Jean-Michel Basquiat 1982

This is Andy Warhol's silkscreen portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. I just love the way that copper ground shines, how the black sits on top, but also disappears into it. I’m wondering what it was like when Andy asked Jean-Michel to sit for this? They were such different kinds of artists. You can see their friendship and the respect they had for each other in this portrait. Jean-Michel staring out at us, that gorgeous hair, so familiar from his own work, and Andy, immortalizing him, dipping into his own bag of tricks, the silkscreen. It makes you think about all the portraits over the centuries of artists painting artists, a long, ongoing conversation. They were all inspired by one another’s creativity. There's so much ambiguity here and it allows for multiple interpretations.