Author(s): MARY-DAILEY DESMARAIS

CONTEMPORARY ART | RAP / HIP HOP

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York City was financially and socially bankrupt, but the art and music scene was flourishing.  During these years, the downtown New York music scene no wave, hip-hop, disco funk and club culture shaped Jean-Michel Basquiat as both a musician and an artist.

This catalogue for a travelling exhibition explores how Basquiat's painting has parallels in his music (sampling, cut-up, rapping), and takes a new look at his production as a writer and a poet in light of his connections with the then-emerging hip-hop culture.

This beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue of rarely seen photographs and images sheds new light on Basquiat as a musician, exploring how his art and music are related, and how they reflect on his identity as a Black artist in the United States, the downtown New York music scene, and contemporary culture.

AUTHORS: Mary-Dailey Desmarais is Chief Curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MBAM).  She curated the major exhibitions Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism: Signac and the Independants (2020), and Once Upon a Time...The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film (2017).

Dieter Buchhart is a curator and art theorist based in Vienna. He has PhD degrees in art history and restoration (science).  He has curated many exhibitions in renowned international museums and art spaces and was co-curator of the Fondation Louis Vuitton's exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat (2 October 2018-4 January 2019). Journalist and former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Jazzman magazine, Vincent Bessières curated the exhibitions We Want Miles (2009) and Django Reinhardt, Swing de Paris (2012) at the Cité de la Musique Philharmonie de Paris.