by Phoebe Hoban, National Bestseller

Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was the Jimi Hendrix of the art world; in less than a decade he went from being a teenage graffiti artist to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age 27. Basquiat's brief career spanned the giddy '80s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess--a legend in his own lifetime, he was a fixture of the downtown scene, a wild nexus of music, fashion, art and drugs. Along the way, Basquiat got involved with many of the period's most celebrated personalities, from his friendship with Keith Haring and Andy Warhol to his brief romantic fling with Madonna.