Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

When Basquiat was seven years old he was hit by a car while playing in the street and injured so badly internally that his spleen had to be removed. As a way of helping her son to recover and to come to terms with the inner workings of his body, Basquiat's mother bought the young Jean-Michel a copy of Gray's Anatomy. This book, with its diagrams, reproductions and encyclopedic lists of names and descriptions evidently formed a deep impression on the young artist who later named his band Gray after the book and often incorporated pages from this road-map of the human body into his art. Many of Basquiat's figures, both self-portraits and heroes, reveal their inner organs in a manner that reflects a profound sense of the fragmentation of the inner being.