MY MAGICAL ATTIC: BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL AT SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

May 07, 2018

BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL AT SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL AT THE SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

FEBRUARY 16, 2018 – MAY 27, 2018

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL AT
THE SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

FEBRUARY 16, 2018 – MAY 27, 2018

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) is acknowledged today as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. More than 30 years after his last solo exhibition in a public collection in Germany, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting a major survey devoted to this American artist. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition is the first to focus on Basquiat’s relationship to music, text, film and television, placing his work within a broader cultural context.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Basquiat teamed up with Al Diaz in New York to write graffiti statements across the city under the pseudonym SAMO©. Soon he was collaging baseball cards and postcards and painting on clothing, doors, furniture and on improvised canvases. Basquiat collaborated with many artists of his time, most famously Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. He starred in the film New York Beat with Blondie’s singer Debbie Harry and performed with his experimental band Gray. Basquiat created murals and installations for New York nightclubs like Area and Palladium and in 1983 he produced the hip-hop record Beat Bop with K-Rob and Rammellzee.

Having come of age in the Post-Punk underground scene in Lower Manhattan, Basquiat conquered the art world and gained widespread international recognition, becoming the youngest participant in the history of the documenta in 1982. His paintings were hung beside works by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter and Cy Twombly. Basquiat’s raw, vibrant imagery is matched by a startling erudition, seen in the extensive fragments of bold, capitalized text that abound in his works. These bear witness to his encyclopedic interests and his experience as a young artist with no formal training. Basquiat maintained a playful approach to language and rebelled against political indifference through his searching texts.

This exhibition at the Schirn traces Basquiat’s journey from his beginnings as an artist to his early death, aged 27, in 1988. Thematic sections illuminate the context in which his works were made and the story of their reception. It discusses questions such as the role of SAMO© and the influence of Downtown New York scene on Basquiat’s artistic development and the significance of his interdisciplinary art production, which has seldom been considered before. At the Schirn, an outstanding selection of paintings, drawings, notebooks and objects by Basquiat are presented from public and private collections, together with rare films, photographs, music and archive material, which capture the range and dynamism of his practice over the years.

The exhibition Basquiat. Boom for Real is made possible by the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

“Basquiat’s myth still overrides the scientific examination of his artistic oeuvre. And frequently the historic and cultural context in which his unusual works were created is neglected as well. The exhibition Basquiat. Boom for Real starts out from this premise, demonstrating the vitality and diversity of the artist’s entire oeuvre and telling of the wide-ranging influences. Because Jean Michel Basquiat’s art is closely linked with life itself: social, political and art-historical subjects flow together in his work. It is a mixture which dissolves the boundaries of the disciplines and those of his own identity. More than 30 years after Basquiat’s last solo presentation in a public collection in Germany, the Schirn is dedicating a major overview exhibition to his oeuvre. It is a unique event”, comments Dr. Philipp Demandt, the Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

Lisane and Jeanine Basquiat, the artist’s sisters, on the exhibition: “If you want to know what there is to know about Jean-Michel, the place to go is to his work. Presenting it now to the public both in London and Frankfurt in this major survey is a great opportunity and very special to us”.

ARTWORKS AND SUBJECTS OF THE EXHIBITION

At the beginning of his artistic career, Basquiat created politically charged graffiti. In 1978, at the age of seventeen, he and his high-school friend Al Diaz operated under the pseudonym SAMO©, writing cryptic statements in black capital letters on the walls of buildings in New York. The graffiti were satirical attacks on the banality of American culture; their playful and rhythmical use of language soon made them unmistakable. This exhibition at the Schirn presents a large number of photographs by Henry Flynt, who documented this period. The staging within what was then the new artists’ district of SoHo was decisive for the success of SAMO©. Papers such as the SoHo Weekly News and the Village Voice started campaigns to reveal the identity of SAMO©.

Basquiat had a sense of humour about his status as an artist. He was an autodidact who left school at the age of 16 and who never had any formal art training. Growing up in a cultured Brooklyn family, he regularly visited the New York museums as a child. He owned a comprehensive collection of artist’s monographs which he used as sources. Even in his earliest paintings and drawings Basquiat showed that he knew how to borrow from the visual vocabulary of twentieth-century Western painting, while developing a style distinctively his own.

Basquiat achieved his breakthrough with the presentation of his works in the group exhibition at P.S. 1 New York/New Wave. Works such as Untitled (1980) – a sheet of metal over two metres high with spray-painted text: NEW YORK NEWAVE – are brought back together again at the Schirn for the first time since their original display. The enthusiasm of his contemporaries and the encouragement Basquiat received from his fellow-artists and critics can be experienced to this day. The works from his first solo exhibition in 1982 were full of explosive energy – layers of paint in intensive shades and scribbled, scratched arcs which resemble the movement lines in action cartoons. The Schirn also presents works from this period including Untitled (1982) showing a victorious boxer with his fists raised and a thorny halo.

Basquiat was not only a painter and graphic artist; he was also a performer, actor, poet, musician and DJ. He was thus a direct disciple of the collective tendencies of the international art scene of the 1970s and early 1980s to work in a multidisciplinary way. Together with Michael Holman, Vincent Gallo and Nicholas Taylor, Basquiat played clarinet and synthesizer in the band Gray. Jazz and blues play an important role in his oeuvre. In many paintings he studied the history of black jazz musicians – as, for example, in the work King Zulu (1986). He was an early protagonist of the hip-hop movement alongside Fab 5 Freddy, Toxic and Rammellzee. Under his own label Tartown he produced the record Beat Bop (1983), for which he also designed the cover. In the independent film New York Beat written by Glenn O’Brien (later released as Downtown 81), Basquiat was chosen for the main role and played the artist he would later become. The exhibition in the Schirn brings this era to life once more with the films New York Beat (1980-81), excerpts of Basquiat’s appearances in the programme TV Party (1979–1982) as well as photographs of key figures from the Downtown scene such as Madonna, Debbie Harry, Grace Jones, Maripol and Andy Warhol. In the early 1980s Basquiat produced numerous collages, postcards and objects together with Keith Haring, Jennifer Stein, John Sex and others. The exhibition also shows a refrigerator Untitled (Fun Fridge) (1982) and a vase – also Untitled from 1982. On the initiative of Bruno Bischofberger, Basquiat made the acquaintance of Andy Warhol; they would create a series of joint works with Francesco Clemente. Basquiat and Warhol continued to cooperate between 1984 and 1985. The Schirn presents their collaborative piece Arm and Hammer II (1984) as well as and the double portrait Dos Cabezas (1982), which Basquiat painted immediately after his first meeting with Warhol.

