Jean-Michel Basquiat

Strange to think of Gordon Bennett as an almost classical figure in contemporary Australian art. After years of critiquing art-historical standards, Bennett has himself become the standard bearer. Six years after his death at the age of 58, his practice represents a canon that future generations of artists will be both motivated and shadowed by. In this, his first homegrown retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), some of Bennett’s most well-known series are framed by  seriality itself. At the centre of "Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett" – its beating heart – is a freestanding display of numerous works on paper, establishing how the Queensland-born artist obsessed over his ideas in multiple drawings, watercolours and revisions, in constant dialogue with his own visual vocabulary as much as he was with those whose works he appropriated.

Jean-Michael Basquiat (1960-1988), artista cuya obra se vincula habitualmente al neoexpresionismo y el primitivismo, dejó un abundante legado pictórico pese a morir a los 27 años. Puede decirse que su trabajo y su breve carrera son paradigmáticos de la situación del mundo del arte en la década de 1980, que presenció el declive del arte conceptual y el minimalismo, dominantes la década anterior, y una permeabilidad creciente entre las llamadas en ese momento " alta cultura " y " cultura popular ". Basquiat es, en definitiva, fundamental para entender este contexto y la dirección que el arte tomaría a finales del siglo XX. La música ocupó en su vida un lugar central ya que no solo influyó directamente en su producción, sino que él mismo participó en formaciones como Grey. El jazz fue para Basquiat —de la misma forma que otros elementos afroamericanos— un importante referente, con cuadros que retratan a Dizzy Gillespie o Charlie Parker o aluden de manera explícita a su música. Pero no solo constituyó un influjo directo, pues tanto en sus obras como en sus opiniones o parte de su forma de trabajar se advierten simetrías con el jazz, pero también ambigüedades y contradicciones. Esta comunicación se ocupa, vinculando la musicología a la hermenéutica, del heterogéneo flujo de relaciones entre Jean-Michael Basquiat y el jazz.

The artistic interests and the careers of David Bowie and Andy Warhol crossed numerous times. This article sets David Bowie’s intersecting relationship across time and place with Warhol as the foundation upon which his performance as Andy Warhol in the 1996 film Basquiat (directed by Julian Schnabel) is based. My first argument is that as a musician, Bowie was influence by ‘the New York scene’ but he creatively and performatively employed over time his own metaphors for conveying the didactic. To come to play the part of Andy Warhol, draws his arc to a close of becoming recognised as the artist Andy was. I wish to draw clear parallels between the essay’s two binary relationships, between on the one hand Bowie and Warhol as real-life media self-constructions and on the other, the ways the film depicts the dyadic relationship between the art-world in New York, Basquiat and Warhol. It is against this background that David Bowie is the prime vehicle to play Andy Warhol. My specific route into this problematic is unearthing the essence of Bowie’s art-form fusions, vision and sound, which allowed him to portray in the film the dialectical tension between art and commerce, of genuine acts associated with risk and will.

"In 2008, Cedar Lewisohn curated the first large-scale exhibition of street art at a major museum or gallery. 'Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution' (23 May - 25 Aug 2008) involved the exhibition of works by six international street artists on the exterior facade of the Tate Modern in London. In the exhibition's accompanying publication Lewisohn stated, "Street art and graffiti both have the peculiar ability to exist in the mainstream of culture and at the same time on its periphery."

This dissertation attempts to excavate this claim in the context of developments in New York City. It explores, primarily, the inter-relationship between graffiti and street art from their rapid period of evolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and from the mid-1990s onwards. The initial definitions applied to distinguish graffiti and street art have highlighted key differences in methodology and the underlying aims of the artists involved in each practice. The first section examines the practices of early graffiti writer Dondi White alongside his contemporaries John Fekner and Jenny Holzer, contemporary artists who were working in the streets of New York during the early 1980s in addition to producing studio-based work. An analysis of the street-based practices of 'street art pioneers' Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring also considers the crossover of street practice to gallery career, a transiton established in graffiti writing  during the early 1980s in which graffiti moved from a peripheral presence to a major subcultural development and gallery fixture. The third and final section comprises a discussion around the current day development of street art and its transition into the mainstream through the practices of Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Swoon. This development has been facilitated by gallery exhibition and increased representation for street artists, the dissemination of ideas through the internet, and the increased media attention given to street artists.

