Barbican: Basquiat:Boom for Real
“Portrait of Basquiat being welcomed by the Metropolitan police – an (unofficial) collaboration with the new Basquiat show.” - Banksy
When it was announced that the Barbican was staging an exhibition on Jean-Michel Basquiat, we were intrigued to discover more on an artist, whose style somewhat resonates with our own. The exhibition received an overwhelming number of positive reviews, and we arrived at the Brutalist-style building to uncover the secret to his influence and join another generation fascinated by his work.
Once inside the exhibit, you roam from room to room, shadowing Basquiat's path from broken beginnings to igniting the New York art scene and unknowingly carving out his own celebrated future as one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.
The show highlighted his friendship with his advocate and collaborator Andy Warhol, his frequent attendance and contribution to the iconic underground nightclub Mudd Club, his encounters with the fashionable faces framed in Maripol's polaroids and his ever-changing canvas from street corners, DJ decks, pages of exercise books to his vividly scribbled paintings.
Sketches from Boom for Real
All that surrounded him, were no doubt enticed by Basquiat's radiant charisma that can be seen in the post-modern film 'Downtown 81' that played continuously, churning out No Wave classics - the soundtrack of his generation. The gentile manner with which he addressed his interviewers in archive footage, counteracts with his violent, primitive anatomically abstract figures. His work depicts the everyday warrior, the tormented working-class figures, burning with passion and angst, armed with scrabbled prophetic musings and rightly crowned.
Sketches from Boom for Real
Fragments of poetry and words that plagued his mind, once sprawled all over Lower Manhattan under his pseudonym SAMO are now scattered within his canvas paintings and housed between the lines of his scruffy notebooks that line a segment of the exhibit.
His presence was felt through every beat and brushstroke, each room pulsed with Basquiat's soulful preaching that bled into every aspect of his work. You are taken though a clear visual timeline starting from his scrawls on the walls of East Manhattan through to his now multi-million-dollar canvases. The exhibition was a beacon of creative inspiration and explosion of talent all created by a single artist. Although the exhibition has already ended, we highly recommend you check out Banksy's homage underneath the Barbican - yet another artist influenced by Basquiat.
Comentarios