Basquiat's 'Defacement': The Untold Story

Police brutality, racism, graffiti and the art world of the early-1980s Lower East Side converge in one painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat painted Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart) on the wall of Keith Haring’s studio in 1983 to commemorate the death of a young black artist who died from injuries sustained while in police custody after being arrested for allegedly tagging a New York City subway station. Defacement is the starting point for the present volume, which focuses on Basquiat’s response to anti-black racism and police brutality. Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story explores this chapter in the artist’s career through both the lens of his identity and the Lower East Side as a nexus of activism in the early 1980s, an era marked by the rise of the art market, the AIDS crisis and ongoing racial tensions in the city.

Texts by Chaédria LaBouvier, Nancy Spector, J. Faith Almiron and Greg Tate are supplemented by commentary from artists and activists such as Luc Sante, Carlo McCormick, Jeffrey Deitch, Kenny Scharf, Fred Braithwaite and Michelle Shocked, who were part of this episode in New York City’s history, which parallels today’s urgent conversations about state-sanctioned racism. Basquiat’s painting is contextualized by ephemera related to Stewart’s death, including newspaper clippings and protest posters, samples of artwork from Stewart’s estate and work made by other artists in response to Stewart’s death and the subsequent trial, including pieces by Haring, Andy Warhol, David Hammons, George Condo and Lyle Ashton Harris.

Chaédria LaBouvier is a writer and Basquiat scholar. In fall 2016, she organized a one-work exhibition of the artist’s painting "Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart)" (1983) for the Reading Room at Williams College Museum of Art.

Nancy Spector is Artistic Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.

J. Faith Almiron is Assistant Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on the role of art, visual culture, and performance in relation to social transformation.