In a similar manner to graffiti writers, street artists have ignited controversial debates through their transition from relatively unknown urban artists to overnight gallery sensations, a transition that has been both lamented and applauded. For the purposes of this discussion, it also serves to highlight the ambivalent and dichotomous position that continues to surround the existence of graffiti and street art aesthetics in both a peripheral and mainstream context.

For the full text, please email me. I am happy to provide references and the dissertation to interested students and researchers."

A herança artística de Jean Michel Basquiat continua a interrogar-nos desde os anos oitenta. Algo nos escapa sempre na nossa inquirição. Ela interroga-nos sobre a natureza fundamental de nossa humanidade enquanto corpo e pessoa e interroga simultaneamente a identidade racial dos povos afro-americanos. Porém, a tentativa constante de colocar a arte de Basquiat no confronto maniqueísta racial entre negro e branco, muitas vezes manipulada por discursos de exegese política advinda dos movimentos de contestação negra, já só nos convence parcialmente.

If language is not pure signification, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, what is the contaminant? At Mid-Twentieth Century painters rejected babbling kitch in favor of existentially loaded gestures. A decade later, Conceptualism rejected such grandiosity and returned to language. I posit that both Conceptualism and Abstract Expressionism were stuck in immanentism. Abstract Expressionists iterated familiar psychoanalytic conflicts, only superficially individuated; 70’s Conceptualism frequently relied on mere puns or inane systems. Similarly, Badiou reminds readers that contemporary art is neither pure form nor psycho-sexual catharsis.  As postwar commerce and communication media intensified the inundation of corporate slogans and news headlines, examining the slippages in meaning in the translation between mass dissemination and individual meaning gained social urgency.

Artists in the second half of the Twentieth Century included letterforms in their images to speak directly to this bifurcation. Through formal devices, like the expressiveness of Basquiat’s scrawl, or conceptual devices such as Corita Kent’s appropriation of the General Mills logo, these artists foil the interpellation of pure language to reveal peculiar affects and individuated understandings.

At the dawn of the 21st century, street art seemed to have popped out of nowhere. Scholarship on the genre attempts to create a linear connection between urban graffiti in the 1970s and today’s street art, flitting through the 1980s and 1990s with a brief nod to Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The story is actually more complex and as scholarship and research into the two genres continues to evolve,  forgotten artists emerge. This paper looks at the application of William Warmus’s theory of the reticulate aesthetic as it applies to the evolution of street art today.

La fortuna di Leonardo negli Stati Uniti, fino all'inizio degli anni Sessanta del secolo scorso, è stata legata a pochi e circoscritti episodi, il più eclatante dei quali fu certamente l'arrivo della Gioconda nel 1963. Tale fortuna era inoltre incentrata principalmente sulle sue opere maggiori e per lo più confinata in un ristretto seguito di appassionati. Le due grandi mostre di Los Angeles (1980) e di New York (1981) curate da Carlo Pedretti-intervallate dalla notizia dell'acquisto all'asta del Codice Leicester da parte del magnate del petrolio Armand Hammer-accesero invece l'attenzione su aspetti fino a quel momento poco noti di Leonardo. In particolare, l'esposizione di cinquanta disegni appartenenti alla Royal Library di Windsor restituì al pubblico americano un Leonardo più sfaccettato e rafforzò la sua notorietà. L'impatto sul panorama culturale fu immediato e potente, come dimostrano sia la ricezione da parte del grande pubblico, sia le testimonianze nelle opere degli artisti più famosi dell'epoca. Il merito fu di Pedretti, che riuscì a fare degli studi del genio vinciano una disciplina sistematica che lo collocò tra i più grandi studiosi leonardiani a livello mondiale. In questo saggio mi propongo di ricostruire con dati documentari e materiale inedito, provenienti dall'Archivio Pedretti e dal The Andy Warhol Museum di Pittsburgh, quanto l'arrivo di Carlo Pedretti sia stato determinante nella percezione e nella ricezione di Leonardo negli Stati Uniti, sia in campo scientifico che artistico.

