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Posts tagged as “Jean-Michel Basquiat”

New Basquiat Exhibit at Guggenheim in NY to Center His Cultural Activism and Identity

By goodblacknews on April 30, 2019
Jean-Michel Basquiat Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983 Acrylic and marker on wood, framed, 63.5 x 77.5 cm Collection of Nina Clemente, New York © Estate of Jean-Michael Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar Photo: Allison Chipak © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2018

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

An exhibition of rarely-seen work by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat will be on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from June 21 to November 6 this year.

The Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story exhibition will be supplemented with work by other artists of Basquiat’s generation and will explore a formative chapter in the artist’s career and the role of cultural activism in New York City during the early 1980s.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the painting Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), created by Basquiat in 1983 to commemorate the fate of the young, Black artist Michael Stewart at the hands of New York City transit police after allegedly tagging a wall in an East Village subway station.

Originally painted on the wall of Keith Haring’s studio, Defacement was not meant to be seen widely and has rarely been exhibited in a public context. With approximately twenty paintings and works on paper by Basquiat and his contemporaries, this presentation around Defacement will examine Basquiat’s exploration of Black identity, his protest against police brutality, and his attempts to craft a singular aesthetic language of empowerment.

The works on view by Basquiat will further illustrate his engagement with state authority as well as demonstrate his adaptation of crowns as symbols for the canonization of historical Black figures. Also featured will be archival material related to Stewart’s death, including diaries and protest posters, along with samples of artwork from Stewart’s estate.

Paintings and prints made by other artists in response to Stewart’s death and the subsequent criminal trial of the police officers charged in his killing to be presented include Haring’s Michael Stewart—U.S.A. for Africa (1985); Andy Warhol’s screenprinted “headline” paintings from 1983 incorporating a New York Daily News article on Stewart’s death; David Hammons’s stenciled print titled The Man Nobody Killed (1986), and Lyle Ashton Harris’s photographic portrait Saint Michael Stewart (1994), all of which are testaments to the solidarity among artists at the time and the years following.

To learn more: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/basquiats-defacement-the-untold-story

Composer Jon Batiste Turns Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Life Into a Broadway Musical

By goodblacknews on September 30, 2018
Jon Batiste and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Black-and-white image of Black man in black leather jacket and shirt in front of background with text. Black-and-white image of Black man with black dredlocs in suit on white wall
Jon Batiste and Jean-Michel Basquiat. (Brad Barket/Getty Images; Andy Warhol/Colorlines Screenshot from Facebook)

Composer Jon Batiste is set to bring the life of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat to the stage via a new Broadway musical. The New Orleans-bred musician and bandleader of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” announced the show on Tuesday (September 25):

Deadline reports that Batiste will collaborate with stage producers Barbara and Alan D. Marks (The Encounter”) and director John Doyle (“The Color Purple” revival) on the untitled project. The team partnered with the late Haitian- and Puerto Rican-American artist’s estate, which granted rights to use his original art and personal archival material in the musical.

“Over the years, many people have approached us about telling our brother’s story on stage,” sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, who administer their brother’s estate, told Deadline. “But having discussed this project with the Marks over many months, our interest was piqued once we understood that their approach to telling our brother’s story treats his life, his art and his legacy with respect and passion. With Jon Batiste and John Doyle leading the creative team, we are thrilled with the possibilities. We cannot wait to begin the developmental process. Broadway is a new world for us, and we look forward to sharing our brother’s life and art.”

Batiste wants the musical to both capture Basquiat’s story and inspire other artists to channel his creative spirit.

“I want people to leave this show inspired to create. I want them to not only learn about Jean-Michel Basquiat, an innovator, but to also feel the visceral thrill of the creative process and to deepen and discover their own creativity,” he told Deadline. “We have an opportunity to tell a truly profound story, full of emotional highs and lows, with unbelievable art at the center. I’m honored to work with veteran storyteller John Doyle, the Marks and the Basquiat family. We are assembling a team to help craft a boundary pushing masterpiece inspired by a true American original.”

Source: https://www.colorlines.com/articles/jon-batiste-turns-jean-michel-basquiats-life-broadway-musical

Unreleased Basquiat Art From 1979 to 1981 to be Displayed at X Contemporary via Art Basel in Miami this December

By goodblacknews on October 14, 2016

Unreleased Basquiat Art From 1979 To 1981 To Be Displayed Soon
Jean-Michel Basquiat (photo via okayplayer.com)

article by Elijah C. Watson via okayplayer.com
A collection of unreleased work from Jean-Michel Basquiat will be unveiled this December at X Contemporary, a satellite event of Miami’s Art Basel.  According to a report from Art News, the exhibit will feature a range of Basquiat’s work — including paintings, collages, and drawings — created by the artist between 1979 and 1981, in his good friend Lonny Lichtenberg‘s New York apartment.
Curating the display will be another of Basquiat’s close friends, Al Diaz. The name Diaz might sound familiar, considering he’s the artist Basquiat collaborated with during his graffiti days, creating the infamous SAMO graffiti tag that was painted throughout the streets of downtown Manhattan in the late 1970s.
The show, hosted by Brooklyn’s Bishop Gallery, will run from November 30 to December 4, at Miami’s Nobu Hotel.
This news joins other recent Basquiat exhibit announcements, including one that’s happening in the UK. London’s Barbican Centre is hosting Boom For Real, the UK’s first large scale Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition, which will feature over 100 of the late New York artist’s works, with his most famous paintings lined up alongside notebooks and drawings.
To read more, go to: http://www.okayplayer.com/news/unreleased-basquiat-art-to-be-displayed-soon.html

"Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks" Exhibit Showing at Brooklyn Museum Until August

By goodblacknews on April 6, 2015
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s notebooks are on display at the Brooklyn Museum. (Credit: Tseng Kwong Chi/Muna Tseng Dance Projects)

As a child, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum, which he used to visit with his mother and where he got a globalist view of art history that would provide fuel for his own later painting. He’s back at the museum now, part of that global history, in “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks.”

