Basquiat Remix

The exhibition presented at the Collection Lambert returns to the sources of the raw energy in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting, questioning the uniqueness of his art, as visceral as it is self-aware, that quickly surpasses its own specificities, and the dazzling talent that quickly surpasses its own specificities, and the dazzling talent of a young prodigy to symbolize, in themselves, new ways of approaching the art of the 80s.

When Jean-Michel Basquiat kicked open the doors of the art world in the early 1980s, it was with incredible audacity; that of a young artist of Haitian descent who, at a time when painting had been declared dead and buried, made it the essential medium of representation. With this cadaver and its Areopagus of sublime ghosts, he covered the walls of the most distinguished galleries, opening their doors to new ways of thinking and creating a countercultural generation nourished from a cultural melting pot; from the appropriation of myths and the great masters of the past; to the blending of references from great art and subcultures, drawing as much from the vernacular as from great classics with elation and unparalleled energy.