A síntese do enredo deixa a impressão de um desenvolvimento cronológico da vida de Basquiat. O filme de Julian Schnabel, no entanto, é mais sutil: cria um retrato poético pela utilização de vários efeitos plásticos do meio cinematográfico, como sobreposição de imagens (o rosto de Basquiat sobreposto por imagens recorrentes de ondas), dissociação de quadros (quando a câmera de Schnabel quer descrever uma situação, tenta desenhar um espaço indefinido e mais abstrato do que um espaço específico) e uma trilha sonora rica — composta por Public Image, The Rolling Stones, Grandmaster Flash, Joy Division, The Pogues e “A Small Plot of Land”, faixa do álbum Outside (1995)de Bowie, que marca o retorno às suas raízes artísticas.

O ensaio a seguir é menos uma reflexão sobre Basquiat e a forma como foi retratado por Schnabel e mais um ponto de partida para refletir sobre a relação de David Bowie com Andy Warhol. Longe de mim a ideia de considerar o filme mero pretexto para falar sobre eles. Pelo contrário, retomando a distinta aparição de Bowie em Basquiat, tento estabelecer correspondências com outras referências diretas ou indiretas a Warhol em seu trabalho. Creio que seja essa uma das possibilidades de pensar no gesto artístico como parte de um modernismo reificado pela imagem. Vou investigar a relação entre os artistas enquanto uma modernidade das aparências: qual a importância de Warhol na construção artística de Bowie? A problemática da superfície revela alguns aspectos contraditórios da “cultura pop”: como pensar na natureza de suas obras dentro do sistema da “indústria de massa?” Quero expor essa questão com base na teoria de Peter Bürger sobre a vanguarda artística, da qual pude colher fragmentos no filme de Schnabel.

Can You Hear Me? Music Labels by Visual Artists is the first survey on the obscure and fascinating phenomenon of record labels founded and run by visual artists. It reflects on the way these extra-artistic activities contribute to redefining the role of the contemporary artist as a catalyst of intellectual energies and producer of cultural processes at large. Moreover, it tries to understand if and how these activities challenged the art world’s static and modern perception of art and art works.

Spanning 1980 to 2015, the project consists in a book and an exhibition that celebrate the contemporary artist as a multi faceted producer of collaborative projects. The highlighted labels have released a dynamic spectrum of activities in and outside the art world and remained untouched by its unwritten capitalist code, attempting to develop alternative forms of cultural production and attract new audiences.

Record labels featured:
Arcangel Surfware, Avant / Savant, Awesome Vistas, Beige Records, Chicks on Speed Records, Compound Annex, D.S. al Coda, Decemberism, Distributed History, Duchess Archive, Earhole Productions, Elektro Music Department, Hyena, Kalup Linzy Studio, Leiterwagen, Make it Happen, Musicsystem, Nuevos Ricos, raster-noton, Synchronic, Tartown Record Co., Teenage Teardrops, Villa Magica, Von
Archives, and Wierd.

Artists featured:
Carlos Amorales, Cory Arcangel, John Amrleder and Sylvie Fleury, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Johanna Billing, Matthew Brannon, Chicks on Speed, Paul B. Davis, Destroy All Monsters, Cali Thornhill Dewitt, Dexter Sinister, DJ Spooky, Chris Johanson, Mike Kelley, Kalup Linzy, Lucy McKenzie, Carsten Nicolai, Albert Oehlen, Daniel Pflumm, Seth Price, Pieter Schoolwerth, SUPERFLEX, Mika Tajima, Nico Vascellari, Andy Warhol, and Alex Waterman.

