Basquiat and Warhol

He's the kid who…used to sit on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village and paint T-shirts, and I'd give him $10 here and there…now he's on Easy Street. He's got a great loft on Christie Street. He was a middle-class Brooklyn kid—I mean, he went to college and things—and he was trying to be like that, painting in the Greenwich Village….I took a Polaroid and he went home and within two hours a painting was back, still wet of him and me together. And I mean, just getting to Christie Street must have taken an hour. He told me his assistant painted it. - Andy Warhol   Polaroid Polacolor ER print 1982 sheet: 4 1/4 x 3 3/8"

Thus Andy Warhol described his first impressions of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Warhol made this portrait in the fall of 1982, when he was first formally introduced to the newly famous twenty-one-year-old painter. Warhol was one of Basquiat's heroes; the young star, in turn, represented for Warhol the creative sexual energy of the 1960s. The two prolific artists carried on an intense friendship in the mid-eighties, culminating in an artistic collaboration. Basquiat died of a drug overdose before he was twenty-eight, fulfilling his belief that "the true path to creativity is to burn out."

Andy Warhol & Jean Michel... 24.00x30.00... Buy From Art.com

Warhol and Basquiat collaborated together on a series of works when an art dealer commissioned a set of canvases jointly painted by the two, together with the Italian artist Francesco Clemente. Warhol and Basquiat then continued to work together, and exhibited their collaborations in 1985. In most of the works Warhol depicted corporate logos and newspaper headlines, to which Basquiat added menacing faces and figures.

Arm and Hammer 2 Acrylic on Canvas 1985 76 x 112"

General Electric with Waiter Acrylic and Oil on Canvas 1985 112 x 151"