Architectural Digest
The late celebrated-but-troubled graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27, has long made headlines on these shores. After all, just this past May his searing 1982 painting of a skull rang up a stunning $110.5 million at Sotheby’s.
But now the artist’s considerable body of work is poised to capture attention across the pond, since London’s Barbican is featuring “Basquiat: Boom for Real,” the first large-scale U.K. exhibition dedicated to his considerable creativity; it debuts September 21 and runs until January 28. Surprisingly, there is not a single work in a public collection there. What’s on view will be drawn from museums and private collections globally.
While countless museums have spotlighted Basquiat’s astonishing paintings and drawings, the Barbican takes a totally different tack. In the early years, Basquiat worked as a graffiti artist, a poet, a performer, an actor, and a DJ, as well as making sculpture, drawings, and paintings,” says Barbican co-curator Eleanor Nairne. “We were keen to highlight this dynamic cross-disciplinary practice, which really mirrors the energy of the downtown New York scene in the late 1970s and 1980s,” she adds.
The exhibition explores his relationship to music, film, and television, reflecting the New York art scene at the time, which was marred with abandoned buildings, drug dealers, and prostitutes, along with the scourge of AIDS. In addition to the artist’s iconic paintings and drawings, there are never-before-seen film strips of Basquiat dancing in his studio, photo-booth snaps, and the baseball helmets he adorned with paint and even bits of human hair. Also on view is his Fun Gallery refrigerator door, emblazoned with his signature graffiti.
“The show throws into light the artistic milieu then, where art, music, and performance merged,” says SoHo art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, who spoke at Basquiat’s burial. “Jean-Michel was central to it and I was there too,” he adds.
The self-taught artist frequently went beyond the proverbial paintbrush, turning to spray paint and oil sticks. And his searing imagery speaks of raw anger and racism, which continues to reverberate today. A case in point is Basquiat’s 1984 painting Glenn, of a mask-like head around which he collaged his infamous notes and rambling figures.