LONDON – Basquiat dancing to Duke Ellington. Basquiat reading from the book of
Genesis. Basquiat starring in a movie. Basquiat cosied up with Andy Warhol.
These and more Basquiats are on show at “Boom For Real” at the Barbican Art
Gallery in London, the first substantial survey of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat
whose 1982 painting “Untitled” became the most expensive work by an American
painter at auction when it sold for £10o million at Sotheby’s, in May last year. The
work is the subject of its own solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum until March
2018, while “Boom For Real” will transfer from England to Schirn Kunsthalle
gallery in Germany where it will be on shown from February up until May.
“Boom For Real” is a most exhilarating show which works as an exhaustive
overview of one man’s life and also as an instructive account of unrivalled artistic
genius.
Whether as playful attempt at self-importance or as calculated myth-making,
Basquiat in 1981 got a friend to authenticate his notebooks by writing in it that
“the book is absolutely and uniquely the product of Jean-Michel’s hand”, a month
before his first solo exhibition in the US at the Annina Nosei Gallery. Selected
pages from notebooks have been framed in glass and hung like works of equal
importance as the paintings, and typically features self-composed maxims –
“VICTIMS OF EMBELLISHED HISTORY” “I FEEL LIKE A CITIZEN ITS TIME TO GO AND
COME BACK A DRIFTER”, wry observations, short-short stories and a list ofadmired cultural figures. There are also excerpts from Genesis, as well as a
recording of Basquiat reading from it, in continuous play, and whose voice lends
his jottings authority, ambience and poetic energy that is strongly reminiscent of
Frank Ocean’s own spoken word performance on “Seigfried” from his album
“Blonde” (2016).
Heavily panned by the press and viewing public, the 1985 joint exhibition by
Basquiat and Andy Warhol was a commercial flop as not a single painting by the
superstar pairing was sold. Three decades on and removed from the hostile
anticipation and reactions of the time, the collection of 150 works made within a
year of intensive productivity, are every bit as vital as other praised works.
Extracts from a TV interview of the two in which both seemed genuinely chummy
are on display for visitors to watch, as are a selection of works, most recognisable
of which is”Arm and Hammer II”, aretooling of the once popular American
baking soda brand, made into a double-portrait charged with powerful symbolism
which could take on different meanings – most inviting of which is as an
affirmation of black genius in the portrait of Charlie Parker and the recognition of
valorized white labour in the muscly arm fisting a hammer.
Basquiat’s obsession with bebop and adoration of its proponents from Dizzy
Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and most fervently Charlie Parker make
for some of his most zestful works, but also function as epigenetic records of
black heritage as in “Bird On Money” (1981), “Untitled (Charlie Parker)”
(1983), “Plastic Sax” (1984), “King Zulu” (1986) and “King Of The Zulus”
(1984-85), a work of cluttered sophistication in which a painted image of Charlie
Parker is nestled between pages of notebooks containing drawings and jottingsthat were pasted onto the canvas, bridging the work along sculpture and painting.
What a loss it is to never see what manner of sophistication he would have
develop if he’d lived into his 30s, 40s, 50s as it has in the works on Ernest Duku,
the Ivorian artist whose “sculpted-paintings” are superbly complex renderings of
African ideographic heritages.
Jay Z’s casual brag of having a “yellow Basquiat in the kitchen corner” on 2013’s
“Picasso Baby” speaks to his and the monied rapper’s taste for expensive art, but
Basquiat’s stature as a very early adopter of Hip Hop receives less recognition,
oddly even from rappers who readily idolise and namecheck their forebears. Fab
Five Freddy is known to have introduced the young painter, in the 70s, to the
cutting and scratching techniques that are integral to the formulation of what
became known as Hip Hop. In 1983, Basquiat will co-produced the still impressive
“Beat Bop” with Rammellzee, who rapped along with K-Rod on the 10 minute
track. Copies of the vinyl record and slipcover are displayed, their black surfaces
carrying white designs by Basquiat which include his signature crown motif.
“I know so little about my career, to tell you the truth” said Basquiat in a 1985
interview “I don’t know who has what or anything like that really, or even what
they paid for it most of the time”.
“Basquiat: Boom For Real” is so far the most comprehensive assembly of his art
but also his life and 27 years on earth, during which he reportedly made 1 000
drawings and 1000 paintings of varying historical importance and graphic intensity
—a set of achievements yet equalled by any artist, living or dead.