- Jean Michele Basquiat
- Jean Michel Basquiat is one of the most well knows artist from the late 70s and early 80’s due his many powerful pieces of art and for constantly being in the media for either his romance with Madonna or his artistic relationship with Andy Warhol. Unfortunately, due to a drug overdose Basquiat died at the young age 27 right here in Manhattan. When he was alive he struggled with selling his art until he met Andy Warhol, once they started collaborating together his art work took off and has been popular ever since. Just last year Sotheby’s sold one of his painting which is untitled but illustrates a skull for $110.5 million!
Due to frequently feeling like an outsider he used his expressive style of art to shine a light on many social issues that not only affected him but plenty others as well. He targeted things like power structures, class struggles, racism issues and politics. He regularly created portraits of himself to express what he had experienced with in those social issue. Examples of those are below.