Jean - Michel Basquiat , part 1© Nick Burton
Feb 5, 1999
Jean - Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. His father Gerard was an an accountant who had emigrated from Haiti in 1965, and his mother was a Puerto Rican born woman who had once been a dress designer. Jean-Michel was constantly drawing as a child, and was exposed to much music. His maternal grandfather had lead a small Latin music group, and Gerard was constantly playing jazz records. When he was five, the family moved to Flatbush, and when he was seven, he was hit and badly injured by a car, and as a result, had his spleen removed. When he was in the hospital recovering, his mother brought him a copy of "Gray's Anatomy," which became something of an influential book for him. His mother had also taken him to museums and theaters, and his favorite work was Picasso's "Guernica."
Jean-Michel's home life was far from happy; his mother and father regularly disciplined and beat him, and his mother was in and out of mental institutions. His parents separated when he was seven, and his father took custody of him. He was sent to St. Ann's, a private school, up to the fourth grade. It is noted that in the third grade Jean-Michel drew a picture of a gun and sent it to J. Edgar Hoover. Jean-Michel was bused to P.S. 1 in Bensonhurst as part of an integration program, and the school was completely white apart from Jean-Michel and a few other children who were bused in. He excelled at art there, producing many comics that impressed and delighted his teachers. He rebelled against his schooling however, and thought himself above the teachers, wanting only to paint and draw all the time. When Jean-Michel was 12, his father got a job with Berlitz and the family moved for a short time to Puerto Rico before returning to Brooklyn, where Jean-Michel attended Edward R. Murrow High School. When he was 15, citing physical abuse by his father, he shaved his head and ran away from home and Brooklyn, ending up in Washington Square Park. His father found him and persuaded the boy to go home, and he entered the 11th grade . By that time he was smoking pot regularly as well as experimenting with LSD and heroin. Jean-Michel made friends at City-As-School with Al Diaz, who would become his partner in making the now famous SAMO slogans, a private joke between Basquiat and Diaz based on the phrase "same old shit."
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