Back in March, I was excited about an exhibit of one of my favorite artists that was making its way from the Brooklyn Museum of Art to Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts - and as of yesterday, it’s finally here.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Brooklyn-based artist of Puerto Rican/Haitian descent, who made some of what I consider the most beautifully raw and fierce paintings. It’s a beautiful mix of paint, collages, poetry and graffitti. His work reaches inside me somehow. I’ll look at one of his paintings and recognize something in it - not a shape or a word or picture specifically - but instead, a certain emotion or perspective….something…and I’ll think, “I didn’t know someone else felt that too.” Yeah, it’s strange to experience a sense of validation from some paintings, but it’s one of the reasons I love his work. It’s like deep down, we speak the same language. Sounds cheesy, I know. I don’t know if what I’m seeing in Basquiat’s work is what he intended to communicate, but I love what I’m able to take away from it.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art put together a website on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and work. It’s aimed at teenagers, but is still a good retrospective on his work.

The only other artist that I’ve felt this way about is Jean Cocteau. When I was in Montreal two years ago, the Mus�e des beaux-arts de Montr�al had an amazing Jean Cocteau exhibit. I had never even heard of Jean Cocteau, but the exhibit blew me away.

Basquiat is currently on view through February 12, 2006 at the Caroline Wiess Law Building at MFAH. There’s a series of lectures on his work in the next several weeks, and (inexplicably) a Starbucks Music Night titled, “The Beats of Basquiat.”

Yay for MFAH.