Basquiat drew from his surroundings and experimented with different supports and materials. In the style of copying and pasting foreign content he took over material he had found and changed it to suit his sense of aesthetics. His approach was based on the cut-up technique of the Beat authors who experienced a revival during the early 1980s. He structured the picture surface with the conventions of quotations – footnotes, numbers, indexes – as well as grids, lines and vectors which recall mind maps and flow diagrams. His particular preference lay in the schematic representation of complex interconnections – from Leonardo da Vinci’s codices to star charts to illustrations from encyclopaedias and reference works. It was here that Basquiat found the raw material for his art. He referred repeatedly in his works to those of famous artists, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Titian and Leonardo da Vinci. The Schirn is also presenting his works Untitled (Pablo Picasso) (1984) and Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Hits (1982). Basquiat recorded his thoughts and ideas in lined notebooks. The exhibition has assembled a selection of these books with poems, sketches, quotations, text fragments and addresses which served as both diaries and sources of inspiration. Exhibition curated by Barbican Centre, London, in cooperation with the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

http://www.schirn.de/en/exhibitions/2018/basquiat/

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT & ANDY WARHOL, ARM & HAMMER II, 1984

Acrylic on Canvas

Guarded by Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland,

© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 & The Estate of JeanMichel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar,
New York, Courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland

The joint work “Arm and Hammer II” was created in 1984. Warhol began with two reproduced logos of “Church & Dwight”, an American manufacturer of household consumer products. This logo was developed in the early 1960s and took up the traditional manner of depicting Vulcan with the motif of a muscular arm: The Roman god of fire, metalworking and the forge was frequently portrayed in visual arts as a blacksmith with a hammer. In the same way that “Church & Dwight” had appropriated this motif for marketing purposes, Warhol removed it from its customary context. Greatly enlarged, it perhaps symbolizes the strong influence of large corporations on American consumer culture. Basquiat responded to Warhol’s initial work by placing the black censured strip across the brand name of the left-hand logo. He covered the arm-and-hammer symbol in the center with the depiction of a black saxophonist. The musical instrument thrusts itself over the logo into the empty picture space, followed by large blue dots – a sign that the pulsating energy of Jazz would not be halted. The number “1955” alludes to the legendary Jazz musician Charlie Parker, who died in that year. In this manner Basquiat confronted his hero with Vulcan, effectively making them equals. Simultaneously, this juxtaposition can be read as criticism of the commercialization of Jazz.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/collaborations

GLENN, 1984 ( DETAIL )

FIVE FISH SPECIES 1983

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

Artworks: © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 & The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat,

Licensed by Artestar, New York.

GLENN, 1984

Acrylic, Oil Stick and Photocopy, Collage on Canvas

Private collection, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 & The Estate of
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, MOSES AND THE EGYPTIANS, 1982

Courtesy FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 2018 Photo by Erika Ede

SUBSTITUTE RELIGION

Basquiat was truly fascinated by all manner of books. He was also interested in biblical stories.

The very title of the piece “Moses and the Egyptians” addresses one of the best-known scenes from the Old Testament. The form of the twin rounded tops brings to mind the classic depiction of the stone tablets that Moses brought back down with him from Mount Sinai. Lines of text reference the Ten Plagues and the meeting between Moses and the Pharaoh, which occurred prior to the Israelites’ “Exodus from Egypt”. The religious context in this piece is not an isolated case; indeed, in his notebooks Basquiat additionally termed some of his poems “Prayers” or “Psalms”. This might be an expression of religiosity, but Basquiat also associated psalms and prayers in his notebooks with music and singing.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/an-open-book

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks: ©VG Bild-Kunst
Bonn, 2018 & The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Pablo Picasso was a great source of inspiration for Basquiat. Here he portrayed the Spanish artist in angular shapes, with a youthful face and wearing a red-and-white striped pullover. He painted the name “Pablo Picasso” in capitals seven times on the canvas. While the Spaniard’s face appears youthful, the red striped pullover evokes associations with the photos of Picasso as an old man – a reference to the artist’s long career. Picasso’s wild hair and facial features bear a certain similarity to Basquiat himself. Did the young black artist want to compare his own success with that of Picasso? The portrait can be seen as a kind of self-assertion by Basquiat and refers to the position he sought to occupy in an art world dominated by white artists.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/place-to-be

UNTITLED ( PABLO PICASSO ), 1984

Oil, Acrylic and Oil Stick on Metal

Private Collection, Italy,

Licensed by Artestar, New York

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

This painting with its numerous splashes and stains seems to have been realized quickly. Three simply sketched mask-like heads dominate the picture surface. Basquiat drew his inspiration for this work from many different sources: Next to the head on the left, the name “ARRON” is scribbled, which is repeated as “ARON” next to a crown in the center of the picture. In this we can see a reference to the legendary baseball player Hank Aaron, whom Basquiat so admired. Presumably, the artist was also alluding to the figure of Aaron from the Old Testament: Moses’ brother, who played an important role in freeing the Israelites from Egypt. The biblical reference is reinforced by there being three heads, which could be a symbol of the Trinity. In this context the “A” and “O” letters strewn here and there could be read as a reference to the famous verse from Revelations in the New Testament: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:13).

