Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Self-Portraits

The JSMA is pleased to present a special lecture on the work of the acclaimed American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat by Fred Hoffman, a curator, scholar, and art dealer who had a close working relationship with Basquiat during his short but prolific career. Hoffman’s recent monograph, “The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat,” is recognized as one of the definitive texts on the artist. In conjunction with the current JSMA exhibition of Basquiat’s 1983 Self Portrait—a double portrayal of the artist on a found wood panel—Hoffman’s talk will present a number of the self-portraits Basquiat created during his brief career. He will discuss some of the artist’s most highly recognized and iconic works, as well as images of the artist integrated into multilayered narrative themes and subjects. Interestingly, Hoffman had direct involvement in the execution of one now-acclaimed self-portrait, a work executed at Hoffman’s print publishing studio where he and the artist collaborated on Basquiat’s now acclaimed silk screen editions. As Hoffman will present, Basquiat’s portrayals of himself were part of a larger, lifelong concern for questions of identity, whether his own, his race, or that of humanity. As Hoffman also notes, “At the end of his short career, Basquiat executed few self-portraits, turning more inward, focusing on an ‘interior’ reality, the life of the soul.” The JSMA has been privileged over the past year to have an unusual number of significant works on view by Basquiat. Visitors to the museum in 2021 will recall his brilliant Daros Suite of thirty-two drawings from 1982-83. Along with Self Portrait, the museum is currently showing Hardware Store of the same year, a large, two-panel painting. This program was originally held in-person in March 2022 and rerecorded for YouTube in May 2022.