The aim of this article is to examine some of the poems collected in Kevin Young’s second published book of poetry, titled To Repel Ghosts, and to explore the ways in which these writings mirror the stylistics of pop art by employing aspects of popular and mass culture to shed a new light on them and comment upon the condition of contemporary culture in general. In To Repel Ghosts, Young – former member of the now-dissolved African-American poetry group named The Dark Room Collective – uses the persona and works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the late visual artist and an iconic pop-cultural figure, as a starting point for a more general reflection upon the American culture of the  late 20th century, dominated by and inevitably filtered through the mass media. Much like Basquiat in his artwork, Young in his poems attempts at combining the image and the word; whereas the former often incorporated words and phrases into his paintings, the latter’s poetic project seems to focus on evoking images through the medium of words. The poems collected in the volume are verbal takes on the visual – from a series of poems titled after Basquiat’s works and attempting to recreate and/or play with the painter’s vision to his “television and comic book poems,” Young uses language to reproduce and communicate phenomena which, by their very nature, naturally exist in the realm of images. At times, the poet’s style and technique may be said to resonate with the ideas as postulated by the Imagists; the scarcity of verbiage, focus on the presentation of stills of life (in Young’s case, these would be “screenshots” from the American mass and popular culture of late 20th century)  and musical rhythmicality found in his poems all evoke this short-lived albeit influential doctrine once advocated by Ezra Pound. The fragmented diction and inherent musicality of the poems may also bring to mind the stylistics of jazz poetry in the tradition of Langston Hughes or Bob Kaufman; the fact that the volume is subtitled Five Sides in B Minor, divided – like vinyl records – into “Discs” and “Sides” and filled with poetic portraits of some of the most iconic American musicians adds up to the book’s overall jazz-like feeling. By attempting to force written language to become more than just words – to vibrate with image and sound – Young turns his poetry into an imitation of the all-present noise characteristic of the contemporary, media-permeated culture. Reading the poems collected in To Repel Ghosts may sometimes evoke the feeling of TV channel surfing – the reader is confronted with sudden and seemingly unrelated images of famous artists, sportsmen, TV series and comic book characters, or pieces of music and visual art.

This study aims to delve into the differences between the presentation of dishes with an artistic outlook, and the presentation of the food as is, with specific reference to the images of the picturesque work by the sophisticated artist Jean Michel Basquiat, whose work often involve elements of gastronomy. The means to achieve this goal is the analysis based on the concepts of image and photograph. A researcher investigating the artistic character of food, and making frequent references to food as a biological necessity as denoted by the concept of nutrition, and hence underlining the need to consume food and beverages in short time frames, can often reach to the conclusion that such passing products cannot easily be categorized as art. Yet, the question 'can food be considered art?' pops its head given the effect of food being comparable to that of words and images, not to mention the prevalent use of modern art in the context of presentation in gastronomy (Myhrvold, 2011). The present study will follow the tracks of Myhrvold, and will analyze the production, processing, cooking and presentation stages, which are essential elements of gastronomy as a discipline, with an aesthetic perspective, and with reference to the concepts of image and photograph.

When we reduce the complexity, thoughtfulness and brilliance of Jean Michel-Basquiat and his work to notions of childlike musing or primitive utterances, we miss invaluable opportunities to engage him in all of its fullness and complexity – including the very difficult and aggressive politics that play out both on, beneath and beyond the surface of his work.

Die kommerzielle Methodik des kapitalistischen Kunstmarktes der 80er Jahre hat den damals stattfindenden Kunstboom zwar angeheizt, aber gleichermaßen die eigentliche Kunst dahinter und die schaffenden KünstlerInnen gelenkt. “The art market destroys the art” - Julian Schnabels Zitat beschreibt seine Motive, den Künstlerfilm über Jean Michel Basquiat zu drehen - einen der außergewöhnlichsten Köpfe in der damaligen Kunstszene. Sein Leben und Schaffen kann paradigmatisch für das Dilemma in der Kunstwelt betrachtet werden und hat dennoch bis heute ein Zeichen für die Freiheit von Kunst gesetzt.

The British street artist Banksy has debuted a new work in London, this time to coincide with a Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Barbican Centre. Banksy’s mural depicts British police officers frisking and interrogating a figure from Basquiat’s 1982 painting “Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump.” The work invites us to confront the relation between race, space, and visual technology—a relation so uncontainable, as recent events have shown, that it is quickly coming to the center of global politics.

