Basquiat and Warhol, 2019, 

Acrylic on canvas, 14" x 11" (36 x 28 cm)

In 1982, Warhol met Basquiat through their common art dealer Bruno Bischofberger and became friends. They end up collaborating on 200 paintings and had a common show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, opening on September 14, 1985. 

Andy Warhol

In this POST, Warhol shares a detail of their joint work.

Vivien Raynor, critic for the NY Times, qualified the collaboration on September 20 1985 as “bright, messy, full of private jokes and inconclusive. Art historians may be able to relate this manifestation to the automatist poetry that certain Surrealists wrote collectively. Anything is possible.”

Basquiat’s comment is from an interview“I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

Warhol said of it that it was probably among the best things he had done and was always positive about the collaboration even when the reviews were negative. Indeed, thanks to Basquiat, Warhol went back to painting and found a new source of inspiration. 

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Jean Michel Basquiat
Meeting and working with Warhol was a dream for Basquiat and Warhol genuinely admired Basquiat’s work and they would sometimes swap techniques which was what Warhol preferred when “you can't tell who did which parts."

In an interview Basquiat detailed their process and how he would start the painting before Warhol would add to it and so on. He event mentioned that Warhol was sometimes unwilling to add more and Basquiat would push him to do so.

Bruno Bischofberger, their art dealer is of course supporting the collaboration.

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Sources:

The Andy Warhol Diaries,

Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988, Leonhard Emmerling

New York Times, September 20 1985

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