Jean-Michel Basquiat, Quality Meats for the Public (1982)

Just as with Futura 2000 and Lady Pink, so too did Jean-Michel Basquiat bring the energy of the street inside the art gallery. Basquiat's Quality Meats for the Public (1982) shows a black male and his dog in a field of pastel teals and pinks and vibrant oranges and reds. While the colors alone suggest a relationship between the street and the gallery, the work suggests that the medium of painting is a way of giving the public what it wants, whatever fetish that may be. The "quality meat" is a fetishized commodity - whether the work of art or a luxury apartment. Thanks to the newfound illegality of graffiti, Basquiat's street art has been evicted from the public realm and heralded for private consumption in the gallery world.