[35] Eventually, he began spending time writing graffiti around the School of Visual Arts, where he befriended students John Sex, Kenny Scharf, and Keith Haring.

[36] In April 1979, Basquiat met Michael Holman at the Canal Zone Party and they founded the noise rock band Test Pattern, which was later renamed Gray.

[70] In early December 1982,[71] Basquiat began working at the Market Street studio space art dealer Larry Gagosian had built below his Venice Beach, California home.

[85][86] On his return to New York, he was deeply affected by the death of Michael Stewart, an aspiring black artist in the downtown club scene who was killed by transit police in September 1983.

[119] The funeral was attended by immediate family and close friends, including Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, Glenn O'Brien, and Basquiat's former girlfriend Paige Powell.

[122] The 300 guests included musicians John Lurie and Arto Lindsay, Keith Haring, poet David Shapiro, Glenn O'Brien, and members of Basquiat's former band Gray.

Art critic Franklin Sirmans analyzed that Basquiat appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.

[130] A few of the books he used were Gray's Anatomy, Henry Dreyfuss' Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci published by Reynal & Company, and Burchard Brentjes' African Rock Art, Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson.

[146] In his exploration of death and marginalization, Basquiat’s portrayal of dismembered black bodies serves as a radical commentary on the trauma of displacement and the alienation experienced by African Americans.

Art historian Olivier Berggruen situates in Basquiat's anatomical screen prints Anatomy (1982) an assertion of vulnerability, one which "creates an aesthetic of the body as damaged, scarred, fragmented, incomplete, or torn apart, once the organic whole has disappeared.

[152] The black-hatted figure that appears in his paintings The Guilt of Gold Teeth (1982) and Despues De Un Pun (1987) is believed to represent Baron Samedi, the spirit of death and resurrection in Haitian Vodou.

[153] Basquiat has various works deriving from African-American history, namely Slave Auction (1982), Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta (1983), El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) (1983), and Jim Crow (1986).

[159] Like a DJ, Basquiat adeptly reworked Neo-expressionism's clichéd language of gesture, freedom, and angst and redirected Pop art's strategy of appropriation to produce a body of work that at times celebrated black culture and history but also revealed its complexity and contradictions.

"[61] Writer Olivia Laing noted that "words jumped out at him, from the back of cereal boxes or subway ads, and he stayed alert to their subversive properties, their double and hidden meaning.

"[161] A second recurrent reference to Basquiat's aesthetics comes from the artist's intention to share, in the words of gallerist Niru Ratnam, a "highly individualistic, expressive view of the world".

[163] Musician David Bowie, who was a collector of Basquiat's works, stated that "he seemed to digest the frenetic flow of passing image and experience, put them through some kind of internal reorganization and dress the canvas with this resultant network of chance.

[170] Major exhibitions of his work have included Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings 1981–1984 at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in 1984, which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 1985.

[57] Advised by Italian artist Sandro Chia, gallerist Emilio Mazzoli purchased ten of Basquiat's works for $10,000 and held an exhibition at his gallery in Modena in May 1981.

[211] In June 2002, New York artist Alfredo Martinez was charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with attempting to deceive two art dealers by selling them $185,000 worth of fake Basquiat drawings.

[214][215] In 2007, Basquiat's painting Hannibal (1982) was seized by federal authorities as part of an embezzlement scheme by convicted Brazilian money launderer and former banker Edemar Cid Ferreira.

[247][248] In 2020 a Los Angeles man, Philip Bennet Righter, plead guilty to art fraud after trying to sell forged paintings by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

[243][250] In February 2022, the Orlando Museum of Art mounted the controversial exhibition Heroes & Monsters, which consisted of 25 cardboard works that were claimed to have been sold by Basquiat directly to screenwriter Thad Mumford in 1982, and then placed in storage, where they remained until being rediscovered in 2012.

"[255] Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman confessed to creating a suite of 25 Basquiat forgeries that wound up at the Orlando Museum of Art and was sentenced to community service and probation.

[256][257][258] In 2023, Florida art dealer Daniel Elie Bouaziz was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for a money laundering scheme to sell counterfeit contemporary artworks, including pieces purportedly by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Banksy.

Members varied depending on who was available at the time when a piece was being authenticated, but they have included the curators and gallerists Diego Cortez, Jeffrey Deitch, Annina Nosei, John Cheim, Richard Marshall, Fred Hoffman, and publisher Larry Warsh.

[273] His work had a significant impact on the street art and hip hop scene,[274] and has been noted as an influence on a range of contemporary artists including Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Halim Flowers.

[297] Apparel and accessories companies that have featured Basquiat's work include Uniqlo,[298] Urban Outfitters, Supreme,[299] Herschel Supply Co.,[300] Alice + Olivia,[301] Olympia Le-Tan,[302] DAEM,[303] Coach New York,[304] and Saint Laurent.

[317] In 2022, it was reported that actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. will star as Basquiat in an upcoming biopic titled Samo Lives, which will be written, directed and produced by Julius Onah.

[323] In 1991, poet Kevin Young published the book To Repel Ghosts, a compendium of 117 poems relating to Basquiat's life, individual paintings, and social themes found in the artist's work.

[330] Shortly after Basquiat's death, guitarist Vernon Reid of the funk metal band Living Colour wrote a song called "Desperate People", released on their album Vivid.