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED, 1981 ( DETAIL )

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED, 1981 ( DETAIL )

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED, 1981

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Rammellzee vs. K-Rob, produced and with cover artwork by

Jean Michel Basquiat, ‘Beat Bop’, 1983

Vinyl Record and Slip Cover

Collection of Jennifer Von Holstein, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York

BEBOP MEETS HIP-HOP

A defining music style in the 1980s in New York was Hip-Hop, which originated in African-American Funk and Soul music. Basquiat worked regularly as a DJ and was one of the early actors in the Hip-Hop movement. In 1983 he produced a Rap single with musicians Rammellzee and K-Rob: Not only was “Beat Bop” released under Basquiat’s own label “Tartown”, but he also designed the cover. The allusion to Bebop and its influence on the music scene of the time could not be clearer. Some 500 records were initially pressed, and today they are considered to be collector’s items amongst Hip-Hop LPs.

YOU MAY LISTEN MILES DAVIS & MARCUS MILLER ''SIESTA'' ALBUM

You May Visit Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Web Page to Explore

Jean Michel Basquiat's Individual Music Selection ....

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (ESTRELLA), 1985

Foto: Kent Pell. Courtesy Aquavella Galleries

This picture shows how Basquiat explored his fascination with Bebop in his own works. Several simply sketched record outlines with the word “DIAL” refer to Charlie Parker’s sessions at the eponymous record label between 1946 and 1947. The lists on the left-hand side of the work consist of titles from the famous Savoy Studio recordings of 1945, including “NOW’S THE TIME” and “THRIVING ON A RIFF”. There are also other musical references, for instance to Jazz drummer “MAX ROACH”, the record label “SAVOY” and the record speed “78”. The recurring expression “SO BE IT” may be a reference to the Blues song with that title by Dean Elliott, who composed the music for Basquiat’s favorite cartoon series “Tom and Jerry”.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, King Zulu, 1986, Acrylic, wax and felt-tip pen on canvas, MACBA Collection. Government of Catalonia long-term loan. Formerly Salvador Riera Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 & The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York, Photo: Gasull Fotografia

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/the-colors-of-jazz

UNTITLED ( CROWN ), 1982

Acrylic, Ink and Paper Collage on Paper

Private Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (CHARLES DARWIN), 1983

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

AN OPEN BOOK

Basquiat was an avid reader. The floor of his studio was strewn with books. Every visit to the Strand Bookstore on Broadway brought new additions to his extensive collection.

In particular, it was in encyclopedias and reference books that Basquiat found the raw material for his art. Like a sponge he soaked up the elements and symbols he found in the knowledge they contained. In “Untitled (Charles Darwin)” he processes scientific knowledge: the surface temperature of the sun, the theory developed by Charles Darwin on the evolutionary descent of the various species, and Gregor Mendel’s Laws of Heredity. Both scientists are represented in the portrait and surrounded by several sets of text that allude to their discoveries. Overall, the image resembles a mind map. It illustrates, through the many crossings out, Basquiat’s thought and work process. He repeatedly made references to the work of famous artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Titian or Leonardo.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/an-open-book

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT IN COLLABORATION WITH FAB 5 FREDDY, FUTURA,

KEITH HARING, ERIC HAZE, LA 2, TSENG KWONG CHI,

KENNY SCHARF UND WEITEREN KÜNSTLERN, UNTITLED, 1982

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: LEONARDO DA VINCI’S GREATEST HITS, 1982

© THE ESTATE OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK.
phOTO: BRUCE M. WHITE. COURTESY ACQUAVELLA GALLERIES

In the picture Basquiat assembles views of bodies that can also be found in Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific studies. The individual elements have a sketched quality. One piece of writing on the work reveals that the drawing was inspired by Leonardo's study of the bone of leg in man and horse. Other sets of text describe body fragments and comment on individual elements of the picture.

UNTITLED, 1980

Enamel, Spray Paint and Oil Stick on Enamelled Metal

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of an Anonymous Donor,

Paris & The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York,
Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

This work hung in P.S.1 right in front of the entrance to the main exhibition. It took up the show’s slogan as its central theme with its deliberately misspelt graffiti “

NEW YORK NEWAVE ”. Basquiat sprayed his work on a metal panel. The picture shows a passing car and a plane in the yellow sky – subjects that evoke acoustic associations and seem to transfer the noise and energy of a city into the gallery. The scribbled letters “A”and “O” – frequently employed by Basquiat – lend rhythm to the composition. Hovering alongside the airplane, they resemble a blanket bomb raining down on the car, possibly a reference to the air raids of World War II.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (ALICE IN WONDERLAND), 1983

©The Estate of Jean Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

IN WONDERLAND

Alice wanders through a world between reality and dream. Together with the surreal figures, the young girl hears incredible stories. The animated world served Basquiat as a source of inspiration and a projection surface for his own cosmos.

Basquiat’s drawing “Untitled (Alice in Wonderland)” shows various characters from the eponymous Japanese anime of 1983, e.g. the Cheshire Cat, the little blue Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter. The artist brings the figures from the illusionistic TV world into reality and assembles them again in a new context within his picture. He originally created each sectionon a separate fragment of paper, subsequently taping the various pieces together. The work illustrates a further aspect of his working method, namely recombining existing elements.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/the-screens

SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT is one of most important exhibition venues in Europe. Since opening in 1986, it has presented more than 200 exhibitions on around 2,000 m² of floor space and can boast a total of more than 8 million visitors. The SCHIRN focuses on art-historical and historico-cultural themes, discourses, and trends from a contemporary perspective. Its range of offers is multifaceted, international, and progressive; it attempts to open up new points of view and to break open traditional patterns of reception. The exhibitions are devoted in equal measure to contemporary stances in art and art of the modern era.

PLACE OF EXCITING DISCOVERIES

The SCHIRN strives to offer visitors an original, sensory exhibition experience and opportunities for active involvement with the works on display. This calls for modern and targeted education and communication measures geared toward all age groups, such as a permanent games and learning circuit, the MINISCHIRN, or the digitorial, an innovative way to prepare oneself for visiting an exhibition. For years, the SCHIRN has also been a pioneer in digital communication in the area of culture with its comprehensive SCHIRN MAGAZINE as well as with its multifaceted activities on all of the social media channels.

