Basquiat at the Brooklyn Museum

Jean-Michel Basquiat is back in his native Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Museum's exhibit of his paintings opens tomorrow and runs until June 5. Over 90 of his paintings and drawings will be on display, some of them never before seen by the public. The Brooklyn Museum notes Basquiat's "integration of text and iconography," something he undoubtedly honed while working mainly as a street artist.

Some of the drawings are spare, economical meditations, distilling an idea into the meanderings of line. Others are dense with deposits of marks and words. The collage ground they created gave Basquiat a surface to which he responded with painted imagery. The collage technique produced dense and complex surfaces in his paintings. They recall the artist’s urban milieu—outdoor walls layered with posters, paint, dirt, and graffiti that he encountered every day in New York City.

You can see Basquiat in Downtown 81, or see Julian Schnabel's rendering of his life in the film, Basquiat. Here's Basquiat.net, a site dedicated to him. Plus: A CNN piece about street art today, Gothamist on NYC street art, and Bluejake's street art Flickr photos.