ORLANDO, FLA.- On view at the Orlando Museum of Art, Heroes and Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Thaddeus Mumford Jr. Venice Collection presents a rare group of paintings from a private collection that is being shown for the first time.

Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a drug overdose at 27. The eight short years that preceded his death in 1988 were marked by an astonishing trajectory from a little-known street artist to become an international art world celebrity. His life was a familiar story of our time in which a vulnerable artistic genius rocketed to fame only to have his life spin out of control and end in tragedy. The drama of Basquiat’s life story has contributed a great deal to his now-legendary stature, but as this exhibition affirms, it is the brilliance and originality of his work that is of enduring importance.

The twenty-five paintings presented at the OM°A were made by Basquiat in Venice, California, in 1982. They reveal the artist at the height of his creative powers, matching a complex personal vocabulary of symbolic imagery with a strikingly expressive style of painting. They are introspective and autobiographical, charged with a frenetic energy born from the emotional turmoil of Basquiat’s life. They also reflect the artist’s critical eye for examining the tumult of popular culture and the urgent social issues of his day, particularly those related to racism, hypocrisy, and unjust disparities of wealth and poverty. These artistic statements are as relevant and forward-thinking today as they were in the 1980s, and they are partly why Basquiat’s work continues to be fresh and meaningful.




Basquiat was a very prolific artist, painting dozens of works in marathon studio sessions lasting days at a time. Typically, he had a television on, music playing, and books and magazines scattered around the studio. Images and texts from those media sources, autobiographical references, and poetry made their way into his work. His compositions seemed to grow intuitively as he added visual elements in layers of drawing and painting. Added elements sometimes obscured or partially obscured what had gone before, an intentional strategy to conceal meaning and render interpretation ambiguous.

1982 is considered a seminal year in which Basquiat produced his most significant works. This assessment has been borne out by record-breaking sales such as the 1982 skull painting sold at Sotheby’s in 2017 for $110.5 million. This remains the highest auction price for a work by an American artist to date. Skull-like heads are among Basquiat’s key motifs and are seen in many of the paintings in this collection. Rather than simply evoking death, they appear imbued with an animated life force, much like African masks embody the supernatural spirits they represent. From another perspective, they could be portraits that penetrate surface appearances to reveal a raw inner life. Basquiat’s work is always expansive, opening paths to countless interpretations.

This exhibition is the first to bring these extraordinary works to public view and, with the accompanying catalog, provide thoughtful, critical analyses and historical context for them. The collection was initially acquired by Thaddeus Mumford Jr. directly from the artist in 1982. Basquiat was living in Venice, California, at that time, working on paintings for his first Los Angeles show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery. Mumford was a leading Hollywood writer and producer who, throughout his career, was instrumental to the success of such acclaimed television programming as NYPD Blue, The Cosby Show, Roots: The Next Generation, The Electric Company, Sesame Street, and M*A*S*H, among others. Mumford garnered ten nominations for Daytime and Primetime Emmy and Writers Guild of America Awards, winning for The Electric Company and M*A*S*H. Mumford and Basquiat also recognized they shared the experiences of being among a very few ambitious and accomplished Black men in creative industries dominated by White men. Mumford held the collection until 2012. By that time, he was in ill health and had financial difficulty and the paintings were sold. Since then, they are held by several collectors who have generously allowed the Orlando Museum of Art to organize this exhibition.

The exhibition will run through June 30, 2023.