Bu calisma,  Jean Michel Basquiat isimli cok yonlu bir sanatcinin gastronomi unsurlari iceren resimsel calismalarinin gorsellerinin kullanimi sayesinde gastronomide sanatsal bakis acisi ile yapilan yemek sunum islemi ve urunun oldugu gibi servis edilmesi arasindaki farklari fotograf ve resim kavramlari uzerinden  incelemek icin hazirlanmistir. Yemegin sanatsalligini incelerken; yasamak icin beslenme zorundaligina ve yiyecek-iceceklerin kisa surede tuketiminin eser kavramindan uzakligina deginen bir arastirmaci, bu bilgilerin karsisinda her ne olursa olsun,  sozlerin ve resimlerin insan duygu-dusunceleri uzerinde varolan etkisine yemeklerin de sahip oldugunu ve modern sanat anlayisinin gastronomi sunum asamalarinda hali hazirda uygulanmakta oldugunu yemek sanat olabilir mi? sorusu uzerinden calismasina yansitmistir. (Myhrvold, N:2011, s:13)

Starting from the definition of a concept for “aesthetic ideas”, this paper studies a proposal by the African-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) - expressed, in his keywords, in the strategy of “attacking the circuit of galleries today”- to overcome limits of political-territorial of a hegemonically white artistic field and inscribes its art through aesthetic logos of Eurocentric identity agents who dominate by the logic of a modern/colonial system, confer erasure, invisibility and primitiveness to Afro-Atlantic artistic legacies.

The artistic interests and the careers of David Bowie and Andy Warhol crossed numerous times. This article sets David Bowie’s intersecting relationship across time and place with Warhol as the foundation upon which his performance as Andy Warhol in the 1996 film Basquiat (directed by Julian Schnabel) is based. My first argument is that as a musician, Bowie was influence by ‘the New York scene’ but he creatively and performatively employed over time his own metaphors for conveying the didactic. To come to play the part of Andy Warhol, draws his arc to a close of becoming recognised as the artist Andy was. I wish to draw clear parallels between the essay’s two binary relationships, between on the one hand Bowie and Warhol as real-life media self-constructions and on the other, the ways the film depicts the dyadic relationship between the art-world in New York, Basquiat and Warhol. It is against this background that David Bowie is the prime vehicle to play Andy Warhol. My specific route into this problematic is unearthing the essence of Bowie’s art-form fusions, vision and sound, which allowed him to portray in the film the dialectical tension between art and commerce, of genuine acts associated with risk and will.

Essay discusses the work of American artist Rashid Johnson in relation to comparisons made to himself and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Posits the question of art and race insomuch the ways in which the Art Press can overlook socially qualified meanings.

[dalla prefazione di Irene Santori]
…molly - alberto - attratti dal segnale nascosto: le prime tre sezioni di questa raccolta paiono già miniare qualcosa come una Visitazione. Poiché qui è
questione di grembi che si toccano, di consanguinei, e del concepibile e dell'inconcepibile. Minuscoli i loro nomi, come minuscolo è quel che, al
segnale, trasalisce nell'invisibile.

Through the culturel history, meaning of art and art object have been queried and these researchs have emerged thesis and antithesis. Fundamentaly, this article aim to comparison interaction and/or conflict with mathematical rationalist art and primitive/heuristical/romantic art. In this context, effects of primitive and experssive art to the nowadays’ art perception are examined to envolve out of Basquiat and neo expressionism. Entailment of expressive art in contemporary art is researched for answers for questions in terms of cultural and genetic heritage of art and instinctive origins of making art object.
Keywords: Rock Paintings, Petroglyph, Primitive Art, Primitivism, Neo-Expressionism, Jean Michel Basquiat

Starting from the definition of a concept for “aesthetic ideas”, this paper studies a proposal by the African-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) - expressed, in his keywords, in the strategy of “attacking the circuit of galleries today”- to overcome limits of political-territorial of a hegemonically white artistic field and inscribes its art through aesthetic logos of Eurocentric identity agents who dominate by the logic of a modern/colonial system, confer erasure, invisibility and primitiveness to Afro-Atlantic artistic legacies.

TEGUR SAPA

Memasuki Juli 2021, situasi tidak juga kunjung membaik. Dengung ambulans semakin rutin menggema di jalan raya. Sementara di televisi, grup whatsapp, hingga sosial media, berita duka terus menggedor nurani kita dan tak jua kunjung mereda.

