Jean Michel Basquiat.

In 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat made the momentous transition from the street to the studio. Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981: The Studio of the Street explores that critical year, functioning simultaneously as a coming-of-age story and an intimate oral history of the shifting cultural tide of New York’s downtown scene. It is also a groundbreaking survey of rarely seen works that chart the artist’s progression from spray-painted text to text-and-image; from materials found on the street to large, traditional painted canvases; and from pure drawing to his uniquely evocative hybrid of drawing and painting. Marrying an exuberant spontaneity and art brut style, with a firm command of not only art materials but also art history, Basquiat defined eighties Neo-Expressionism and left behind a body of work that resonates no less powerfully today.