This exhibition presents his work in painting, sculpture, drawing, video, music and fashion, as well as that of his contemporaries - and sometimes collaborators - A-One, ERO, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura, Keith Haring, Kool Koor, LA2, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee and Toxic.
The post-graffiti moment of the 1980s in New York marked the transition of street art from city walls and subway trains to the canvas and the art world. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) became the galvanizing and emblematic leader of this transformational and insurrectionary movement in American contemporary art, which resulted in an unprecedented fusion of creative energies defying long-standing racial divisions. This exhibition presents his work in painting, sculpture, drawing, video, music and fashion, as well as that of his contemporaries - and sometimes collaborators - A-One, ERO, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura, Keith Haring, Kool Koor, LA2, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee and Toxic. Throughout the 1980s, these artists gave new directions to fine art, design and music, helping to foster the now worldwide popularity of hip-hop culture. "Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation" shows how this group's subversive abstractions of visual and verbal language - including neo-expressionism, freestyle sampling and wild lettering - propelled their creative voices onto the major international art and music scenes. This is the first major exhibition to contextualize Basquiat's work in relation to hip-hop, and the first time that his comprehensive, robust and thoughtful portrait of his black and Latino artist friends and colleagues has come to the fore in studies of his work. Notable among these works are the much-loved painting Hollywood Africans, which depicts Toxic and Rammellzee, the legendary artist/philosopher who is also represented by numerous works in "Writing the Future", and with whom Basquiat created the prophetic, influential and talismanic rap song "Beat Bop".
