The estate of famed neo-expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat recently requested to have nude photos of the artist taken down from an art website. The photos were taken before the artist’s death in 1988 and shows him posing naked for his then girlfriend. The photos were displayed in an art exhibition that was dedicated to the late painter which lead to the pictures being posted online. Basquiat was a rising star, before his death from a heroine overdose, in the street art community that emerged in the 70’s and 80’s due to his brutalist inspired abstract artwork which focused on the struggles of the impoverished.
See Mara Siegler, Estate fighting release of Basquiat’s nude photos, Page Six, October 4, 2015.
