Boom for Basquiat

Author: Trusha Naidoo

Date: 6th December 2017

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Truth be told, I hadn’t been to the Barbican in a long time. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the Basquiat exhibition, entitled “Boom for Real” but it was a cool idea to take our 6-year-old. He spent the entire time drawing what he saw. Basquiat’s big bold lines clearly inspired him!

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Basquiat worked across such a breadth of media, it’s quite staggering to see it all curated so meticulously. Seeing his vast range of sources offered a major insight into his street-styled take on the pop culture of his times.

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As you’d expect there are a lot of elements detailing his collaboration with Andy Warhol. That I expected. What I hadn’t realised was how extensive his references to jazz where. As a fan myself, I delighted in his nods to the genre. From Charlie Parker to Dizzy Gillespie to Max Roach, they are all lurking not too far from the surface of many of his works.

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I also never realised that Diego Cortez, the curator of the New York / New Wave exhibition, gave Basquiat pride of place to paint back in 1981. Considering David Byrne, William Burroughs and Warhol were also exhibiting, Cortez was obviously onto his genius before many others.

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The exhibition also charts Basquiat’s many co-creations, spanning everything from graffiti to collages to rap. For instance, even Debbie Harry made an appearance in a film starring Basquiat. He plays the struggling artist, obviously. The film also features some of the first canvasses he ever painted at the tender age of 19.

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Seeing “Dos Cabezas” his painting of himself with Warhol was a definite highlight. The fact that he was such a fan of Warhol that he rushed over to his studio to paint this after meeting Warhol for the first time and delivered it to him 2 hours later, was typical of his spontaneity.

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It was also the first time I had seen any of his notebooks with their carefully capitalized prose and poems. He had an almost “songwriterly” ear for words. His playful phrases could easily be snippets from songs.

 

If I had to sum up “Boom for Real”, it puts the “for real” into art.

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