The SCHIRN pushes space- and time-related boundaries, time and again rethinks things, extends the exhibition space to include the Internet, and provides exhaustive WIFI and progressive digital communication offers free of charge. As one of the most outstanding art institutions in all of Europe, it has also been a constant in Frankfurt’s cultural life, a place were interested citizens, patrons and partners, young or established artists, committed friends, as well as people from throughout the world come together. The SCHIRN is not a temporary museum—not in terms of its content-related orientation, presentation design, or its art-historical approach. As an institution without a collection it is the SCHIRN's responsibility to develop well-founded suggestions from a contemporary perspective. This promotes a discourse that can be taken up again by museums.

The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT has presented major surveys dedicated to radical turn-of-the-century Austrian art, to pioneering artistic positions ranging from Expressionism and Dadaism to the Surrealist object art by Dalí and Man Ray, as well as dealt for the first time with female artists of the Impressionist movement. The world of bohemian life in Paris became visible in “Esprit Montmartre,” and “German Pop” demonstrated how surprising the specifically German version of Pop Art is. Light was also shed on sociohistorical and historico-cultural subjects such as “Shopping—A Century of Art and Consumer Culture,” “Privacy,” the visual art of the Stalin period, or New Romanticism in contemporary art; other presentations revealed the influence of Charles Darwin’s theories on art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or the intriguing causalities between artists of the modern era and self-proclaimed “prophets” of this period. Large-scale solo exhibitions dealt with the oeuvres of artists such as Carsten Nicolai, Odilon Redon, Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin-Kienholz, Edvard Munch, Jeff Koons, Gustave Courbet, Yoko Ono, Théodore Géricault, Philip Guston, and Helene Schjerfbeck. Jan De Cock, Jonathan Meese, John Bock, Mike Bouchet, Tobias Rehberger, and Doug Aitken developed new exhibitions especially for the SCHIRN.

http://www.schirn.de/en/m/schirn/

KIDS JUST LOVE THE CHILDREN’S ART CLUB

Co-hosted by the SCHIRN, Städel and Liebieghaus museums, the Children’s Art Club offers children and youngsters aged between 6 and 13 the chance to explore these museums, their exhibitions and not least their own artistic talents.

 For just 20 euros a year club members enjoy unlimited free admission to the SCHIRN and MINISCHIRN, the Städel and the Liebieghaus and can take part in all public events, such as children’s and family guided tours. In addition, the three museums will inform them in good time about important dates and exciting activities on offer. And four times each year, they get to take a peek behind the scenes at the SCHIRN, Städel and Liebieghaus, finding out how paintings are attached to the wall, where the lights are switched on, how artists go about their work, where the director’s office is located and how a sculpture is restored. Exclusive events and school sponsorships round out the program. Kindly sponsored by Fraport AG.

http://www.schirn.de/en/m/engagement/

SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

HISTORY AND FOUNDING

The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT was built at the edge of the historical path between the Römer and the cathedral that future emperors ceremoniously paced down on their way to their coronation in the Middle Ages. Butchers sold their goods here at open stands, so-called “schrannen” or “schirnen”, to which the SCHIRN owes its name. After World War II and the destruction of the historical city in center 1944, the ensemble had disappeared. The area lay fallow for nearly forty years until the SCHIRN complex, which was designed by the architects Bangert, Jansen, Scholz & Schultes, filled the vacant lot between the Römer and the cathedral. It is 140 meters long and only 10 meters wide and tall.

The foyer of the SCHIRN is characterized by luminous walls that immerse the space in alternating colors with the aid of RGB technology. Along with other modernization measures, this design was developed in 2002 in collaboration with the architectural office Kuehn Malvezzi in Berlin. The luminous walls and the exhibition lighting were converted to LED in 2016 subject to current climate protection requirements and thus meet the newest standards.

OPENING OF THE SCHIRN

The opening of the Kunsthalle coincided with a fertile period in terms of cultural policy. “Culture for everyone” was the motto of Hilmar Hoffmann, who had a formative influence on the city’s cultural life from 1970 to 1990 as its head of cultural affairs. The foundation of the Museumsufer and the SCHIRN was a result of his enthusiasm and creative drive. The latter was initiated for the purpose of also being able to present “major exhibitions” in Frankfurt. The SCHIRN’s founding director, Christoph Vitali, who served from 1986 to 1994, quickly understood to focus this vague purpose, which was as open to interpretation as it was malleable. From the very beginning, Vitali presented an extraordinary program radiating far beyond the city. From 1994 to 2001, Hellmut Seemann, Christoph Vitali’s successor, demonstrated how to maintain the Kunsthalle’s independence in an economically difficult situation.

STRIKE OUT IN NEW DIRECTIONS

Under the directorship of Max Hollein, the years after 2001 were marked by the development of a stringent profile for the SCHIRN. The program now came to center on nineteenth- and twentieth-century and contemporary art. The character of the presentation also changed, aimed at clearly distinguishing the Schirn’s range of offers from those of the museum. The Schirn’s exhibitions address a large public. The goal of being the region’s most popular institution in terms of attendance has repeatedly been more than achieved, and especially so in recent years. However, the SCHIRN’s success is not measured by visitor numbers alone, but likewise by its ambitious program and the resonance it leaves behind in the art world and in the public.

http://www.schirn.de/en/m/schirn/

SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT

JAZZ, BEBOP AND BASQUIAT

Entire series of reference works study which artist influenced whom and how, and conversely who was influenced by what thing or person(s). While English film composer John Powell responded to the question of whether he listened to other film music with a simple “Ooh God, no!”, others have a much more casual attitude when it comes to giving themselves over to foreign influences. Like Jean-Michel Basquiat: Music was one of his most important sources of inspiration. He is said to have had some 3,000 LPs in his record collection alone. In fact, friends relate that he constantly had music playing in his studio – and anyone who visits the exhibition “Basquiat. Boom for Real” at the SCHIRN will, before entering the exhibition rooms, have heard Jazz music and seen a film excerpt showing Basquiat dancing happily.

