts and graf­fi­ti, hip hop, post-punk, and DIY film­mak­ing, which met in a boom­ing art world. As a painter with a strong per­son­al voice, Basquiat soon broke into the estab­lished milieu, exhibit­ing in gal­leries around the world.

Basquiat is now rec­og­nized—art schol­ar and cura­tor Dieter Buch­hart argues—as an artist who “eter­nal­ized… the exhil­a­rat­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for art, music, and social cri­tique in New York.” But for all the high praise he has gar­nered after his trag­ic over­dose at 27, in life his work was often “’explained away’ by his Afro-Hait­ian and Puer­to Rican her­itage,” writes Kris­ten Foland at Swamp. “Some art his­to­ri­ans and crit­ics, includ­ing Sharon F. Pat­ton, cat­e­go­rized his work as ‘prim­i­tive’ and called him a ‘black graf­fi­ti artist,’ a term he found inher­ent­ly racist.”

Basquiat recoiled at the idea of being seg­re­gat­ed and sin­gled out as a “black artist”; but he proud­ly cel­e­brat­ed black life and cul­tur­al forms in nar­ra­tive works rich with sym­bol­ism and poet­ry, mourn­ing and tri­umph. Asked about his sub­ject mat­ter, he once replied, “roy­al­ty, hero­ism and the streets.” Grand themes and set­tings were what he had in mind, and Nairne fit­ting­ly titles her essay in the TASCHEN book, “The Art of Sto­ry­telling.”

Per­haps the rea­son Basquiat’s life makes such a good sto­ry, for kids and grownups alike, is that he him­self was such a pow­er­ful sto­ry­teller. He weaved his per­son­al his­to­ry seam­less­ly into the social and polit­i­cal fab­ric that enmeshed him in the leg­endary late-sev­en­ties/ear­ly-eight­ies down­town New York scene. The new large for­mat TASCHEN book lets you get a close-up look at the fine details of his rev­o­lu­tion­ary can­vas­es, draw­ings, col­lages, wood pan­el paint­ings, and street poet­ry and paint­ing.

You can pur­chase the book through Ama­zon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

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

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

Should you find your­self in a Japan­ese city, spend time not on the Star­bucks- and McDon­ald’s-lined boule­vards but on the back streets that wind in all direc­tions behind them. Or bet­ter yet, head into the back alleys branch­ing off those streets, those half-hid­den spaces that offer the most evoca­tive glimpses of life in urban Japan by far. Only there can you find pas­sage into the won­der­ful­ly idio­syn­crat­ic busi­ness­es tucked into the cor­ners of the city, from bars and restau­rants to cof­fee shops and of course book­stores. Those book­stores have long occu­pied Japan’s back alleys, but now an artist by the name of Monde has brought the back alleys onto book­shelves.

Mon­de’s hand­craft­ed wood­en book­end dio­ra­mas, which you can see on his Twit­ter feed as well as in a Buz­zfeed Japan arti­cle about them, repli­cate the back alleys of his home­town of Tokyo. They do it in minia­ture, and down to the small­est detail — even the elec­tric lights that illu­mi­nate the real thing at night.

Scaled to the height of not just a book but a small Japan­ese paper­back, the likes of which fill those back-alley book­stores from floor to ceil­ing, they’re designed to slot right into book­shelves, pro­vid­ing a wel­com­ing street scene to those brows­ing through their own or oth­ers’ vol­umes in the same way that the actu­al alleys they mod­el come as a pleas­ant sur­prise to passers­by on the main streets.

Tokyo has become a beloved city to Japan­ese and non-Japan­ese alike for count­less rea­sons, but who can doubt the appeal of the way it com­bines the feel­ing of small-town life in its many neigh­bor­hoods that togeth­er make for a megac­i­ty scale? Mon­de’s dio­ra­mas cap­ture the dis­tinc­tive mix­ture of domes­tic­i­ty and den­si­ty in the cap­i­tal’s back alleys, reflect­ing the nar­row­ness of the spaces in form and their some­how organ­i­cal­ly man­made nature — step­ping stones, pot­ted-plant gar­dens, and all the small pieces of infra­struc­ture that have accu­mu­lat­ed to sup­port life in the homes of so many — in con­tent. Though Tokyo has for decades been regard­ed, espe­cial­ly from the West, as a place of thor­ough hyper­moder­ni­ty, its alleys remind us that with­in the some­times over­whelm­ing present exists a mix­ture of eras that feel time­less — just like the con­tent of a well-curat­ed book­shelf.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

You could pay $118 on Ama­zon for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s cat­a­log The Art of Illu­mi­na­tion: The Lim­bourg Broth­ers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Or you could pay $0 to down­load it at Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, the site offer­ing “five decades of Met Muse­um pub­li­ca­tions on art his­to­ry avail­able to read, down­load, and/or search for free.”

If that strikes you as an obvi­ous choice, pre­pare to spend some seri­ous time brows­ing Met­Pub­li­ca­tions’ col­lec­tion of free art books and cat­a­logs.

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured the site a few years ago, back when it offered 397 whole books free for the read­ing, includ­ing Amer­i­can Impres­sion­ism and Real­ism: The Paint­ing of Mod­ern Life, 1885–1915; Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings from the Roy­al Library; and Wis­dom Embod­ied: Chi­nese Bud­dhist and Daoist Sculp­ture in The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. 

But the Met has kept adding to their dig­i­tal trove since then, and, as a result, you can now find there no few­er than 586 art cat­a­logs and oth­er books besides. Those sit along­side the 400,000 free art images the muse­um put online last year.

So have a look at Met­Pub­li­ca­tions’ cur­rent col­lec­tion and you’ll find you now have unlim­it­ed access to such lush as well as artis­ti­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, and his­tor­i­cal­ly var­ied vol­umes as African Ivories, Chess: East and West, Past and Present; Mod­ern Design in The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, 1890–1990; Vin­cent Van Gogh: The Draw­ings; French Art Deco; or even a guide to the muse­um itself (vin­tage 1972).

Since I haven’t yet turned to art col­lec­tion — I sup­pose you need mon­ey for that — these books don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make me cov­et the vast sweep of art­works they depict and con­tex­tu­al­ize. But they do make me wish for some­thing even less prob­a­ble: a time machine so I could go back and see all these exhibits first­hand.

Note: This is an updat­ed ver­sion of a post that orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in March 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

2,000+ Archi­tec­ture & Art Books You Can Read Free at the Inter­net Archive

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.