She had been captivated by Basquiat since childhood her parents had owned three of his drawings.ĭefacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983 (© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The painting went to Haring’s goddaughter, Nina Clemente, and at some point an independent Basquiat scholar named Chaédria LaBouvier heard about it. He died in 1990, of complications from AIDS, only two years after Basquiat’s own death from a heroin overdose. Haring later cut Defacement out of his wall, then mounted it in a gold frame and hung it over his bed. Which is the greater defacement: writing on a subway wall, or the police brutality that wipes out young Black men’s lives? The word ¿ DEFACEMENT©? looms above them, posing a question. In the days after Stewart’s death, he painted Defacement onto the studio wall of another artist, Keith Haring, in precise, furious strokes: two piglike figures in uniform, raising their batons at a black silhouette. “We would look at each other, without having to say it: We know that could be us.” The six officers tried in relation to Stewart’s death were cleared two years later by an all-white jury.īasquiat took his fear and his anger and responded in the way he knew best. “I remember being with Jean-Michel,” Fab told me. It resonated in particular with young Black men such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fred Brathwaite, known as Fab 5 Freddy, who had also been labeled as graffiti artists-undisciplined, dangerous outlaws-even though they were now working on canvas and selling in galleries. Stewart’s death shocked the city’s artists, many of whom had known him personally. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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