An exhibit of superb works of the legendary queer artist JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT at the Brant Foundation in NY is now ONLINE in a Virtual Gallery. Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. He first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. 

He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction,  figuration,  and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.

He  very sadly died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27. On May 18, 2017, at a Sotheby’s auction, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and black rivulets (Untitled) set a new record high for any American artist at auction, selling for $110.5 million.

When this show  opened at the new private New York art space, owned by newspaper tycoon Peter M. Brant, it was one of the few that allowed people to see Basquiat’s masterpieces for free.  You can now visit the Brant Foundation’s virtual display of Basquiat’s work here .