Racau #2 ini terbit dalam keadaan berkabung. Namun meski begitu, saya dengan naifnya akan terus menawarkan rasa optimisme kepada kalian semua; “Kita pasti sanggup melalui hal-hal buruk dan segera berjumpa di keadaan yang lebih baik dari hari ini.”

Di edisi kedua yang bertajuk “Mendadak Abstrak Tiba-Tiba Basquiat” ini, Racau juga kehadiran seorang kawan perupa yang juga mahir menulis, Mayek Prayitno. Dengan tajuk “Seni di Kala Pandemi” Mayek mengajak kita untuk mengintip apa yang berhasil diporak-porandakan oleh pandemi ini.

“Seni di Kala Pandemi” adalah sebuah retrospeksi, serta rambu-rambu yang mengawal kita semua agar mampu menjalani hidup normal di situasi new normal.

Akhir kata, semoga Racau #2 “Mendadak Abstrak Tiba-Tiba Basquiat” bisa membawa kebahagiaan bagi kalian semua, mengisi kejenuhan di kala pandemi yang entah kapan akan berakhir.

Sehat dan bahagia selalu bagi kita semua, aamiin


Rengga Satria
Jakarta, 03 Juli 2021.

My current body of work, “The Joy of Exile: in three acts” is a continuing stream of exploration of the concept of literal and inner migrations. This is my MFA Thesis Collection created during my tenure at Boston University's College of Fine Arts.

In this body of work,  I use words and images together in the exploration of my inner life. The installation of this work is largely paintings on canvas and paper– presented in such a way that paint extends beyond the boundaries of the canvas on to the wall. The work has lots of literary references; the poetry of Walter Benjamin (and Paul Klee) for example in "Angel of progress." I see the drawings on the wall as a Junot Diaz style fun with footnotes.

In addition, I've been lucky enough to count on the collaboration with a friend, poet Anthony Cody. His poem, "Llegando al Toldería" (after a painting of mine) is the anchor for my installation. The pieces are placed within stanzas of the poem. My installation is an allegorical- poem-comic-mural –– the play within words and images are the key to the experience. The installation is a three-part poem with a prologue (four parts total).

I use the corn kernel as a metaphor for the migrant. Donuts as a metaphor for experience. Debris as travel companions. Popcorn as the culmination of experience of human mobility.  It's a bit challenging to speak about these works individually, I se them as chapters of a single piece, yet pieces in of themselves.

Throughout the process, I've sought to make peace with experiences, to understand some things. I've been lucky enough to do that.

Katlardan birinde, siyah perdeyle kapalı bir bölümden güzel bir müzik sesi ve diyaloglar duyunca, içeriye bir bakmak istiyorum. Siyah perdeyi aralayıp içeriye girdiğimde salonun tamamen dolu olduğunu ve herkesin pür dikkat, hiç ses çıkarmadan bir filmi izlediklerini görüyorum. Ekranda gösterilen filmin kime ait olduğunu hemen çıkartmam zor elbette. Herkesin çok istekli seyrettikleri filmi ayakta izlemeye karar veriyorum.

Before his death at the age of twenty-seven, Jean-Michel Basquiat completed nearly 2,000 works. These unique compositions—collages of text and gestural painting across a variety of media—quickly made Basquiat one of the most important and widely known artists of the 1980s. Reading Basquiat provides a new approach to understanding the range and impact of this artist’s practice, as well as its complex relationship to several key artistic and ideological debates of the late twentieth century, including the instability of identity, the role of appropriation, and the boundaries of expressionism. Jordana Moore Saggese argues that Basquiat, once known as “the black Picasso,” probes not only the boundaries of blackness but also the boundaries of American art. Weaving together the artist’s interests in painting, writing, and music, this groundbreaking book expands the parameters of aesthetic discourse to consider the parallels Basquiat found among these disciplines in his exploration of the production of meaning. Most important, Reading Basquiat traces the ways in which Basquiat constructed large parts of his identity—as a black man, as a musician, as a painter, and as a writer—via the manipulation of texts in his own library.