In the mid-1970s, New Yorkers reacted to their city’s looming bankruptcy and the rest of the country’s cold-shouldered indifference in classic New York style. Among the crumbling infrastructure, crime, unemployment and poverty, it was suddenly party time. Left to its own devices, a generation of musicians, artists, film-makers and writers was finding new ways of expression, from the south Bronx b-boys to the punks in downtown Manhattan.
The separate scenes began to find each other, to converge and create a look and sound that, though emblematic of their time and place, still inform much of our popular culture. Such a fertile environment was the perfect space for a young, ambitious New York artist such as Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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