In countless of his works one can discern direct references attesting to Basquiat’s fascination for literature, the visual arts and science, inviting to trace the source of these influences. In several works explicit references can be found both to Jazz and famous musicians, which point to Basquiat’s intensive occupation with this new style of American music that emerged in the 20th century, and whose influence on subsequent music must not be underestimated.

THE ORIGINS OF JAZZ

The origins of Jazz date back to the end of the 19th and the early 20th century, when above all musicians in the south of the United States created a new type of music that drew on the Blues and Ragtime. With its special rhythmic and harmony elements Jazz is often seen as the American pendant to European classical music, although it cites both the European and African history of music. Similarly to Blues and Ragtime, Jazz music was largely played, defined and advanced by African-American musicians. New Orleans Jazz was followed by Dixieland Jazz, then in the 1920s by Swing, whose typical beat can be specifically traced back to African rhythm techniques. Louis Armstrong provided the definition when stating: “If you don’t feel it, you’ll never know it.”

It was through the dance music played by the large Swing orchestras of the 1930s and 1040s that Jazz finally came of age: Several musicians, amongst them Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk and Max Roach, who were bored with the ever identical sounds of swing music experimented with more sophisticated rhythms. The harmonies became more complex, there was greater emphasis on improvisation, the music ensembles became smaller. Bebop was born, the main basis for Modern Jazz.

BASQUIAT'S HEROES

While Jean-Michel Basquiat also hauled the heroes of the old Jazz onto his canvases like Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke as in his work “King Zulu”, the protagonists of Bebop feature repeatedly in his works. And although he asserted that Miles Davis was his favourite musician, there is another great artist cropping up again and again in his works: Charlie “Bird” Parker. The special relationship Basquiat had to Parker also emerges in a different context: In her book “Widow Basquiat” Jennifer Clement quotes the artist as saying he would go mad if he didn’t hear Parker’s music every day. At that time a whole crate full of Ross Russell’s biography on Charlie Parker “Bird lives!” stood in Basquiat’s studio, and he happily gave his friends copies.

It is also possible to draw interesting parallels between Modern Jazz, in the styles of Bebop, Hardbop, Modal Jazz und Free Jazz, and Basquiat’s preferred method: on the one hand, free improvisation and trying out new means of articulation starting with an existing song or melody structure and on the other the references to existing “facts”, as Basquiat called the inspiration he took from books and then placed in a new context. Or there was the conscious focus on the intellect: Bebop, which distanced itself clearly from the danceability of Swing and whose more complex harmonies demanded more careful listening, and no longer had anything in common with the “feeling” Armstrong believed Swing hinged on.

On the other hand, we have Basquiat’s collages and works with a heavy emphasis on text and symbols, works that can evidently never be completely deciphered and often place at their centre the head, separated from the body as a symbol for the reactionary. Or, as American author Greg Tate asserted: “He belongs to a black tradition, well established by our musicians, of making work that is heady enough to confound academics and hip enough to capture the attention span of the Hip-Hop nation.” Not least of all, one reason Basquiat felt so close to young Bebop musicians is that they were among the first Afro-Americans to also receive recognition and admiration from whites, even though this did not prevent them from being subject to constant racist discriminations or animosities, a situation he was also familiar with.

http://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/jazz_bebop_basquiat/

http://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/new_yorks_new_wave/

You may watch ‘’ Radiant Child ‘’ movie of Jean Michel Basquiat and reach more articles to read to click above link.

CABEZAS, 1982

Acrylic and Oil Stick on Canvas With Wooden Supports

Private collection, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

COLLABORATIONS

Basquiat collaborated closely with other artists. With this approach he took up the collective trends within the international art scene in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Artist Jennifer Stein got to know Basquiat in April 1979 at the Canal Zone party in the loft of British artist Stan Peskett. Basquiat and Stein quickly became friends and began, at Basquiat’s suggestion, to produce postcards together. They arranged four compositions on a sheet measuring 27.9 x 21.6 cm. Then they photocopied it multiple times, used a spray adhesive to stick the sheets onto card, and cut out the postcards for sale. The collages they created were inspired by the rough atmosphere of New York: street refuse, newspaper headlines, advertising and cigarette butts. Basquiat and Stein sold their postcards on the street for one dollar each. They often stood directly in front of the Museum of Modern Art, even though the security staff constantly chased them away. In 1979 they met Andy Warhol as he was eating lunch in the WPA restaurant in SoHo. Basquiat sold him one of his postcards depicting sunglasses. He later recalled that it had taken 15 minutes for him to summon up the courage to go in.

FRIENDS LIKE ANDY

Basquiat admired Andy Warhol. From 1983 the two were close friends and began a fruitful collaboration.

When the two artists met for the first time, Andy Warhol had long since been an icon of the international art scene – he was one of the founders of Pop Art. He took his motifs from everyday culture, the consumer world, and the mass media. In addition, from the 1960s Warhol constantly widened his repertoire and ignored traditional divides between the various disciplines. His spectrum ranged from painting, graphic art, drawing, photography, sculpture and film through to fashion, television, performance, theater, music, and literature.

On the initiative of art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, Basquiat visited his great idol on October 4, 1982 in the “Factory”, Warhol’s studio and meeting place for the artistic avant-garde. After the encounter Basquiat hurried back to his own studio and painted the double portrait “Dos Cabezas”. It depicts the two artists’ heads with an ironizing similarity – Warhol with the disheveled wig, and Basquiat with shaggy dreadlocks. Simultaneously, the young artist expresses his desire to be on a level with his role model. He had the work sent over to Andy Warhol that same afternoon before it had even dried.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/collaborations

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

KING ZULU, 1986,

Acrylic, Wax and Felt-Tip Pen on Canvas

MACBA Collection. Government of Catalonia Long-Term Loan.
Formerly Salvador Riera Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Licensed by Artestar, New York, Photo: Gasull Fotografia

