Artist. The protege of pop artist Andy Warhol, he was the son of middle-class Brooklyn parents, and had a precocious success with his paintings from the start. His career was incubated by the short-lived graffiti movement, which started on the streets and subway cars in the early 1970s. Having no art training, he never tried to deal with the real world through drawing; he could only scribble and jot, rehearsing his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for “face” or “body” over and over again. Critics made much of Basquiat’s use of sources: vagrant code-symbols, quotes from Leonardo or Gray’s Anatomy, African bushman art or Egyptian murals. (bio by: MC)  Family links:  Parents:  Matilda Andrades Basquiat (1934 – 2008)