Jean-Michel Basquiat's exposed photos taken by Paige Powell

TMI on TGIF

Photographer Reveals Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Exposed Body Pics For Exhibit

Via HuffingtonPost

A budding photographer who’d recently moved to New York snapped intimate photographs of her lover, nude and relaxing in her Upper West Side apartment. If you’re Paige Powell, this story is made ever more interesting thanks to the fact that her lover happened to be one of the most iconic artists of the last century — Mr. Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Powell revisits her personal photography archive in an ongoing exhibition in New York City, sharing a treasure trove of Basquiat imagery with a gallery audience for the first time. The black-and-white, 35mm photos capture the famously meteoric artist at his most relaxed — reclining on a futon, smoking, doodling and watching cartoons. The exhibition, entitled “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reclining Nude,” captures a key figure from New York’s transformative art scene in his natural state, while subverting the art historical tradition of the reclining nude from a female muse to a male artist.

Says Paige:

“The photographs provide an intimate look into our private lives while we were together in the early 1980s. They are at once vulnerable and trusting images of our love and the daily life of Jean-Michel Basquiat,” Powell told ArtDaily.

The candid and decidedly NFSW shots of young Basquiat, taken only five years before his death, give fans of the Haitian-American graffiti master a chance to peek into his life behind closed doors. See the photos yourself in the exhibition “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reclining Nude,” showing at The Suzanne Geiss Company until February 22, 2014.

Wonder if rappers are still gonna keep shouting this guy out after they see these pics.

You can have a look at the goods (or lack thereof) on the flip.

Images via Paige Powell