On a day that was anonymous of weather or time of the week six year old Jean-Michel and his mother Matilda enter The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Almost any museum containing art will have the works of artists from around the world hanged up in every room. However, there was one work of art that Matilda wanted her son to see. Inside a room that was empty and dim of light was a piece by an artist of the Cubism-Surrealism period. A lover of art, seeing this piece Matilda starts to cry. Jean-Michel goes from staring at the piece to looking at his mother. As they both look at each other Matilda has discovered something magnificent about her son. Imprinted around the head of Jean-Michel is a four pointed crown. Matilda pulls Jean-Michel close to her and puts her arm around him. Everything gets brighter thanks to Jean-Michel's glowing crown. The scenery expands and the last thing you can see is Pablo Picasso's Guernica fading away into the measurement of time.
In his teen years and early adulthood subway stations and abandon apartments in Greenwich Village would become his home. Even his name would go from Jean-Michel to SAMO. Dropping out of high school and rebelling the choices of his father came with a price. Life in late 1970's New York City was pure hell, but Jean-Michel would be determine to make a difference and become a household name in the art world. After all what he went through that crown never tilted or broke.
By the year 1980 Basquiat is mentored by Andy Warhol, one of his favorite artists. Magazines such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and others had Basquiat's face plastered on them. Many of his piece's were added to galleries and were sold. It would be sometime in the near future when both Basquiat and Warhol would duke it out in a project that went nowhere (as regards to reviews and buyers).
It was the twelfth of August in 1988 when the art world and society at large lost a phenomenal human being. I have often wondered If the response was as massive as most biographies and documentaries often depict. Just like the figures he painted, Basquiat was a prophet of his time. During his short time in the world of art Basquiat was a black artist in a predominately white world. Knowing how hard this may had been, the drug that killed him (heroin) was his tool of escape.
Thirty-one years after his tragic death Jean-Michel Basquiat is still teaching us about ourselves. From those in the entertainment industry (Kanye West and Jay-Z to name a few) to public intellectuals in places of higher learning, Basquiat is seen as an historical figure holding the same impact as MLK or Malcolm X. My mission as a writer/blogger is to turn Basquiat into a saint bigger than the pope himself. Through his piece's of art Basquiat has been telling the world that we're all royalty. The only thing is will we ever pick up our crowns?
No comments:
Post a Comment