Jean-Michel Basquiat
dal 10/7/2008 al 13/9/2008
Segnalato da
10/7/2008
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Fundacion Marcelino Botin, Santander
To Repel Ghosts. Retrospective exhibition that feature more than 40 works with a particular focus on the artist's fragmented vision of the human body. From SAMO, his graffiti-like work of the late seventies, to his untimely death in 1988, Basquiat painted those subjects that affirmed the precarious character of the urban experience: skeletic bodies, black figures, imagery rooted in the landscape of his youth, soon to be followed by denser compositions painted on canvases with exposed, rough stretchers.
The Fundacion Marcelino Botin in Santander and the Fondazione Memmo, Rome, organized a retrospective exhibition of Jean Michel Basquiat. The exhibition, which opens in Santander (Spain) on 11 July 2008, will feature more than 40 works with a particular focus on the artist’s fragmented vision of the human body. The exhibition, entitled Jean Michel Basquiat: To Repel Ghosts, will travel to Rome, Palazzo Ruspoli, Fondazione Memmo in October.
From SAMO, his graffiti-like work of the late seventies, to his untimely death in 1988, Basquiat painted those subjects that affirmed the precarious character of the urban experience: skeletic bodies, black figures, imagery rooted in the landscape of his youth (cars, planes, sky-scrapers, cops, children’s games, cartoons and comics, graffiti, pervading symbols such as ©, or the crown—the latter a declaration of his authority, a seal of approval as well a sarcastic comment on the ownership of his own recycled imagery), soon to be followed by denser compositions painted on canvases with exposed, rough stretchers.
Basquiat’s works display a spontaneous aggregate of various, often unrelated visual elements, yet they are clearly declarative and narrative in character. Picture surfaces are fluid, never static but slippery, in a manner that indicates Basquiat’s admiration for Cy Twombly (one of the few artists whose influence he acknowledged). The artist’s open, unstructured presentation of reality is marked by irony and displacement; some motifs appear with regularity, symbols of a lost innocence: the crown, black heros (Hank Aaron, Charlie Parker), cultural models of urban, mostly black life; writing that has been crossed out and lapidary symbols denote a sense of ambiguity.
The creative act translates into a seeming lack of equilibrium—there are shifts in tension in Basquiat’s display of surfaces, and his relentless sign -making does not result in the creation of an exclusive pictorial order. The many fragments, such as carved-out, dismembered limbs in the manner of afro-brazilian ex-votos, contribute to the free picturial image of conventional hierarchies. The body, constantly evoked, becomes an idea, a trace with a ghostly presence through the physical energy peculiar to the artist. The image of the “body” appears first of as his own, in many guises, and in anatomical terms. It later can be seen as a “performative body”, or “body-in-performance”: the so-called ‘graffitism’. It also appears in his interest in the images of great musicians and sportsmen: it is not just their ‘fame’, but their ability to project something improvised and at the same time sublime.
The artist affirms his presence through the evocation of fragments, as a way of “repelling ghosts”, a favorite phrase of his that appears in at least three paintings. The eerie presence of zombie-like creatures that appear to be coming back from the dead, the remnants of writing, sometimes erased, sometimes ‘etched’ into the canvas with unequalled force: these affirm Basquiat’s peculiar situation in which he tried to bridge the abyss between the evanescence of life and its affirmation through the painter’s gesture.
The exhibition will be curated by Olivier Berggruen, Associate Curator, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, who has organized, among others, large exhibitions on Matisse paper cut-outs, Picasso’s theatrical work, as well as retrospectives of Yves Klein and Ed Ruscha. A fully illustrated catalogue will feature essays by Olivier Berggruen and Francesco Pellizzi.
Art is a Game is an educational programme, inspired by the exhibition, for children between 8 and 12 years carried out by The Marcelino Botin Foundation.
Art is a Game. Wednesday, July the 30th, August 6th, 13th, 20th or 27th.
Fundación Marcelino Botín
Exhibition Room at 3, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, Santander (Behind the Paseo de Pereda) Spain.
Exhibition Room daily Opening hours: 12:00 to 14:00 and 17:00 to 21:30.
Free entrance.