Top 10 Guerrilla Artists
A Philosopher of the Streets
Before Jean-Michel Basquiat became the toast of the international art scene and a regular fixture at Andy Warhol's Manhattan studio, he was just a poor kid from Brooklyn with a can of spray paint. With no formal art training, the high-school dropout used the city's subway cars and walls as his canvas. Signing his work SAMO©" (said to mean "same old s___"), Basquiat juxtaposed African-American historical figures with Caribbean motifs, cartoons and cryptic, stream-of-consciousness poetry. He staged his first public exhibit in 1980 at an abandoned massage parlor alongside street artists like Fab Five Fred and Keith Haring, scandalizing some contemporaries by scrawling "FREE SEX" on the event's outside signboard and proclaiming it a last-minute addition to the show. In 1988, a year after the death of his mentor, Andy Warhol, Basquiat himself died of a heroin overdose. He was 27.