Jean-Michel Basquiat Loved A Xerox Machine

There isn’t a time when the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat isn’t hot. In 2017, Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $110.5 million, becoming the most expensive work by an American artist ever. But Basquiat’s work is coming more into focus recently. His presence is felt in the massive Andy Warhol exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art that closes at the end of March, and Basquiat’s work makes up the inaugural exhibition at the new Peter Brant Foundation space in New York City’s East Village. The Brant exhibit is already completely sold out throughout its three-month run. While the Brant exhibition is a showcase of Basquiat’s masterworks, a more curated collection of work recently opened at the Nahmad Contemporary gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Titled Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox, the exhibition is the first to explore in detail Basquiat’s use of Xerox photocopies to create art. The Nahmad gallery will feature 20 works, some of which are rarely publicly shown, as well as a collection of Xeroxed postcards that the artist created. (In case you were wondering, this should not make you feel entitled to start peddling that photocopied picture of your butt that made at last year’s office holiday party as “art.”)

The exhibition will be on view at the Nahmad Contemporary gallery through May 31, 2019.