Seven elements hover against a blue background. On the left we see a trombone player. In the center is a mask labeled “KING ZULU”, and below it a large ornate “G” and the information “5542-A”. To the right we can make out a trumpeter, a small saxophone player and an elegant male figure wearing a hat. The final element is easily overlooked: Basquiat first painted the sentence “DO NOT STAND / IN FRONT OF / THE ORCHESTRA” on the canvas and then painted over it in blue. However, this sentence is crucial to understanding the painting. The mask refers to American Jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong riding on a float as “King of Zulu” during the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans in 1949. The letter “G” is the logo of record label Gennett Records, which was hugely instrumental in disseminating Jazz music. In the seated trumpeter the artist has combined the figure of two black musicians: the body of Bunk Johnson and the head of Howard McGhee. The number “5542-A” by contrast refers to the record “Sensation” by the American Jazz band “Wolverine Orchestra”. If the key to the painting lies in the inscription painted over in blue, then the section that is not painted over can be read as calling on the viewer to look below the picture’s “surface” and embark on his own investigation of the history of American Jazz music.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, SELF-PORTRAIT, 1981

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Basquiat reduced this double self-portrait to the silhouettes of two black heads, both sporting dreadlocks. He used bright red oil stick to outline the mouth and eyes of the left head. By contrast, the mouth is missing altogether on the head on the right. This self-portrait poses many questions. Does it show a split personality searching for himself? While the name of tenor saxophone player Ben Webster can be seen several times on the left side of the picture, on the right side Basquiat placed song titles by composer and pianist Thelonious Monk. These elements provide the key to understanding the self-portrait: Basquiat placed himself alongside his heroes from the music world, but simultaneously alluded to the poor recognition given to African-American artists.

Basquiat painted this football helmet with white and blue paint and stuck his own hair on it. He may have been inspired by the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. The French artist declared everyday objects to be artworks after making minor changes to them or simply placing them on a pedestal. In doing so, he offered up for discussion mass-produced items as readymades, and opened up completely new ways of understanding art. Duchamp’s influence on the post-1945 generation of artists was ubiquitous. Basquiat created a series of football helmets which he wore as performance props and which simultaneously referenced his interest in the history of famous black athletes. On one of the helmets Basquiat wrote the name “AARON” – a reference to baseball player Hank Aaron, as made previously in “Untitled, 1981”.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/place-to-be

UNTITLED, 1982

Acrylic and Oil on Linen

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York,

Courtesy Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Foto: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam

THE COLORS OF JAZZ

There are numerous references in Basquiat’s oeuvre to his comprehensive Jazz and Blues collection. The artist owned over 3,000 records and even swapped his own works for rare vinyl pressings. It was also his custom to listen to loud music and dance while he painted.

In his paintings Basquiat frequently addressed the history of black Jazz musicians, such as his idol Charlie Parker. He greatly admired the musician’s biography “Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie ‘Yard bird’ Parker” (1973) by Ross Russell, and even kept several copies of it in a box in his studio to give to friends.

Parker’s musical style was trailblazing for the development of Bebop, which replaced Swing as the main style in the early 1940s and was the foundation for modern Jazz. With Bebop, Jazz increasingly morphed from light music to an art form. Moreover, Bebop put the spotlight clearly on black musicians, who played brilliantly even though they had no musical training – for the self-taught Basquiat surely an interesting aspect.

Typically, the fundamental elements of Bebop are considered to be greater rhythmic freedom for drums and bass, as well as a quick tempo. However, it was the so-called cutting contests that really set it apart. One of the musicians would improvise a solo and another musician would respond to it. Such exchanges were either of a competitive nature or took the form of a dialog.

Among those who frequented New York clubs to listen to the musical experiments of Bebop were representatives of Abstract Expressionism such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. The defining elements of this art genre, emotion, spontaneity and free expression, had a lot in common with the transient and spontaneous improvisations of Bebop music. It also had a far-reaching influence on the poets of the Beat generation. The musical liberty of Bebop and the “speed” of modern life inspired representatives of this literary genre to experiment with language and style.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/the-colors-of-jazz

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (FOOTBALL HELMET), CA. 1981–84

BASQUIAT. BOOM FOR REAL, EXHIBITION VIEW,

© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2018, Photo: Norbert Miguletz, Artworks:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2018 &
The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York.

A PANEL OF EXPERTS, 1982

Acrylic, Oil Stick and Paper Collage on Canvas with Exposed Wooden Supports & Twine

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Gift of Ira Young,

Licensed by Artestar, New York,

A PANEL OF EXPERTS, 1982 ( DETAIL )

SELF – PORTRAIT, 1983

Oil on Paper and Wood

The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Courtesy Collection Thaddaeus Ropac, London

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT IN COLLABORATION WITH FAB 5 FREDDY, FUTURA 2000,
KEITH HARING, ERIC HAZE, LA2, TSENG KWONG CHI,
KENNY SCHARF UND WEITEREN KÜNSTLERN, UNTITLED (FUN FRIDGE), 1982

Painted everyday items repeatedly crop up in Basquiat’s oeuvre, such as refrigerators, shelves, stools and tables. He produced “Fun Fridge” in 1982. Originally it belonged to the Fun Gallery, which was opened in 1981 by Bill Stelling and actress Patti Astor. The refrigerator bears the signatures of artists from the graffiti, Hip-Hop and downtown scene. Basquiat can be identified as SAMO©, while Patti Astor stylized her name with a star. We also find depictions of figures from popular children’s shows. Another joint product of this cooperation was the impressive blue vase bearing a series of drawings and lettering.

http://www.schirn.de/basquiat/digitorial/en/place-to-be

YOU MAY LISTEN MILES DAVIS ''SOLEA'' ALBUM BY SKETCHES OF SPAIN

You May Visit Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Web Page to Explore

Jean Michel Basquiat's Individual Music Selection ....

