Trove of posthumous paintings reveals Basquiat's technical skill and process

Basquiat produced more than 1,000 paintings in 10 years

He worked incredibly quickly, producing an estimated 1,000 paintings and 2,000 drawings during his 10-year career. Despite having little formal training, Basquiat was an autodidact who read and consumed widely, then rapidly infused those influences into his work.

Basquiat's paintings are among the most sought after works in the art world

Although he was popular during his lifetime, Basquiat’s legend has only grown in the decades since his death. In 2017, an untitled work from 1982, sold for $110.4M. More recently, an early work, 1981’s "Crowns (Peso Neto)," earned $48.3M. That work is pictured below.

View Jean-Michel Basquiat's artwork

The iconic artist had a short career, but he produced a massive body of work and changed the style of American art by bringing together pop art, graffiti, hip-hop, and punk. His work still hangs in galleries across the world. View scans of the most famous ones here.

Basquiat helped move graffiti from the streets to the galleries

He took graffiti's aesthetics—cryptic slogans, bold colors, and repurposed iconography—and placed them on his canvases, helping to create what some called "post graffiti." These short documentaries, produced in 1982 and 1983, capture the nascent movement as it emerged in the mainstream art world.

Basquiat's art was text heavy

Like his graffiti, Basquiat’s drawings and paintings often featured words and phrases among images. Art historian Robert Farris Thompson said, “[i]t’s as if he were dripping letters.” Below is 1983’s Horn Players, which includes portraits of jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, along with words Basquiat associated with them.

Basquiat impressed Warhol by quickly painting a picture of the two men

After Jean-Michel Basquiat was introduced to Andy Warhol in 1982, Warhol took a Polaroid photo of the two of them, and Basquiat ran home (about a mile and a half) to paint it. Two hours later, he returned with Doz Cabezas. The act impressed Warhol, who mentored the young artist.

A 1981 review helped propel Basquiat into superstardom

“The Radiant Child,” featured in Artform in December 1981, presented Jean-Michel Basquiat (and, to a lesser degree, Keith Haring) as the genius of the post-graffiti art movement. The critic, Rene Ricard, wrote that, “[o]ne or two words on a Jean-Michel contain the entire history of graffiti.”

Read the New York Times Magazine’s 1985 cover story on Basquiat

The profile, entitled “New Art, New Money,” captures the artist in the middle of his rise to fame. It also hints at some of his frustrations with that position. In talking about the demands a gallery placed on him, he said, ''I wanted to be a star … not a gallery mascot.'' (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Basquiat's crown motif acts as an artistic signature

While tagging graffiti across New York, Basquiat began to appreciate the power of repetition and branding, especially while establishing mystique through his “SAMO” tag. Some art critics argue that his crown motif serves a similar purpose, enabling viewers to recognize his work immediately.

An indie film helped launch Basquiat's art career

Basquiat starred in “Downtown 81” as a struggling artist, which was not far from reality. In fact, the paintings that he carries throughout the film are some of his earliest works. The production gave him canvas and paint, which he used to create other paintings.

New York named a street after Basquiat in 2025

The influential pop artist made his name (and developed his unique graffiti-inflected style) in the city's East Village. In 2025, the city added his name to one of the neighborhood's streets in his honor. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

A young Basquiat was fascinated by the book 'Gray's Anatomy'

At 7 years old, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing stickball. While in the hospital, his mother gave him a copy of Henry Gray’s medical reference book “Gray’s Anatomy” to help him better understand his recovery. The book fascinated the young Basquiat, who’d later incorporate bodies and anatomy into his art.

Basquiat produced an early hip-hop classic

The 1983 track “Beat Bop” features emcees Rammellzee and K-Rob rapping over a beat produced and arranged by Basquiat. Though it leans into several tropes from the early days of hip-hop, it’s also singular, with elements of dub, funk, and disco blending over its 10 minutes.

Picasso’s early masterpiece conceals a long-lost secret

Art historians have studied Picasso's Blue Period throughout the last century, but researchers have now uncovered something previously unknown: an underpainting of a woman under one of the artist's portraits.

The scientists trying to prove Jackson Pollock's symbolism

Jackson Pollock is one of the most famous American artists in history. He is well-known for his Abstract Expressionist "drip paintings," which seemed to defy interpretation. But following the artist's posthumous bipolar diagnosis, a team of scientists attempted to prove that his symptoms, including mania and psychosis, caused Pollock to embed images under his thrown paint.

This famous painting was hung upside-down for 77 years

According to a curator at a German museum, an abstract painting by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian has been displayed upside down for seventy-seven years at a number of museums.

Explore the collection of vivid frescoes Pompeii left behind

This gallery showcases remarkably preserved frescoes depicting food, daily life, landscapes, and myth. Tools abandoned during the eruption reveal how ancient artists worked, offering insight into Pompeii’s visual culture before Vesuvius buried the city in ash.

The frenemies who shaped Modern Art

Matisse and Picasso are two of the biggest names in Modern Art, with works that redefined the possibilities of painting in the 20th century. While they were often cast as rivals, this Artnet article highlights their more complicated relationship, which was somewhere between a friendship, a mentorship, and an ongoing competition.

The Canadian artist considered the 'Picasso of the North'

Norval Morrisseau's art is bold, with vivid colors and striking angles. His interviews were similar, with the artist often challenging the way questions were posed and his life was characterized, believing he was being unfairly pigeonholed as an Indigenous artist. This overview of Morisseau's work and life is a helpful primer on the artist, the perfect place to start before jumping into the deep end.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Blake's 'illuminated manuscripts' blended poetry and painting

Blake's poetry was often accompanied by the author's complementary illustrations. They’re masterful works of art, pieces that were unlike anything else in Blake’s time—or in ours. Thankfully, The William Blake Archive has scanned all of the original manuscripts, allowing you to see the majestic books in their entirety.

See Salvador Dalí's art at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosts some of Dalí's most recognizable works, including "The Persistence of Memory," pictured below, and its famous melting clocks. MoMA acquired the painting in 1934, after it became a sensation in 1932.

The 18th-century French painter of goofy selfies

Long before smartphones existed, French artist Joseph Ducreux was posing for effect in his self-portraits. A minor aristocrat during the French Revolution, Ducreux depicted himself with unusual expressions, forgoing the typical staid pose for effusive ones. This article collects those paintings and tells the painter's story and his unlikely resurgence through online memes.

Riveting artwork from the battlefields during World War I

During World War I, the United States government commissioned eight artists to accompany American Expeditionary Forces to Europe to sketch and document what they saw. Drawing tanks, soldiers, shattered villages, and even German prisoners of war, the artists preserved much of the war as a matter of historical record and to rally support back home.

South Korean artist uses her own body as a canvas

Dain Yoon is a South Korean artist whose whimsical paintings utilizing her body as a canvas have gone viral. See examples of her works where she uses her face and torso to present elaborate, often surreal, visual works.

Learn about eight art heists that have gone terribly wrong

Half-baked plots, car troubles, and poor forgeries are some examples of blunders that led to failures in stealing works of art. For example, one heist by armed gunmen led to the theft of 20 van Gogh paintings. Before the robbers could declare victory, a flat tire on one of the getaway cars forced them to abandon the Dutch master's works and escape. They were later arrested for the crime.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year