The exhibition Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, currently running at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, demonstrates that the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which is usually associated with painting, also calls upon other media, including music — the main theme of this exhibition — literature, comic strips, cinema and animation, a much lesser-known aspect of his work.
Basquiat was born in New York in 1960 to a Haitian father and a mother of Puerto Rican descent. In the late 1970s, in collaboration with Al Diaz, he drew enigmatic graffiti under the pseudonym SAMO. The artist quickly made a name for himself in the New York art world (becoming friends with Andy Warhol and Madonna, among others). He then produced solo paintings and achieved international fame that continued to grow until his death in 1988.