THE FASCINATION OF UNKNOWN

WHAT LINKS JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, ALIAS SAMO©, AND BANKSY? SCHIRN MAG ON THE TRAIL OF STREET ART IN NEW YORK AND LONDON. ( DECEMBER 2017 )

BY MARTHE LISSON

Jean-Michel Basquiat – or rather his oeuvre – is currently on display in London’s Barbican Centre before coming to the SCHIRN in February 2018. His images are hugely influenced by the graffiti aesthetic, which is hardly surprising given that he started out with his Writings in the New York of the 1970s, where graffiti was as much a part of the city as the empty municipal coffers. Nevertheless, Basquiat did not produce complex (text-)images like Lee, Futura2000, Fab5Freddy and other greats of that time. His were plainly design aphorisms.

During the early 1980s graffiti spread from New York City across the world, and now street art (graffiti is a form of street art) is more popular than ever. Book stores stock volumes about street art alongside monographs of Van Gogh and Monet. Similarly, street photography is now afforded the same significance as Brassai and Bresson. We harbor a yearning for what is raw, supposedly authentic – we want street credibility, in contrast to that which is dictated by powerful institutions and media channels. And – something that has not changed since Basquiat’s time – we also want a touch of the mysterious.

ANARCHY AND REBELLION

One of the most popular, fascinating and mysterious street artists of recent years is Banksy. His Pieces and Writings have made headlines not only in London, but all over the world. To this day, it is still not certain who is behind the pseudonym Banksy, and that makes him – anonymously – and his works even more popular. After all, in the age of iPhones, etc., surreptitiously hanging one’s own work in the Tate Gallery, as Banksy did in 2003, has a touch of anarchy and rebellion. But a background in graffiti is not the only thing that links Banksy and Basquiat.

In the late 1970s Basquiat teamed up with his friend Al Diaz, and from 1977 they started working under the pseudonym SAMO© (a wordplay on ‘same old shit’), spray-painting aphorisms on the walls of SoHo and the Lower East Side. These were tough times for the city: New York itself was on the brink of ruin and US President Gerald Ford refused to provide state aid to save the city from bankruptcy. The crime rate had doubled.

THE SPRAY CAN AS A KIND OF WEAPON

Buildings burned nightly in the Bronx, set alight by their owners who were no longer able to let or maintain them. New York was full of graffiti – there was barely a train that was not coated in color. Primarily these were Writings, whereby the text functiones as the central motif of the picture, and often it would be the artist’s own name or pseudonym that was spray-painted as artfully as possible. Many graffiti artists saw the spray can as a kind of weapon. With their Pieces, they were able to draw attention to themselves without standing directly in the limelight as a person. Their images represented them in the public sphere. Artists like Lee then developed their Writings further, away from the narcissistic spraying of their own names, tackling political themes instead.

In this chaotic, graffiti-covered city, the aphorisms of Basquiat and Al Diaz appeared reduced and minimalistic, and thus touched a nerve. SAMO© became a sensation. The tone of SAMO© was different, incorporating witty statements: SAMO© AS AN END 2 THE NEON FANTASY CALLED ‘LIFE’ or ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TIME, HYPER COOL, ANOTHER WAY 2 ------------. The curiosity surrounding SAMO© eventually become so great that on September 21, 1978, the SoHo Weekly News launched an appeal for the artist to make himself known.

SAMO© IS DEAD

In the newspaper The Village Voice, which resonated far beyond Greenwich Village, the author Philip Faflick wrote about SAMO©, saying that New York had stopped paying any attention to its walls until something new had appeared that fall. This article also revealed the identities of the two artists Jean and Al. The collaboration between Jean and Al fell apart shortly afterwards, Keith Haring gave a eulogy in Club 57, and SAMO© IS DEAD appeared on the walls of SoHo in the aftermath.

Undoubtedly it is not only since Basquiat and SAMO© that people have been captivated by the anonymous, the unknown and the mysterious. These days it is particularly fascinating, since it is far from easy to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, Banksy has managed it very well for years; a master of this very art of anonymity. He is the internationally popular street art artist of recent years, and that is undoubtedly not only down to his creativity, but also because his identity has still not been revealed. He became known for his black-and-white Stencils (graffiti spray-painted with the help of a stencil), primarily in London and Bristol. Over the last few years, however, Australia, Germany, the USA and many other countries have also got “their” Banksy.

AN (UNOFFICIAL) COLLABORATION

After a new work of Banksy graffiti appeared in Dover in May (the EU flag, from which a worker is chiseling out a star), Banksy returned to London in September with two works – in time for the opening of the Basquiat exhibition. Both works are painted directly on the external walls of the Barbican Centre itself which, according to Banksy’s Instagram account, has always been careful to remove graffiti immediately.

The first, smaller piece of graffiti shows a Ferris wheel on which the seats or cars are replaced by the crowns that Basquiat so frequently painted. Underneath the wheel people stand in line waiting for a ride – a little sideswipe at the exhibition, perhaps? The second, life-size picture is based on one of Basquiat’s best-known paintings, “Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump”. Banksy has the figure searched by the city’s police and labels the work as a portrait of Basquiat. Perhaps it’s a critical comment on the fact that Basquiat was the first black artist in an art market otherwise dominated by whites and that black people are still far more frequently victims of police discrimination and violence – subjects that Basquiat tackled in many of his works.

The motifs of Banksy’s street art are easy to understand, and the social criticism or criticism of current politics is often bold. This is another element of his popularity, as his works are not cryptic. Banksy is there for all to see, and has something in his creative bag of tricks for everyone. His approach is a stroke of genius, since regardless of whether his works are big or small, he has still never been seen creating them in the public space. Everything immediately finds its way onto YouTube and Facebook, but not Banksy. This leads time and again to speculation that Banksy is not acting alone and perhaps even has an entire workshop. Maintaining anonymity was undoubtedly easier for Jean and Al.

