Gianfranco Gorgoni, Jean-Michel Basquiat his Crosby Street Studio, 1982

Remembering the inimitable Jean-Michel Basquiat on what would have been his sixtieth birthday. Here he is, captured by Gianfranco Gorgoni

in his studio-slash-living-space on Crosby Street in New York’s SoHo area. He is posing with one of his famous “head” paintings, which are now the most sought-after of his works. Many believe that these large-scale, frenetically rendered depictions are self-portraits. They often resemble African masks—that much appropriated favourite of modernist artists like Picasso, here proudly reclaimed—as well as skulls, an allusion to the artist’s Haitian heritage and the skull’s significance in the vodou religion.