BASQUIAT

During the tragically brief life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960—1988), he created a distinct style of painting that involved language, a set of repeated personal symbols, and a rhythmic harmony of surface based on a loosely gridded picture plane. Although a self-taught artist, Basquiat had a deep understanding of art history, acquired at least partially through frequent visits to New York´s major art museums, beginning when he was only 4 or 5 years old. Significant influences ranged from Picasso, Pollock, Dubuffet, and Twombly through Leonardo da Vinci. Fluent in French and Spanish (Basquiat´s father was born in Haiti; his mother was from Puerto Rico), he was a precocious reader in both languages, as well as in English. His special interests included Symbolist poetry, mythology, history, and medical texts, particularly Gray´s Anatomy.

Basquiat emerged at a crucial, still insufficiently understood period of American art. He became a full-time painter in 1980, just as the New York art world was about to explode from a circumscribed, uptown world to the galleries in Soho and, shortly thereafter, the East Village. It was the birth of the era of artist as celebrity, and the ambitious artist could became a celebrity in the downtown club scene from which the hip-hop movement arose. Young artists were creating short-lived venues to show their own work and that of their peers. Basquiat first received critical attention in the now-legendary Times Square show of 1980, a weekend-long venue in an empty building that exhibited the work of several hundred artists.

Most of Basquiat´s work incorporates text with imagery; indeed, some of the drawings are purely writing. Certain words like "tar," an anagram for "art," recur throughout his work, as does "salt," indicative of the artist´s interest in the concept of possession. (Salt was once used as currency.) Basquiat devised a group of symbols, such as the copyright mark (artistic possession), a notary-public´s stamp, and, most ubiquitously, a three-point crown, denoting approval or admiration. A natural and vigorous draftsman, he had become equally adept as a colorist by 1982.

This exhibition marks the first serious examination of Basquiat´s work by an American museum. Basquiat comprises 67 paintings, many drawn from European collections, and 36 drawings, all of which examine the artist´s work in the context of his role as the last Modernist.

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BASQUIAT RETROSPECTIVE
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Kuratoren: Marc Mayer, Fred Hoffman, Franklin Sirmans, Alma Ruiz
Organisation: Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn

Stationen:
17.07.05 - 10.10.05 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
11.03.05 - 05.06.05 Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn
18.11.05 - 12.02.06 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston