is anyone wanna thinks about that Jean-Michel Basquiat?

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I just cropped it like that because I like the shape of the navy patch way better as something to hang the painting on. Does anyone know if he only ever painted on rectangular canvases?

plax (I know, right?), Thursday, 17 September 2009 22:43 (fourteen years ago) link

xp - will try and remember to ask my better half about that ... he would be likely to know.

new clusterfuck thread will eventually provide me a funny display name (sarahel), Thursday, 17 September 2009 22:49 (fourteen years ago) link

julian schnabels paintings are completely irredeemable.

plax (I know, right?), Thursday, 17 September 2009 22:54 (fourteen years ago) link

but... how do you guys tell what he's trying to do? The only thing I can suss from the oreja painting is there's an ear there which is emphasized with "oreja" written in the same color, and a lightning bolt in a ballot check box next to a game of hangman? So he's telling us to "listen and vote together or we will hang separately"? From the article posted above, the crown is a signature, so is maybe not part of the painting proper? How do you begin to identify compositional mistakes if the purpose is unclear? When Lars looks at his painting, he's got this expression like he's figured it out. smug bastard!

Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 September 2009 23:14 (fourteen years ago) link

xp - me and the bf like making fun of how awful schnabel is. He's really v cute when he rants about Schnabel.

new clusterfuck thread will eventually provide me a funny display name (sarahel), Thursday, 17 September 2009 23:17 (fourteen years ago) link

why identify compositional mistakes from a composer who never went to composin' schoolz? i mean what's the point? jean-michel is tactile not cerebral. sure he's high as a kite and thinkin about some shit, but imo he's about anger/raw emotion and very anti-art. so trying to analyze it through the art canon gets nowhere. his "drawings" were lists of wordz someone said er wrote.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Thursday, 17 September 2009 23:32 (fourteen years ago) link

why identify compositional mistakes from a composer who never went to composin' schoolz? i mean what's the point?

because he was an artist and made art, and composition is a part of art? It's like if you were to be a self-taught engineer and make your own hot-dog cooking device. People would still evaluate it like a professionally designed hot-dog cooking device. Does it cook the hot dogs effectively? Do the hot dogs look appetizing after cooking them with your device?

so trying to analyze it through the art canon gets nowhere

How dare you analyze a painting by comparing it to other paintings?

new clusterfuck thread will eventually provide me a funny display name (sarahel), Friday, 18 September 2009 00:14 (fourteen years ago) link

good point. but what i think i was trying to get across was that criticism through formalist art theory somehow dilutes the emotional content (or potential for emotional connection) that is there. if people get stuck on the fact that mr basquiat "is pretty bad at using the edge of the picture plane" then are they getting the intense horror and paranoia? painting as a form for getting across raw emotion gives no thought to the edge of the picture plane.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, 18 September 2009 00:30 (fourteen years ago) link

but as a viewer, "the edge of the picture plane" could be a hindrance to that emotional connection or the effectiveness of the communication of the intense horror and paranoia, etc.

new clusterfuck thread will eventually provide me a funny display name (sarahel), Friday, 18 September 2009 00:33 (fourteen years ago) link

"effectiveness of the communication of the intense horror and paranoia"

I'll vouch for this because it did not communicate horror and paranoia to me. Was it supposed to?

Philip Nunez, Friday, 18 September 2009 00:45 (fourteen years ago) link

man, rene ricard needed an editor. like, an actual one. not just the dude on the artforum masthead at the time.

strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, 18 September 2009 00:54 (fourteen years ago) link

also, basquiat's focus on gesture is inherently formalist, its more about the staging or deployment of the imagery than the imagery itself. I mean, a lot of it looks A LOT like Pollock circa '82, esp with the numbers and stuff. One of the things I really appreciate about Basquiat is that he seems to be consciously restaging and expanding and playing with early Pollock, and I find him to be an extremely reverent painter (god this violent brushwork and african mask stuff is kinda Picasso too, I think one of the only signs that he didn't go to art school are that his references are extremely canonical and obviously signposted within the work)

plax (I know, right?), Friday, 18 September 2009 21:05 (fourteen years ago) link

why identify compositional mistakes from a composer who never went to composin' schoolz? i mean what's the point? jean-michel is tactile not cerebral. sure he's high as a kite and thinkin about some shit, but imo he's about anger/raw emotion and very anti-art. so trying to analyze it through the art canon gets nowhere. his "drawings" were lists of wordz someone said er wrote.

― Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, September 18, 2009 12:32 AM (21 hours ago)

also, basically all art is reactionary and anti-art, I mean is this more anti-art than the conceptual art of the previous decade? It's still fairly traditional oil-based painting and I would say fairly conservative at that.

plax (I know, right?), Friday, 18 September 2009 21:09 (fourteen years ago) link

plax are you talking about jackson pollock? he was very dead in '82. and mr basquiat has been referred to as "the black picasso." and yea i suppose anytime you got canvas and paint that's pretty quintessential "art."

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, 18 September 2009 21:57 (fourteen years ago) link

i mean he was "neo-expressionist" which is to say that he was trying to express something. what i get from many of his paintings is very frightening. however i suppose that is a general response i have to stuff.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, 18 September 2009 21:59 (fourteen years ago) link

http://images.artnet.com/aoa_lot_images/15168/0_527_550.jpg
this one is currently bidding $9500

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, 18 September 2009 22:11 (fourteen years ago) link

didn't know he was in club 27, too

xuxa pitts (donna rouge), Friday, 18 September 2009 22:44 (fourteen years ago) link

plax are you talking about jackson pollock? he was very dead in '82. and mr basquiat has been referred to as "the black picasso." and yea i suppose anytime you got canvas and paint that's pretty quintessential "art."

― Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Friday, September 18, 2009 10:57 PM (Yesterday

haha, I meant circa '42!

http://www.earlham.edu/~vanbma/20th%20century/images/pollock%20male%20and%20female%201942.bmp

Male and Female invented Basquiat!

plax (I know, right?), Saturday, 19 September 2009 01:04 (fourteen years ago) link

also, jazz as a synonym for "black" and "messy" is borderline offensive.

plax (I know, right?), Saturday, 19 September 2009 01:13 (fourteen years ago) link

yo plax male and female invented all of us dinit? but those are numbaz and not wordz, eh? that's kinda what facinates me about mr basquiat's oeuvre is the directness of connotation that the words provide coupled with the images.

"also, jazz as a synonym for "black" and "messy" is borderline offensive."
huh?

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Saturday, 19 September 2009 01:30 (fourteen years ago) link

hey sorry, just one of the links you had starts going on about jazz which is what white ppl start saying when black ppl make messy paintings

plax (I know, right?), Saturday, 19 September 2009 01:32 (fourteen years ago) link

and it seems like jean-michel basquiat was one of the first black ppl to make paintings that were taken seriously by the ivory tower. also i saw some youtube where mr basquiat was painting and there was jazz in the background.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Saturday, 19 September 2009 02:11 (fourteen years ago) link

and it seems like jean-michel basquiat was one of the first black ppl to make paintings that were taken seriously by the ivory tower.

uh, not really:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/c/czalau28/Bearden.jpg

my display name is an honor student at ilx high school (sarahel), Saturday, 19 September 2009 02:14 (fourteen years ago) link

what the sarahel? no seriously; good point. i did say seems cuz i dint fact check. good goddamn tho thanks cuz i consider myself a collage-ist. and that's also where the fascination lies: taking direct examples of what one would like to be the image and using it as the image or abstraction of what the image is supposed to represent. you know, like in picasso's famous use of the chair caning:

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/CG11/2005/Group024/Picasso-Still_Life_with_Chair-Caning-synthetic_cubism.jpg

the story goes he couldn't draw it very well so he just found a chair and used the actual caning.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Saturday, 19 September 2009 02:26 (fourteen years ago) link

I'm overdue for a re-evaluation of the man and his work, now that I am no longer an adoring 17 year old. Although on a purely aesthetic level, I can't deny they are very beautiful looking.

I like that when Julian Schnabel's bio movie came out, somebody reviewed it as 'worst living artist makes movie about worst dead artist'.
While I don't necessarily agree with it, this still made me laugh.

EDB, Saturday, 19 September 2009 04:59 (fourteen years ago) link

http://www.graigcortelyou.com/basquait/images/gwalkinga.jpg

riding with death

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Sunday, 20 September 2009 17:25 (fourteen years ago) link

I like that one

yo gotti gotti! (Curt1s Stephens), Sunday, 20 September 2009 17:38 (fourteen years ago) link

beat bop

produced by basquiat? fo sho: the cover art was.

Don't hag me with your false green. (jdchurchill), Monday, 21 September 2009 22:20 (fourteen years ago) link

ten months pass...

Saw this:
http://www.filmforum.org/films/basquiat.html

I can't say it's a great film but I have a feeling it would be very hard to make an uninteresting film about him since he was just so damned charismatic and interesting.