The SAMO© aphorisms have long since disappeared from the walls of New York, but they are not forgotten, since the avant-garde artist Henry Flynt promptly began documenting them. Many of these photographs, which number 57 in total, feature in the exhibition Basquiat. Boom for Real. Although they are considerably younger, most of Banksy’s London works have largely disappeared already too. Transience is the fate of street art. There are still 15 Banksys to be seen, however, and a map shows exactly where. And anyone wanting to experience more of the “Banksy spirit” can now add the “Walled Off Hotel” in Bethlehem to their itinerary.

http://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/basquiat_banksy_the_fascination_of_the_unknown/

NEW YORK’S NEW WAVE

Jean-Michel Basquiat and the curator Diego Cortez met for the first time at the Mudd Club in Downtown Manhattan in 1979. Two years later, Cortez curated the group exhibition New York/New Wave at the city’s P.S.1. The opening night saw the writing of art history: The exhibition was a blockbuster success and opened up the New York art scene to the then 20-year-old Basquiat. In its exhibition Basquiat. Boom for Real, the SCHIRN has reconstructed the arrangement of the works from that time, true to the original.

Long Island City, Queens, 1981. On February 15 the P.S.1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. – now the MoMA PS1 directed by Klaus Biesenbach – launched the group exhibition New York/New Wave, curated by Diego Cortez. The large rooms were full of people, the rush of visitors overwhelming, as people waited in line for two blocks to see Cortez’s portrait of the underground art and post-Punk scene of New York City. The exhibition drew more than 100 established and less established artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers from the No Wave scene, including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Nan Goldin, now well-known greats in the art world. It also included Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was then just 20 years old.

A FASCINATING PORTRAIT OF NEW YORK CITY’S POST-PUNK PERIOD

The walls were hung from ceiling to floor with works. Different media and styles hung side by side, photography alongside graffiti, alongside drawings, alongside objects. Basquiat was the sole artist to be prominently presented with paintings. His works adorned the final exhibition room and captivated the New York public with their new visual language.

The New Wave, the experimental downtown culture of Manhattan, a symbiosis of music, film, performance and art, reflected the pulse of the time, charging Cortez’s exhibition with energy. The avant-garde movement was formed of a group of creative, rebellious and self-taught artists – qualities that Basquiat was also happy to use in describing himself. The interest in this frenetic and socially critical art of the mid-1970s and early 1980s spilled over from the streets into the galleries of New York.

DIEGO CORTEZ AND JEAN-MICHELS BASQUIATS FIRST ENCOUNTER:

ON THE DANCE FLOOR OF THE MUDD CLUB

It was a time of rebellion, of experimentation and of artistic freedom. New York may have been heading for bankruptcy, but the underground scene didn’t let this spoil the mood. On the contrary: From this dearth it drew a creative energy that captivated Diego Cortez, too. At that time the young curator was spending a lot of time among the circles of No Wave filmmakers and musicians, such as John Lurie, Scott and Beth B and Lydia Lunch. As a co-founder of the Mudd Club, which was originally intended as a Punk club but whose rooms later served as exhibition spaces and gallery areas for artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Cortez met Basquiat on the dance floor in 1979.

Fascinated by his SAMO© works and convinced by his talent, he encouraged the penniless young man, who was already popular within the scene, to paint and draw, to create works of art and sell them. This gave Basquiat money to then be able to afford the materials he needed. Cortez’s idea for his popular group exhibition goes back to another exhibition, "The Times Square Show" in June 1980, which earned gushing praise on the title page of the Village Voice as “the first radical art show of the eighties.” Inspired by the success of the Punk portrait show, in which Basquiat had taken part along with Keith Haring, among others, the curator decided to organize his own exhibition entitled New York/New Wave.

ALWAYS WHITE WALLS WITH WHITE PEOPLE DRINKING WHITE WINE

In the documentary "The Radiant Child" made by Basquiat’s former girlfriend Tamra Davis in 2010, Cortez explains his interest in the show, saying he was tired of seeing white walls with white people drinking white wine. Inspired by the idea and reliant on the money, Basquiat prepared for New York/New Wave by producing more than 20 drawings and paintings in a very short space of time, using a wide variety of surfaces: metal, rubber, paper, canvas and wood. He made the entire exhibition space his own, using the full height and breadth of the exhibition walls and positioning his 23 works in a syncopal rhythm, with the aim of challenging visitors’ viewing habits and sharpening their sense for something new.

In the same breath, Basquiat also created the promotional signs for the exhibition. These included the prominent Jimmy Best and the graffiti “NEW YORK NEWAVE” sprayed onto a metal plate, which hung in the corridor close to the exhibition entrance. He not only replaced the poster advertising, but ultimately even advanced to the point of being the defining statement and trademark of the event.

AN EXPLOSIVE SUCCESS WITH RESONANCE

During the exhibition period, one after another gallery owners and collectors like Annina Nosei, Emilio Mazzoli and Bruno Bischofberger became aware of the young Jean-Michel Basquiat, as the news spread like wildfire. At the time Nosei, a gallery owner, was known for representing international contemporary artists like Francesco Clemente, David Salle and Sandro Chia. She signed a contract with Basquiat, donating not only paint and canvases, but also providing the artist with the cellar of her gallery at 100 Prince Street in SoHo so he could use it as a studio.

In 1982, in his first US solo exhibition at the Annina Nosei Gallery, Basquiat’s works sold out in one night. This was followed shortly afterwards by a successful solo exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, West Hollywood, as well as the ARTFORUM cover story The Radiant Child by writer and art critic Rene Ricard. It was from that point that Basquiat’s career really took off. A year later the painter went down in history as the youngest participating artist in Documenta 7, and during the course of his life he became a cult figure.

http://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/new_yorks_new_wave/

You may watch ‘’ Radiant Child ‘’ movie of Jean Michel Basquiat and reach more articles to read to click above link.

I may work as a freelance Architect. I graduated Yıldız Technical University Istanbul, Turkey. I prepare all the presantation by myself. This blog is my magical attic. Blog include that I already collected and will collect time by time past to future. Some of them influence me with their story , other fascinate me charm of colour, some is bents me differ of design. Some of them come into my life all the fascinating contex together that fuse different concept with there imagination and presantation. They all take part enjoyable place in my memory library to be as metaphor. Some of them I already forgot but when I seen them that make me in good spirits. Other is unforgettable. Some of them connect before to now that make to come new people in our life with new stories. Dream and reality fuses in life. All of them take part in this blog that I love.
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May 07, 2018

BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL AT SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT