Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon

Shortly after his untimely death in 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s meteoric art-world ascent was in retreat. Nearly four decades later, the artist’s paintings are amongst the world’s most recognizable and valuable.

When Jean-Michel Basquiat died in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven, major critics called his work a flash in the pan and the meteoric rise in the prices of his paintings started to fall back. Almost thirty years later Basquiat joined Picasso, Modigliani and Munch when one of his paintings sold for over $100 million. Nearly four decades after his untimely death, he remains one of the most recognizable artists in the world — his work not only headlines major museum exhibitions and private collections but also appears on T-shirts, sneakers, tattoos and accessories from Rio to Singapore. What happened?

For the first substantive biography in over twenty-five years, art world insider Doug Woodham conducted more than 100 interviews — with family members, friends, lovers, gallery owners, collectors, musicians, academics and other artists — to weave a thoughtful and revealing account of Basquiat’s life, work and legacy. Woodham’s account takes readers from the artist’s rich and complex family background through to his commercial and critical resurrection — an ascent that has played a role in reshaping the art-world. In the process, he has also crafted a unique account of how the twenty-first century art world selects its icons and cements their place in history.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon examines key aspects of the artist’s life such as his childhood trauma, sexuality, cultural identities and struggles with addiction — topics long downplayed in the museum and art world, arguably due to the controlling role played by his estate. Simultaneously Woodham uncovers the previously untold story of how a few against-the-grain speculators and gallerists — plus his deftly skilled and strategic father, the band U2 and a bestselling children’s book — all contributed to bringing what Basquiat accomplished back to the centre of the conversation and in the process helped to birth a new era in contemporary art.