Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in
Brooklyn, New York to a multicultural
middle-class family on December 22, 1960. Under the alias
SAMO, he painted poetic verses on the walls of
lower Manhattan in the late 1970s. Within five years, Basquiat went from a teenage
graffiti artist to an international art star renowned for his
neo-expressionism paintings. Basquiat's brief career spanned the 1980s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess. Already considered a legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat was a fixture of the downtown scene. Along the way, he got involved with many of the most celebrated personalities, from his friendships with
pop artists
Keith Haring and
Andy Warhol to his romance with singer
Madonna. Regarded as the "
Jimi Hendrix of the art," Basquiat died of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven on August 12, 1988. == Critical reception ==