📖 Basquiat's Defacement. The Untold Story

An exploration of a formative chapter in Basquiat's brief career through the lens of his identity and the role of cultural activism in New York City during the early years of the 1980s Jean-Michel Basquiat painted Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart) in 1983 to protest the murder of a young, black artist by the New York City transit police for the alleged infraction of tagging a subway station wall. Published to accompany a focused exhibition of Basquiat's response to anti-black racism and police brutality, this catalogue explores a chapter in the artist's career through both the lens of his identity and the Lower East Side as a nexus of activism in the early 1980s. Essays by Chaedria LaBouvier and Johanna F. Almiron are supplemented by commentary from artists, activists and other cultural figures who were part of this episode in the city's history, which invokes today's urgent conversations about statesanctioned racism.