Amazon.com Review
This minutely reported book is as much a portrait of the frenzied, prodigal New York art world of the 1980s as it is a biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose at age 27 in 1988. Basquiat, one of very few African American artists to acquire an international reputation, left a thick web of dealers, collectors, friends, lovers, paintings, drawings, and used syringes behind him. Author Phoebe Hoban seems to have unblinkingly interviewed or examined them all. While she duly registers Basquiat's sad childhood, with his unstable Puerto Rican mother and punishing Haitian father, she doesn't make much of the deeper veins of sorrow and self-destruction that may have motivated the artist and informed his art. Rather, she allows his celebrity, which whisked him from street urchin to art star, to be the central trajectory of this story. The Warhol protégé would probably approve, as he was the primary obliterator of his own psychological depths, throwing away his short, phenomenally productive life in the edgy club and drug scene of downtown Manhattan. The miracle is that Basquiat was so good, and so serious, an artist, surrounded as he was by hype and cash. Hoban's book is a fluid, intricate, authoritative dissection of a time, a place, and--almost--a person. --Peggy Moorman
From Publishers Weekly
Hoban's background as a journalist shows in the fast-paced, reportorial style with which she presents the life and times of the 1980s art world "phenom," painter Jean-Michael Basquiat. Half-Haitian, half-Puerto Rican, Basquiat grew up in Brooklyn as the son of a middle-class accountant. At constant odds with a father friends described as "strict" and "self-absorbed," he became a drug-soaked denizen of the East Village, painting the city's walls with his graffiti tag, SAMO. How he turned his skills at wordplay and fragmented imagery into a career that captivated the international art scene before dying of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 becomes the focus of this accessible, frequently entertaining book. Those who peopled that scene, from gallery owner Mary Boone to Andy Warhol and Madonna, receive ample coverage here, as do the downtown New York clubs he frequented and the upscale European suites he trashed. Throughout, Hoban makes a strong case that racism marred the life of the dreadlocked artist in paint-spattered Armani suits. What's missing is any analysis of the degree to which Basquiat's enormous drug consumption (ca. 100 bags of heroin a day at the end) contributed to his imagery, especially the gap-toothed skulls he splayed across ragged expanses of bright colors. Basquiat died intestate, which ultimately meant that his father, Gerard, became executor. Although there are eight pages of photos (not seen by PW), Hoban could not get permission to reproduce works for her unauthorized biography and the lack is sorely felt. Editor: Paul Slovak. (Aug.) FYI: August 12 will be the 10th anniversary of Basquiat's death.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This first, unauthorized biography of the most monetarily successful black American artist?a master painter and wordsmith?is sorely needed. Jean-Michel Basquiat, initially known by the graffiti tag "SAMO," tragically lived a mere 27 years (1960-88). Son of a Haitian father and a mother of Puerto Rican extraction, he was recognized internationally as a young genius of the Eighties contemporary art scene. Hoban, a New York Times columnist, provides vivid material derived mostly from countless interviews conducted after the artist's death. Basquiat's mesmerizing charisma and sexuality accentuated a catastrophic lifestyle. Real creative talent overshadowed the fact that the enfant terrible was constantly high, fueled by massive quantities of drugs. Yet he remained able to produce dozens of masterpieces and hundreds of works with both strengths and weaknesses. A fine tale of a talented young man, this is also recommended for its commentary on the decade when art in New York was so wide-open a victim of commerce.?Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
As is only fitting, reporter and New York Times columnist Hoban's zippy biography of the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less concerned with art than culture. Basquiat, iconic if nothing else, epitomized the flickering sort of fame that tended to typify celebrity in the 1980s, alighting anywhere on anyone at any moment; it was up to the beneficiary to make something of this. Basquiat made good on his own, or so Hoban would seem to believe. Indeed, she even thinks he earned his good fortune, combining volatility, volubility, and ``street'' credibility into a concoction irresistible to the periods New York art-world star-makers. Hoban constructs a persuasively awful account of the ethical squalor that drove the commerce of art to excesses whose wretchedness was only eclipsed by that of Wall Street. As for the art that ostensibly played some part in Basquiat's sudden skid across our cultural radar, Hoban doesn't trouble herself much about it. Then again, convincing arguments could be madeand Hoban straddles the fence herethat where Basquiat was concerned, art was always beside the point. Her preface, in fact, offers a chronological portrait of the artist's hair. Basquiat, despite the imposing swell of anecdote stirred up by Hoban, still comes across as little more than a colorful cipher. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
....the book [is] compulsively readable. There is enormous value in it, especially in Hoban's depiction of the glitzy 1980's art world, which is sharply etched and deadly accurate. -- The New York Times Book Review, Patricia Bosworth
...written in a style almost as breathless as Basquiat's and leaves no slimy detail of its subject's miserable life unreported. -- The Wall Street Journal, Hilton Kramer
