'Basquiat Canvas' by Shepard Fairey, 2010
Tribute to the street art icon, one of the artist's most coveted prints!
18 x 24 Inches (print)
32 x 26 x 1.2 Inches (framed)
Screen print on cream, Speckletone fine art paper.
Limited Edition of 450 (#311/450)
Signed, numbered and dated by the artist (large, full signature).
*Note: professionally framed with archival matting and mahogany hardwood frame molding.
*Note: This is a consigned lot so we're limited on images. Expect delay on shipping.
ABOUT THE ART
Original artwork by Fairey based on a still image from a video by Tamara Davis.
Studio Number One designed the opening titles for "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", inspired by bebop jazz album covers and the works of the legendary Saul Bass. Designer Kristian Henson explains:
"We felt like Basquiat, in his own way, was a jazz musician: the frenetic energy in his pieces, his improvisation. His work shares his soul, very much the same way Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie worked."
Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Basquiat over twenty years ago, this definitive documentary chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. In the crime-ridden NYC of the 1970s, he covers the city with the graffiti tag SAMO.
In 1981 he puts paint on canvas for the first time, and by 1983 he is an artist with "rock star status." He achieves critical and commercial success, though he is constantly confronted by racism from his peers. In 1985 he and Andy Warhol become close friends and painting collaborators, but they part ways and Warhol dies suddenly in 1987.
Basquiat's heroin addiction worsens, and he dies of an overdose in 1988 at the age of 27. The artist was 25 years old at the height of his career, and today his canvases sell for more than a million dollars. With compassion and psychological insight, Tamra Davis details the mysteries that surround this charismatic young man, an artist of enormous talent whose fortunes mirrored the rollercoaster quality of the downtown scene he seemed to embody.