Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the few artists who have achieved mythic status. His work is instantly recognizable; like Picasso, Warhol or Frida Kahlo, his look is imprinted on our psyche. But how much do we really know Basquiat? Who was he, where did he come from, where did he hang out? Desperately Seeking Basquiat lets readers explore the most significant locations of his life. We learn that he wasn't from the ghetto, but from the respectable, professional middle class Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn. He spent time in his mother's native Puerto Rico as a child. He went to a private school for a few years. And then, yes, he ran away from home and lived with the junkies sleeping rough in Washington Square Park. On the way there are the amazing cast of characters and lovers that came in and out of Basquiat's life - not just Warhol, but Debby Harry, Madonna, William Burroughs, Versace, Francesco Clemente and Keith Haring. And in the midst of all this the art dealers, impressarios and galleries that knew how to take Basquiat's talent and turn it fast into millions of dollars. We discover some unexpected places: Basquiat spent time in Modena, Italy, and a lot of time in Zurich and loved detox trips to the Far East and Hawaii; this is far from just a New York story. Later on he travelled to Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, in search of a new direction. Full of fascinating locations and scene photos from the heady late '70s and '80s NYC, and as with the other titles in the series, Desperately Seeking Basquiat also features great maps, short punchy texts and insightful quotes from Basquiat's contemporaries. For anyone into Basquiat, this delicious volume, with its cute format, really packs a punch. For anyone wanting to know more, much more, about the man behind some of the coolest, most iconic art of the 20th Century, it's indispensable.

Keith Haring's brilliantly instant paintings and images are some of the most recognizable of any artist, ever. Out of all the artists that emerged from the New York graffiti scene in the late '70s and 80s, it's Haring who has had the greatest pop impact. Today his work has acquired extra relevance - Haring was an early and very vocal exponent of diversity who fought all forms of prejudice through his art. He was, and remains, universally loved. In this sparky new look at Haring's life, we get to really know the Haring behind the iconography: where he grew up, the places in NYC he loved to hang out, his art on the New York subway, the artists he partied with, his battles for the LGBQT community and his moving campaigns against the prejudice surrounding HIV/AIDS, from which he tragically died aged just 31.

This work adopts a very refreshing new way of looking at the life of this most brilliant of artist, by following in his footsteps around all the locations which meant the most to him and which most influenced his work.

Learn to paint your favorite Disney characters—including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Tinker Bell, and more—onto decorative rocks with this rock-painting kit. Rock painting gets a special touch in this kit with beloved Disney characters. Step-by-step instructions and photos show readers how to paint 12 different designs featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Bambi, Tinker Bell, and other favorites. Included are 3 river rocks, 3 acrylic paints, 3 gel pens, 2 paintbrushes, a permanent marker, and a dotting tool. The instruction book also comes with stencils for each project, so drawing your favorite characters accurately is made easy. Paint the rocks to add color to your home or garden, give them as gifts, or leave them along a trail to brighten a stranger’s day.

Continue to explore the geography of genius in Desperately Seeking Frida, a pocket-sized hardcover guide that catalogs and explores the most important locations in Frida Kahlos life. Detailed maps show her movements around the world, while archival photographs of the artist and the spaces she inhabited bring her international journey to life. Quotes from contemporaries and Frida herself accompany historical and biographical details that give context to the maps and images. Fans will be thrilled by this in depth, lifetime-spanning tour of her global trajectory, from La Casa Azul in Coyoacn, Mexico, to New York City, San Francisco and Paris. Like the other titles in the series, Desperately Seeking Frida looks at a major cultural icon from a brand-new angle, providing context for her life, work, and legacy.

Part biographical vignette, part activity guide, this book explores Matisse's life and the circumstances that led to his paper cutouts. Readers then get a step-by-step guide to creating their own Matisse-style collages. Full color.

Now available in paperback, this exciting book charts Jean-Michel Basquiat's groundbreaking career. Basquiat first came to prominence when he collaborated with Al Diaz to spray-paint enigmatic statements under the pseudonym SAMO©. From there he went on to work with others on collages, Xerox art, postcards, performances, and music before establishing his reputation as one of the most important painters of his generation. This book places his collaborations in a wider art historical context and looks at his career through the lens of performance. Six thematic chapters offer compelling research, with essays from poet Christian Campbell on SAMO©; curator Carlo McCormick on New York/New Wave; writer Glenn O'Brien on the downtown scene; academic Jordana Moore Saggese on Basquiat's relationship to film and television; and music scholar Francesco Martinelli on Basquiat's obsession with jazz. This insightful survey also features rare archival material and extensive illustrations, demonstrating how Basquiat's legacy remains more powerful and relevant than ever today.

