His mother, to whom he was close, was committed to a mental hospital when he was 11. His parents split up when he was seven and he and his sisters lived with his father, including a move, for a while, to Puerto Rico. His father was Haitian – quite a strict figure – and his mother, whose parents were Puerto Rican, was born in Brooklyn. “I didn’t recognise it as great, it didn’t look like anything I knew.”īasquiat was born to a middle-class family in Brooklyn. The head curator, Ann Temkin, later admitted that Basquiat’s work was too advanced for her when she was offered it. There’s not a single work in a public collection in the UK.” There are not many in the US, either: the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has a couple, but when the city’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was offered his work when he was alive, it said no, and it still doesn’t own any of his paintings (it has some on loan). During his lifetime he only had two shows in a public space. “The time between his first solo show and his death was six years,” she says. Although Basquiat was immensely prolific during his short life, institutions were slow to recognise his talent. It tries to see things from Basquiat’s point of view.Įleanor Nairne, co-curator of the show, explains why there hasn’t been a full retrospective until now. Researched and curated for four years, it follows his career from street to gallery, acknowledges the exceptional times he was working in, and expands its references from straightforwardly visual art to music, literature, TV and movies, all areas in which Basquiat experimented. Now, Boom for Real, a vast exhibition at the Barbican – the first Basquiat show in the UK for more than 20 years – aims to open our eyes. Photograph: ShutterstockĪ household name in the US, Basquiat is less well known in the UK, though the sale, in May, of one of his paintings ( Untitled (LA Painting), 1982) for $110.5m (£85m), the highest amount ever for an American artist at auction, made headlines. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Untitled (LA Painting) sold for $110.5 million (£85m) at Sotheby’s in New York, to become the sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction. Debbie Harry was the first person ever to pay for a Basquiat piece Madonna owns his art and they dated for a couple of months in the mid-80s. Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz own his works, as do Johnny Depp, John McEnroe and Leonardo DiCaprio. ![]() As one of the few black American painters to break through into international consciousness, he is referenced a lot in hip-hop: Kanye West, Jay-Z, Swizz Beatz, Nas and others cite Basquiat in their lyrics Jay-Z, in Most Kingz, uses the “most kings get their head cut off” phrase from Basquiat’s painting Charles the First. A few years ago a Christie’s spokesperson described him, pointedly, as “the most collected artist of sportsmen, actors, musicians and entrepreneurs”. But over the past few years, his star has been on the rise and even those who are snooty about his art can’t argue with his cultural influence. Museums rejected him as a jumped-up wall-sprayer. There was a time in the 1990s when he was dismissed as a lightweight. Since he died, Basquiat has had a mixed reputation. You could stand in front of a Basquiat painting and be fascinated for hours. (Not sex, though: though he had lots of partners, his paintings are rarely erotic.). It’s beautiful and hectic, young and old, graphic, arresting, packed with ambiguous codes there’s a questioning of identity, especially race, and a sampling of life’s stimuli that takes in music, cartoons, commerce and institutions, as well as celebrities and art greats. To me, a non-art critic, his work is fantastic: it feels contemporary, with a chaotic, musical sensibility. Some art connoisseurs find his work hard to take seriously others, though, have an immediate, almost visceral response. He lived hard and died harder (from an unintentional heroin overdose), and had more of the rock-star persona than the art aesthete about him, a cool celebrity sparkle that didn’t always work in his favour. That was the norm, to be a polymathīasquiat the man and Basquiat the painter are hard to untangle. I totally, 100% knew they were going to be big.” We were all these young kids… making art, acting, making films. The only person around that time I felt the same thing about was Madonna. ![]() “He was a beautiful person and an amazing artist,” says Alexis Adler, a former girlfriend. It was like he was born fully realised, a realised being.” “Jean-Michel had his faults, he was mischievous, he had certain things about him that could be called amoral, but setting that aside, he had something that I’m sure he had from the moment he was born. “I knew when I met him that he was beyond the normal,” says musician and film-maker Michael Holman, who founded the noise band Gray with Basquiat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |