Exploring the new exhibition called Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure  — curated by the younger sisters of Jean-Michel — practically made me dizzy.

There have been three times I’ve been rendered speechless —perhaps paralyzed—by coming face-to-face with artwork I’ve only seen in photographs: Seeing Henri Rousseau’s  “The Dream” at MOMA in New York as a teenager, bumping into a massive Cy Twombly at the Tate in London, and a series of Robert Rauschenberg combines at MOCA in Los Angeles.

But the current Basquiat show at The Grand in downtown LA completely consumed me — to the point of hyperventilating — like a cat on an unbearably hot day.

First, watching charming home movies taken by his parents when he was a toddler, getting up-close-and-personal with sketches that preceded his now iconic painterly pieces, and then walking through a reproduction of his studio in NYC back in the eighties — well, brought me closer to someone I thought I knew.

I HAD to know what was collage, what was paint. I used two pairs of reading glasses to determine the kind of oil stick or paint pens he used to make his classic childlike markings. Were those images slapped onto the canvas really xeroxes?  Was there another painting underneath? What are the words he crossed out? And how is it I’m willing to unravel his series of puzzles?

There are so many lessons for us in Basquiat’s work. First, he’d paint on virtually anything. Doors, friends’ apartments, fences, appliances, public walls.  He was fearless, and probably one of the most innovative artists of our time.  When he had to express a thought there was no hesitation. His spontaneity led to hundreds of modern masterpieces, and each one more exciting than the other.

Obsessed? Yes. Grateful? Yes. What a gift — that his work can be shared with us, and even decades after his death, we can celebrate his impact on art, culture and society.

Highly recommended — Show extended through October 15th. Website: https://kingpleasure.basquiat.com/