At the start of his career in the late 1970s, Mr. Basquiat was better known for words than for images: short, enigmatic, rap-rhythm phrases that he wrote on New York City walls and signed with a “SAMO©” tag. The phrases, like his Expressionist-style paintings, may have looked spontaneous, but the 160 unbound notebook pages in the exhibition show they were far from that. We see words tried out and scratched out, listed and rejected, sometimes accompanied by drawings. Some of the images are as avid and original as you would expect from this artist, but it’s the words that stand out. He was a poet who happened to find art first, and this is a poet’s show. (Through Aug. 23, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, NY, brooklynmuseum.org.)

article by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com

Basquiat Painting Fetches Record $48.8 Million in NY

By goodblacknews on May 16, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting titled "Dustheads" sold for $48.8 million at a May 15 auction. (Image courtesy of AP/NBC New York)
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting titled “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million at a May 15 auction. (Image courtesy of AP/NBC New York)

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting titled “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million yesterday at Christie’s at a sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York, setting a new auction record for Basquiat.  His “Untitled,” a painting of a black fisherman, held the previous record when it sold for $26.4 million last November.  Also breaking world auction prices for artists were works by Roy Lichtenstein and Jackson Pollock.

Lichtenstein’s “Woman with Flowered Hat” fetched $56 million. A classic example of pop art, the 1963 painting is based on Pablo Picasso’s portrait of his lover Dora Maar.  An important drip painting by Pollock, “Number 19,” realized a record $58.3 million.  Christie’s says Wednesday’s auction brought in $495 million, the highest total at any art auction.

article via nbcnewyork.com

Basquiat Videos: Toxic, Macklemore And Al Diaz Speak On SAMO's Inspiration And Legacy (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on May 12, 2013

Basquiat VideosWhether seen in a market report, an art history book or a rap verse, the name Jean-Michel Basquiat is legendary. The dreadlocked young artist quickly rose to fame after taking up graffiti in New York City, becoming an incandescent art star before his untimely death in 1988 at only 27 years old.

Twenty five years later, the late artist is experiencing a massive global resurgence. In New York, his blowout Gagosian retrospective saw record attendance and his work is slated to appear later this month at Gagosian’s posh Hong Kong gallery for the first time ever. And yet, we often get so tied up in Basquiat the legend we forget he was a real person.
A new three-part video series released by Christie’s remembers Basquiat not only for his artistic genius, but also his energy, audacity and growing pains. The series begins with Basquiat’s high school friend and the other half of the graffiti duo known as SAMO, Al Diaz. “What we were doing was a response to everything around us…everything we were disillusioned by.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCHe7HCBF1s&w=560&h=315]
Next we hear from Toxic, Basquiat’s friend and contemporary, who paints a picture of the Haitian artist’s meteoric rise to fame.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-NvULWRxdw&w=560&h=315]
Finally we hear from Ben Haggerty, aka Macklemore — yes, the singer of “Thrift Shop” — for a surprisingly touching meditation on Basquiat as a source of inspiration in his work as he grapples with his own success. “When he got with Warhol it was like everyone just tore him down.” Macklemore continues, “That’s such a weird feeling as an artist to make something that’s pure, that’s from the heart, that is who you are, and have a group of people shit on you.”
In a conversation with the curator and critic Henry Geldzahler in Interview, the 23-year-old artist delivers a deceptively simple, thought-provoking line: “The more I paint the more I like everything.” The films above honor the mind and legacy of a star that burned too bright, too fast.  Basquiat’s collection will show at Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong from May 25 until August 10, and “Dustheads” (1982) is expected to fetch $25-35 million at Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 15.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJ82FqXn4g&w=560&h=315]
article by Priscilla Frank via huffingtonpost.com

Former Lover Reveals Wealth of Unseen Works by Basquiat

By goodblacknews on April 9, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)'
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)’ painting estimated at 7-9 million GBP is displayed at Christie’s in February in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? More to the point, is a sound only a sound if someone hears it? Without delving too deeply into the metaphysics, this riddle offers an imperfect analogy for the philosophical conundrum more relevant here, namely – is art only art if someone sees it?  TheGrio interviewed Alexis Adler, a New York University embryologist and former romantic companion of iconic Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, these and other tacit questions about how we evaluate, share and make meaning of art played mysteriously in the background.

Adler, who lived with Basquiat before he was famous, recently revealed plans to share a previously unseen, thirty-year-old collection of art works and ephemera from the early career of the tragic and prolific creator. Produced during their relationship in an East Village apartment — some pieces on the apartment — these pieces have never been seen by the art world or the public.
“This is allowing the people who knew Jean to tell the world more about him, who he was, how I knew him, his warmth and interest as a person,” Adler told theGrio about her plans. “There is a range of work from that time, and it offers a pretty intense snapshot of his beginnings as an artist.”