Famous
exhibition in Paris of the Haitian painter of New York, died at age 27
after an intense and brief career. Basquiat in Paris, Musee
d'Art Moderne. All summer long, Basquiat who has painted 900 paintings
and 1250 drawings made in eight years of career was exhibited at the
Fondation Beyeler in Basel countryside. This exhibition comes now to
Paris. So these giant paintings in Paris said although the
thirst for conquest of Basquiat, who died at age 27 from a drug
overdose in 1988 after a thunder success. Here is the armada of spectra
happy with white teeth and red orbits that reflect his heritage and his
obsessions from Haiti. These are objects unclassifiable, potbellied
Norge the fridge, a pure product of the fifties, the window blind paint
the street artist has transformed into works of art brut. In
Basel, the hanging, dense, emphasized creativity and enthusiasm by
Basquiat, his youth and his desire to do battle in the city to Warhol.
Crowned heads, jaws and face prognathous voodoo succeeded each without
repetition, comes as a partition of shapes and colors, such as members
of the same tribe. Surrounded by his brothers, not to mention his
self-portraits, Basquiat is relived in full freedom, dancer, painter
before his canvas. Former street graffiti artist in cheeky slogan again
became The Radiant Child, filmed at the time by the Teenage filmmaker
Tamra Davis. Building on the already cinematic chronology, the Modern
Art Museum of the City of Paris has chosen him to lead the rise of an
artist. The architecture of the museum, grand and easily overwhelming,
says its not becoming more confident, streets in the workshop, the
first successful collaboration with Warhol, and concludes on a high.
Postcards and other collage-era underground, the eye is carried away by
the whirlwind Basquiat. It is perhaps less affected in Basel ahead of
some celadon green and pale pink, to the melancholy tunes hidden in the
paint. It is quickly fooled by this gifted of a new "primitive
expressionism, fawn dropped in a New York brain that prized as minimal
or conceptual art. That's the beauty of an exhibition as well as
reverse perspective. It is also the power of an artist as well as keep
all facets of his power. Twenty-eight years to get through his day:
December 22, 1960 to August 12, 1988. Today it is us who are going
through and back through the work of dazzling Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Tamra Davis's documentary comes in the ephemeral life of painter style.
An interview in June 1986 by Becky Johnston is the thread. Timidity of
the young man who preferred to "children's drawings to the work of true
artists." Here is the story of a child prodigy. New York in the late
1970s: this is where everything is done and undone in the art world.
Downton attracts students, dropouts, misfits. Broth subcultures. A huge
playground where Basquiat graffiti - who left the family home in
Brooklyn ("Dad, I'll be famous") - cover the walls of Soho, black
neighborhoods, subway ... He signed his name poetic projections Samo
followed by the sign of the copyright. Images show the shaved head.
Self-taught, he founded with some friends a group of experimental
music, Gray. It creates postcards he sells on the street. Andy Warhol,
met by chance a glorious day in a restaurant, he buys three. Beginning
of a long artistic companionship. Basquiat never doubted his art. First
Painting Sold: $ 200 first show in Times Square, then to the gallery
Annina Nosei which leaves a room to create. It goes from the street to
the studio. Made the Village Voice. Sold all his paintings in one
evening. "My first paintings were done on windows. It gave me a frame.
"We see this at work. He paints, draws on jazz, he listens to Ravel's
Bolero on loop. He painted dancer. A journalist asks him to describe
his work? "I do not know. That's like asking how Miles Davis sounds his
trumpet. "He's African art in the veins. It is home of the De Kooning,
Pollock's, or even Picasso. He did not copy but improvised a different
vision. Warhol broods of his love. Basquiat moved into a loft Crosby
Street as boss 24 hours 24. "He really had a competitive spirit," says
Julian Schnabel. Any runaway: exhibitions in Zurich, Rome, Rotterdam,
Tokyo ... The average price for a painting? $ 30,000. It becomes
worship. A critic asked if he made art primary. He replies: "Like a
monkey?" He relocates to Los Angeles. It is to the west. Turns to
heroin to concentrate. He died of an overdose. Closing remarks to
Madonna: "I really liked him, but he was too fragile for this world."
On the poster of the exhibition, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) poses
in his studio, a dark suit and bare feet. The photo made the "a"
supplement of The New York Times in 1985, first cover devoted to a
black artist. It is no less disturbing for what it implies: that
Basquiat is both the dandy - the costume - and wild - barefoot. A
genius, but primitive. Primitive because Haitian father and Puerto
Rican mother? This is not said, just suggested. The most unpleasant
stereotypes threaten. Basquiat was surrounded throughout his life and
many continue to rage. Things are simple. Basquiat is not a street kid
from the Bronx, but the eldest son of the black middle class in
Brooklyn. He did not commit suicide, but died accidentally from an
overdose. This is not a self sprang from the darkness, but a young man
leafing through catalogs and read a lot and a little of everything. He
wants an artist and this is not coincidence that in 1978, it executes
its first tags in Soho and East Village neighborhood of artists and
galleries. His meeting with Andy Warhol has nothing accidental either.
A primitive? No way. His retrospective in a hundred works at the Museum
of Modern Art in the City of Paris is expected to finish with these
ideas. Organized with the Fondation Beyeler, well chosen, well hung, it
focuses on what really matters now: the work. Dazzling display. An
artist takes possession of the latest state of the art - painting - in
order to develop subjects autobiographical and political. These topics
are the black condition in the United States in the early 1980s, racism
and injustice on the part of black artists in American creation, the
memory of slavery and that of Africa. All this is explicit and
consistent. The situation is violent, terrible anger, drawing and
painting are generally violent and terrible. It is unclear how his
observations into a rage amiable style. In the midst of a large canvas,
one name stands out: that of Malcolm X. Other names written in letters
barbed: boxers Jack Johnson - first black world champion - and Cassius
Clay - supporter of the Black Panthers - musicians Charlie Parker,
Miles Davis and Max Roach. In tribute, Basquiat resumed full size on
black discs of their wallets or draws on a red or white their effigies,
reduced to a few traits - traits some "wild" as the "quality" was only
recognized them. Provocation, the canvas is fixed no matter how the
frame, with coarse wrinkles and carvings. In other cases, Basquiat
works on planks, bits of fencing, gates recovered. Unable to buy
paintings? No. His gallery and sales very quickly give him access to
all the facilities it may require. But these fences suggest
confinement, these boards plantation shacks or slums. That he painted
it? A sale of slaves, the white police officers of the NYPD, tramps -
blacks themselves. In this case, the Christic allusions abound then
crown of thorns, wounds, crosses. Or he painted inspired griots and
dancers in a trance, faces that resemble masks. In this case, on a gold
background with royal crowns, pushing the colors in the highest degree
of intensity. The opposition is clear. Organized and the diversity of
modes of expression. Sometimes a drawing bristling, spills, broken and
twisted shapes, bodies reduced to bones, shrunken heads, skulls, black
and white lumpy - death in all its forms. Sometimes, but rarely,
fluidity, sweets and sumptuous color who take one by surprise so many
denunciations and suffering. Obviously, this is possible because
Basquiat, from its inception, demonstrated impeccable dexterity. He
does what he wants. He knows where to go, stop when there is nothing
more needed to be added to simplify the scheme or to amplify monumental
frieze. He has no problem achieving. Picasso died in 1973. It is in
arrears on what Basquiat privilege, five years later to resume the
history of painting, where the old man had left her furious.
Basquiat,
until January 30, Museum of Modern Art in the City of Paris.
