Author and Illustrator: Javaka Steptoe
Publisher and Year: Little, Brown and Company, 2016
Number of pages: 38
Genre: Biography
This book is about Jean-Michel Basquiat, a famous artist from the 1980s, and how his life led him to art. From copying organs out of an anatomy text his mother gave him while he was recovering from a car accident to spray painting graffiti on buildings and mailboxes in New York City, Basquiat grew into his own, messy art form and became world renowned for his iconography and style. Throughout the narrative Basquiat is framed as visionary and upbeat, though it is revealed in the author’s notes at the end of the text that he ultimately passed at twenty-seven.
The illustrations for this book are particularly interesting. They are created on wooden planks, and the images at the start of the narrative are all painted or drawn in ink, reflecting Basquiat’s initial art style of drawing and painting. As the story progresses the art changes, mirroring Basquiat’s changing style, becoming more collage-like and incorporating more materials than just paint and ink: newspaper clippings, chalk, and photographs. Many of the people seen in the book are people of color, reflective of Basquiat’s community of artists and friends. Also, as the images are made on wooden planks they are framed within windows into Basquiat’s life, yet the frames are not perfectly rectangular, mimicking Basquiat’s own chaotic and messy art style.
