• Saturday, March 16, 2013

    Major Basquiat Works at Gagosian, New York




    The Basquiat exhibition which opened last night at Gagosian gallery, is a large and impressive collection of the artist's paintings.

    Such an assemblage of works is what you would expect at a museum, not a gallery. Not since the Brooklyn Museum retrospective of 2005 have we seen such a huge number of his works in the New York area. There are canvases from throughout Basquiat's brief career, from one of the artist’s first paintings on canvas -- the Untitled (Car Crash)from 1980 -- to Riding with Death, painted in 1988, the year of his own death.

    I made a quick count of 62 works (mostly large paintings) distributed through the large, multi-room, Gagosian gallery at West 24th Street.

    Last night a long line snaked down the cold street of people waiting to get in. The crowd in the gallery mixed usual art world types, people who had been friends of the artist or loosely in Basquiat's cohort, and many younger fans of his art, which continues to be extremely popular to many starting to learn about modern painting. There were also more black faces than typically seen in Chelsea galleries -- I hope the word continues to spread outside the usual circles. 


    The gallery did a great job of assembling these works from private and a few public collections (there were many key works from the Stephanie and Peter Brandt Foundation collection in Greenwich Connecticut, and from the Broad Art Foundation in Santa Monica). There were many famous, iconic works by the artist, and some that are rarely displayed or reproduced. Anyone interested in his work will find it a breathtaking show, and those unfamiliar with his work will get the chance to see a range of styles and periods, and experience the physical presence and textural interest that can not be found looking at reproductions.

    That said, the show appeared to me assembled, rather than curated.

    The distribution of the work did not follow the conventional chronological presentation. This can sometimes be useful, bringing up fresher ways of seeing the work. But neither did the rooms seem to be divided by style, medium, theme, or even size. Unlike the lay out of his 2010 retrospective in Paris (or the Brooklyn Museum retrospective in 2005) I was not struck by insightful juxtapositions or illuminating placements of the work. Of course, it is unfair to compare a gallery show to what can be done at a large museum. But it is hard to review the exhibition itself (rather than the very different task of using the occasion to review Basquiat the painter), as there did not seem to be any particular art historical take on the artist being presented here. The bulk of the work was from 1981 and 1982 - the period most prized by collectors. And despite the mix of work, the exhibition seemed to favor bold, expressionist painting of human figures. 
    The two large oilstick on paper drawings were hung in a corridor, and there were no black and white or small drawings, and none of the painted sculpture. By default the show appeared to be saying Basquiat was a prolific and major painter who gregariously produced going back and forth between a mix of styles.

    This is true, but a better understanding of the artist’s approach could have been brought across by highlighting some of the distinct looks and techniques he repeatedly used, and often moved through. There were some good examples of these major stylistic approaches, but they were mixed in to appear like individual examples of an impulsive and mercurial genius.

    One exception was a row of three adjacent 1983 paintings of black boxers, all large canvases mounted on used industrial wooden pallets. These included two of the simple oilstick on monochrome works (Sugar Ray Robinson and Jersey Joe Walcott), supplemented by the more complicated Cassius Clay. The juxtaposition was impressive, and illuminating. 


    In addition to boxers, Basquiat had a longer-term and even more varied use of jazz musicians as subjects in his work. Basquiat was a huge fan of jazz, especially of the be-bop era. He used both the sports figures and the jazz musicians in his work as historical examples of high-points of Black history, as examples of how Black genius was exploited and oppressed by a white power structure, and as analogies to Basquiat's own position as a Black artist in a white art world. His artistic references to jazz were represented here by three works, distributed throughout the show: Discography IINow's The Time (see below), and 
    the excellent 1983 tryptich Horn Players (from the Broad collection in LA), depicting Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

    Basquiat was an uneven artist, but not even the museum retrospectives want to delve into criticism and differentiation of his body of work, so one would certainly not expect that here. What drove Basquiat to be a great artist, his compulsive constant drawing and producing, also led to a prodigious production of painting which to my mind could have used a little more editing – especially the many neo-expressionist paintings of human figures. Basquiat was part of the 80s neo-expressionist wave, with all its problems and contradictions, but he also came to it from a unique place, and often rose way beyond its typical aspects. 


    Basquiat always had a great sense of line, both as the trace of thought processes and as a physical mark on paper. Basquiat’s use, and re-use, of drawing is very important to his process and incorporation of written language and visual sources. In order to produce a major and impressive exhibition
    , small scale drawing was not included here. An attempt at an exhibition of blockbusters was certainly impressive (and will help in bringing in the big bucks for whatever pieces may be on the resale market) but not the best way to understand Basquiat as an artist.

    I also happen to be a huge fan of Basquiat’s painted three dimensional wooden constructions, especially the free standing ones. None were included here. But perhaps a separate, smaller, exhibition of “the sculpture of Jean-Michel Basquiat” is needed.

    The majority of the works here were painting on canvas, but there were many major works showing the variety of supports he used. These included the boxer paintings on pallets mention above, and several canvases with the crossed wooden supports exposed at the corners that he did when assisted by Stephen Torton; an untitled painting on a door; the immense stretched cotton drop cloth of Eyes and Eggs (first shown in Gagosian’s LA gallery, 1983, and now in the Broad Collection); and the huge roughly cut round wood Now’s the Time, a 1985 painting of a jazz record (from the Brant Foundation collection). 




    Two of his fascinating long, horizontal, multi-panel works with hinges were also included, in different rooms:Frogmen, 1983,  and Brother’s Sausages,  both of 1983. When you look at the mix of motifs, painted over sections, and 
    jumbled re-ordering of canvases in these works you can sense the playful yet serious mood of their creation, invoking Rauschenberg, Burroughs and Gysin’s “cut-up” theories, and a blithe “whatever” approach.In one smaller room, pride of place was rightly given to one of Basquiat’s masterful African-influenced “griot”-type works done in the mid 80s on slatted wood, like a fence turned sideways to a portrait aspect. This one (titled M,from 1984) was dressed in a royal blue, and seemed to me to be portraying a women, rather than the usual male figure.Other highlights included the large beautiful but unsettling 1982 Untitled (Two Heads on Gold); the complex diptych and predella painting In Italian (1983); and Obnoxious Liberals (also from the Broad collection), a major 1982 painting of a slave auction on which Basquiat had scrawled “NOT FOR SALE” in white oilstick.

    I have included links to existing images of works mentioned above for reference only (all images of Basquiat works are copyright © The Estate of Jean-­‐Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris; ARS, New York, 2013), but there is no comparison to seeing the actual works. 


    The exhibition will be on view at the Gagosian gallery at 255 W 24th St. until April 6th. 

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