(3 Oct 2018) LEADIN:
A much-awaited retrospective of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work is opening at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris on Wednesday (3rd October 2018).  
The entire career of the prolific pop artist will be on show in a room by room experience set in chronological order.
The exhibit includes some pieces that have never been showcased in Europe before such as "Obnoxious liberals", "In Italian" and "Riding with Death" - one of the artist's best-known paintings.
STORYLINE:
Jean Michel Basquiat began as a graffiti artist around 1977 and within just a few years he was collaborating with the celebrated pop artist  Andy Warhol.
His work was heavily influenced by the hip hop music of the time, but also by art's greats including Picasso.
Basquiat rise to fame was not only down to his talent as an artist, but also thanks to his great charisma. He died of a from a drug overdose in 1988, aged just 27.
The new exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris covers the entirety of the painter's short but intensive career from 1980-1988.  
120 works are on display including Heads from 1981-1982 brought together here for the first time.
Curator Dieter Buchhart says Basquiat was way ahead of the curve.
"His energy is amazing; his line is inimitable. His combination with words, collage and assemblage, nobody else did. It's all under his own aesthetics. But the way he combined knowledge, the way he created knowledge rooms is so contemporary. In the end, he has foreseen the way we work today with twitter, with all our social media, our internet communication."
Other rarely exposed works include  "Offensive Orange",  "Untitled (Boxer)" and "Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers)".  
"Riding With Death" is arguably Basquiat's most famous, and is considered by some to be his final work. Painted in 1988 shortly before the artist's death, the painting depicts a skeleton being ridden by a person.   
"He saw this drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci and he transformed it into something totally new: the horse, the so-called death rider is riding is not-existing, it has fallen apart. It's the fundamental of our society symbolised in this horse which has fallen apart, which is missing. So, the African-American rider, he cannot ride because there is no horse. There is nowhere to go," says Buchhart.
The artist celebrated icons of black culture such boxing champion Cassius Clay, Sugar Ray Robinson,  Joe Lewis and jazzmen Miles Davis.
The son of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat was the first to break the glass ceiling that had kept black artists out of the art elite.
French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac who knew Basquiat personally likens Basquiat to Barack Obama.
"He was a shaman, when I see him, I always think about the shaman. He has this kind of crown that has become now iconic. His elegance was the one of a tribe chief - a shaman. I find this kind of allure with Barack Obama. He was a guide, spiritual guide for some experience."
The exhibit includes several collaborative pieces between Basquiat and Warhol, an idea that Bruno Bischofberger, Basquiat's friend and art dealer came up with.
"It was my idea. Once in the winter time in Saint-Moritz we saw other collaborations hanging in my house of other artist and Basquiat was drawing in my guest book together with one of our children, that was collaboration. And I asked him - maybe it would be nice to make a collaboration with one or two other artists, what about with Warhol? And of course, Warhol was the God, Picasso of his time," says Bischofberger.

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