A New York Times Notable Book: This national bestseller is a vivid biography of the meteoric rise and tragic death of art star Jean-Michel Basquiat Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was the Jimi Hendrix of the art world. In less than a decade, he went from being a teenage graffiti artist to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. Basquiat’s brief career spanned the giddy 1980s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess. A legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat was a fixture of the downtown scene, a wild nexus of music, fashion, art, and drugs. Along the way, the artist got involved with many of the period’s most celebrated personalities, from his friendships with Keith Haring and Andy Warhol to his brief romantic fling with Madonna. Nearly thirty years after his death, Basquiat’s story—and his art—continue to resonate and inspire. Posthumously, Basquiat is more successful than ever, with international retrospectives, critical acclaim, and multimillion dollar sales. Widely considered to be a major twentieth-century artist, Basquiat’s work has permeated the culture, from hip-hop shout-outs to a plethora of products. A definitive biography of this charismatic figure, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art is as much a portrait of the era as a portrait of the artist; an incisive exposé of the eighties art market that paints a vivid picture of the rise and fall of the graffiti movement, the East Village art scene, and the art galleries and auction houses that fueled his meteoric career. Basquiat resurrects both the painter and his time.

How hip-hop culture and graffiti electrified the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his contemporaries in 1980s New York In the early 1980s, art and writing labeled as graffiti began to transition from New York City walls and subway trains onto canvas and into art galleries. Young artists who freely sampled from their urban experiences and their largely Black, Latinx and immigrant histories infused the downtown art scene with expressionist, pop and graffiti-inspired compositions. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) became the galvanizing, iconic frontrunner of this transformational and insurgent movement in contemporary American art, which resulted in an unprecedented fusion of creative energies that defied longstanding racial divisions. Writing the Future features Basquiat's works in painting, sculpture, drawing, video, music and fashion, alongside works by his contemporaries--and sometimes collaborators--A-One, ERO, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura, Keith Haring, Kool Koor, LA2, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee and Toxic. Throughout the 1980s, these artists fueled new directions in fine art, design and music, reshaping the predominantly white art world and driving the now-global popularity of hip-hop culture. Writing the Future, published to accompany a major exhibition, contextualizes Basquiat's work in relation to his peers associated with hip-hop culture. It also marks the first time Basquiat's extensive, robust and reflective portraiture of his Black and Latinx friends and fellow artists has been given prominence in scholarship on his oeuvre. With contributions from Carlo McCormick, Liz Munsell, Hua Hsu, J. Faith Almiron and Greg Tate, Writing the Future captures the energy, inventiveness and resistance unleashed when hip-hop hit the city.

The funny and insightful first-person story of the trailblazing movie director of the 80s and 90s whose fearless punk drama, “Smithereens” became the first American indie film to compete at Cannes, and smash hit "Desperately Seeking Susan" led to a four-decade career in film. Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC. Seidelman continued to shape American pop culture well into the nineties, directing the pilot of the iconic TV series “Sex And The City,” focusing her sharp lens on the changing place of women in American society and helping to fundamentally reshape our self-image in ways that are still felt today. BOOK DETAILS: Raised in the safe cocoon of 1960s suburbia, Susan Seidelman wasn’t a misfit, an oddball, or an outlier. She was a “good-girl” with a little bit of “bad” hidden inside. A restless teenager, she dreamed of escape and reinvention, a theme that would play out in her films as well as in her own life. Because she loved stories, a high school guidance counselor suggested she become a librarian, but she had her sights set further afield. In 1973, she left the Philly suburbs, enrolled at NYU’s burgeoning graduate film school and moved to NYC’s Lower East Side. There, she found herself in the right place at the right time. New York City was falling apart, but out of that chaos came a burst of creative energy whose effects are still felt in American pop culture today. Downtown became a vibrant playground where film, music, performance and graffiti art cross-pollinated and where Seidelman chronicled the lives of the colorful misfits, oddballs, dreamers and schemers she met there. It’s all in DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMETHING. Seidelman not only has a keen perspective on the times she’s lived through -- from her Twiggy-obsessed girlhood, through the Women’s Lib movement of the early 70s, the punk scene of the late 70s, Madonna-mania of the 80s, to the dot-com “greed is good” 90s, and beyond--she tells great stories.