Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art is the tragic story of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, detailing his turbulent childhood, explosive dealings with the art world and rise to fame, which led to his death from a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven.
Phoebe Hoban brings some order to the chaos of Basquiat s life and the arcane dealings of the international art market, placing him in a context alongside his contemporaries, Julian Schnabel and Keith Haring, as well as his mentor, Andy Warhol.
This, the definitive biography of the artist, chronicles the meteoric success and overnight burnout that made Basquiat an instant artworld myth. As much the portrait of an era as the portrait of the artist as a young man, the book is an incisive expose of the Eighties art market, a vivid picture of the rise and fall of the graffiti movement, the East Village art scene and the out-of-control auction houses, and resurrects both the painter and his epoch...