Definitely too worshipful, too fast and tries to cram in too many different narratives of his life, but worth seeing anyway. I definitely came away with more appreciation and understanding of his work. I think like a lot of people I went through a phase where I liked Basquiat because I thought he was cool and then another phase where I disliked his work because I thought I was too sophisticated for it. I came away thinking that Van Gogh actually is a good figure for comparison, at least in terms of the way I view Van Gogh -- an enormously talented and skilled painter with a singular style that doesn't quite represent any particular movement of his time, with enormous popular appeal and a tendency to overdo things.

uNi-tArDs (Hurting 2), Monday, 26 July 2010 12:34 (thirteen years ago) link

Thanks Hurting, been looking forward to this.

disastrous sixth series (MaresNest), Monday, 26 July 2010 20:07 (thirteen years ago) link

yea was listening to npr and they interviewed tamra davis, would go see or rent or netflix that mofo
confused abt the name 'the radiant child' wasn't that keith haring's thing?

mysticalsitarsnsnakesflyingaroundonArjuna'scartbuiltofshardsofacid (jdchurchill), Tuesday, 3 August 2010 23:05 (thirteen years ago) link

in response to something upthread: sam gilliam and alma thomas are two awesome african american painters who are very pre-basquiat. alma thomas was the first black woman to have a solo show at the whitney

plax (ico), Wednesday, 4 August 2010 00:42 (thirteen years ago) link

ten months pass...

Big Basquiat/Warhol collab retrospective in Copenhagen later this year, looking forward to seeing this. They did a lot more work than is really known about or widely seen, much more than their original disastrous 1985 show.

solfege made me schizophrenic (MaresNest), Thursday, 23 June 2011 10:19 (twelve years ago) link

three months pass...

For those in Washington DC:

Sun. Oct. 9 "Downtown 81" movie doc starring late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and featuring James Chance, Amos Poe, Walter Steding, and Tav Falco, Doors Open at 3:30pm, Film Screens at 4:00pm {Free} Pre-Registration Strongly Encouraged. At the Corcoran https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/downtown81 Q&A Following the screening, Maripol and Michael Holman discuss the film, and the art and music scene in New York during the late 1970's and early 1980's.

curmudgeon, Friday, 7 October 2011 14:54 (twelve years ago) link

This is the longest of long shot requests.

Are there any Danish dudes who can report back on the Warhol/Basquiat exhib that's just started at the Arken Museum outside Copenhagen, I'm considering heading over to see it but I wanna know how much there is before I do.

solfege made me schizophrenic (MaresNest), Friday, 7 October 2011 16:39 (twelve years ago) link

two years pass...

RIP René Ricard

http://galleristny.com/2014/02/rene-ricard-has-died/

MaresNest, Sunday, 2 February 2014 14:27 (ten years ago) link

three years pass...

Nobody appears to give a shit judging by this thread but anyway - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b098pd3q/basquiat-rage-to-riches

MaresNest, Sunday, 8 October 2017 11:46 (six years ago) link

I'd deffo love to go to that Barbican retrospective, only ever seen the odd JMB piece in the flesh, and that was 20 years ago.

calzino, Sunday, 8 October 2017 12:02 (six years ago) link

At the Serpentine?

It's a great exhibition, lot's of paintings that I didn't expect to ever see irl, and quite a lot of the bigger well known works are totally absent.

MaresNest, Sunday, 8 October 2017 12:12 (six years ago) link

yep it was at the Serpentine, but i had to do a quick google, in my memory it was a gallery in one of the royal parks that I couldn't remember the name of.

calzino, Sunday, 8 October 2017 12:18 (six years ago) link

My partner is actually thinking of blowing the last dregs of her savings account to go this.

calzino, Sunday, 8 October 2017 12:25 (six years ago) link

Well, 20 years since the last one, Paris and other places in Europe have had retrospectives fairly recently, soooo...

MaresNest, Sunday, 8 October 2017 14:10 (six years ago) link

I've never thought much of his work but I'm ready to have my mind changed.

cosmic brain dildo (Sparkle Motion), Sunday, 8 October 2017 15:32 (six years ago) link

You can see irl JMBs at The Broad in LA for free

kurt schwitterz, Sunday, 8 October 2017 15:39 (six years ago) link

jesus, 16 quid to see an exhibition is a lot.

Susan Stranglehands (jed_), Sunday, 8 October 2017 23:55 (six years ago) link

one month passes...

http://thesnobette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/basquiat-skull-painting-620x413.jpg

This guy paid $110 million for the painting this past spring. I guess he's sending it on a world tour now.

I love Basquiat and the everyday is living in art thing that I romanticize his life to have been.

27 is such a ridiculous age to die.

I also like the album he put out with his band Gray:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fedmYKBom28

nicky lo-fi, Thursday, 9 November 2017 13:35 (six years ago) link

three months pass...

fun to watch this at .5% speed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExDfj-_D6Sk

Dean of the University (Latham Green), Thursday, 15 February 2018 18:44 (six years ago) link


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