{"data":{"id":"69","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":69,"topgoose_id":2749,"tms_id":69,"display_name":"Jean-Michel Basquiat","sort_name":"Basquiat Jean-Michel","display_date":"1960–1988","begin_date":"1960","end_date":"1988","biography":"\u003cp\u003eJean-Michel Basquiat was among a group of young artists in New York who emerged as the worlds of art and music collided and who embraced a new style infused with elements of graffiti and hip-hop culture. He first gained notoriety with cryptic graffiti messages he left across downtown Manhattan, but by 1980 Basquiat was working on canvas, using paint sticks to draw symbols such as crowns, halos, and fragments of the human anatomy.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile on an extended visit to California, Basquiat painted\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/453\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHollywood Africans\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e for a spring 1983 show of his work at a Los Angeles gallery. At the center of the canvas is a portrait of the artist with his friends and fellow artist-musicians Toxic and Rammellzee, who had accompanied him to the West Coast. Basquiat is recognizable at the far right by his dreadlocks; the numerals 12, 22, and 60—the date of his birth—are inscribed nearby.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith phrases such as “HOLLYWOOD AFRICANS FROM THE NINETEEN FORTIES” and “WHAT IS BWANA?” scrawled across the canvas, Basquiat is questioning the historical depiction of Africans and African Americans in films. (Bwana refers to the Swahili word for master or boss, the term local tribespeople in old Hollywood movies deferentially called the white safari leaders.) Yet Basquiat is also referencing himself and his compatriots. Just to the right of his own likeness he wrote “SELF PORTRAIT AS A HEEL #3.” Basquiat seems painfully aware of the derogatory manner in which people of African descent have been depicted in Hollywood, and the context that history provided for his own reception and burgeoning presence as an artist visiting Los Angeles.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gray\"\u003eDana Miller and Adam D. Weinberg, \u003ca href=\"https://shop.whitney.org/products/whitney-handbook-of-the-collection\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHandbook of the Collection\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2015), 57.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500093239","wikidata_id":"Q155407","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:35:17.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T07:05:25.417-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/69/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/69/exhibitions"}}}}