2023-07-03 07:13:03
The four-handed Basquiat x Warhol exhibition is the most important dedicated to the collaboration of these artists, with 300 pieces, including 70 works that Warhol and Basquiat created together. They are accompanied by those of other artists of the moment recreating the artistic scene of that New York.
Michael Halsband, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York, July 10, 1985, Collection of the artist.
When Frank Gehry first thought of the building he was going to design for the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, his head drew a sailboat with twelve glass sails inflated by the west wind as if sailing through the forest. The interior of that sailboat now explodes with the noise and color of the streets of Manhattan. It is the exhibition: Basquiat x Warhol four hands, the most important dedicated to the collaboration of these artists, with 300 pieces among which 70 works that Warhol and Basquiat created together stand out. They are accompanied by those of other artists of the moment recreating the artistic scene of that New York.
Michael Halsband, Andy Warhol y Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nueva York, 10 de julio de 1985, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The eighties there were a mixture of many things: the rhythm of the “beap”, the “hip hop” and the screams of children jumping on the games painted with chalk on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, the windows and doors abandoned in the containers , the trains and carriages covered in graffiti, the thunderous planes that took off and landed from LaGuardia airport, the milk trucks, the ambulances, the best concerts in Central Park, the hell of AIDS and, finally, the street drive and multiracial from that city. It was the food of these two stars, two icons of American contemporary art of the second half of the 20th century.
Between 1983 and 1985, Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) create a singular artistic collaboration from which 160 works will emerge, some of them the most important of their respective careers.
The demiurge of this meeting is the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (Zürich, 1940). In the winter of 1983-1984, at their home in St. Moritz, the two talked regarding “collaborations”, that way of working of some painters from the 15th to the 19th centuries that fascinated Bischofberger. Basquiat had painted a picture in the garage of his house with Cora, the dealer’s daughter, then four years old. Also, in the guest book at her house, Basquiat had made a double-page drawing with her. Bischofberger had noticed how the girl’s childish technique and Basquiat’s “primitive” style matched amazingly. He was a friend and main distributor of Warhol’s work and thought of him to work with Basquiat. On the morning of October 4, 1982 he took Basquiat to the Factory and introduced him to Warhol who immediately photographed Basquiat some thirty times with his Polaroid.
Basquiat then asked Warhol to pass the camera over to Bischofberger to take a portrait of the two. When they went out to eat, Basquiat did not want to accompany them. His head and his left hand, he was left-handed, were already abuzz with an idea and infinite colors. He forcefully pushed the door of his study, pulled a 1.50 x 1.50 canvas and projected his rage and all the power of his gaze onto it. With the painting still fresh and dripping with streaks of black paint, his assistant hurried off to the Factory in Union Square. Warhol, struck by the talent of such a young and free artist, said in his high-pitched voice: “He is faster than me.”
This picture, Two heads, has the strength of any inaugural work and is today the starting signal for the Paris exhibition. In it, Basquiat paints Warhol with a blue, geometric hand, almost like an avatar, and a single eye fixed on the viewer. The rest of the canvas is a particular struggle of hairstyles: Warhol’s acrylic platinum wig pulled across to hide his bald spot, once morest the magnificent dreadlocks of Basquiat’s powerful dark tangle. From this painting, the two artists will not be separated for two years. They will exchange canvases and gym weights, study, friends and insults, parties and ideas, anger, laughter, insecurity, fear and success.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Two heads(1982), Private collection.
Bischofberger knew what he was doing when he brought together the brightest and most rising star of the day and the veteran painter whose career needed to be relaunched. When he proposed to the two artists to exhibit their works in collaboration, the pictorial relationship between them was already consolidated. Basquiat had painted almost every followingnoon in 1984 and 1985 in Warhol’s studio. There was an explosive synergy between their joint production and their different styles: Warhol, whose birth name was Andrew Warhola – he began signing himself “Warhol” not by choice but by typographical error – painted using the projection technique and the tracing, he contributed newspaper headlines, images, brand logos and legends always handwritten by Julia, his mother, and whose calligraphy would become inseparable from his work. Basquiat intervened by hand and painted tribal and powerful figures, fragments of phrases, symbols and his iconic crown.
Monumental-sized works that are present in the exhibition will emerge from those two years. From the dollar symbol painted by Warhol traveled by Basquiat’s snake in Don’t tread on me the en Dollar sign, even lobsters, crabs or poison. There are the best known canvases as Arm and Hammer with his logo and the arm holding the hammer painted by Warhol and the black head of Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat y Andy Warhol, 6.99(1985), Nicola Erni Collection.
The tangle of words and letters that appears in Basquiat’s paintings often have disconcerting mentions of Nero, Marco Polo or Miles Davis, but also of radium, tin or Icarus’ wax wings. However, most often refer to the human body. Klaus Kertess, Basquiat specialist, says: “The word was at the beginning of his creation. He liked them for their meaning, for their sound and for their shape. He liked to say that he used words as if they were brushstrokes.”
Graffiti is one of the four branches of “hip hop” culture, with breakdancing, rapping and deejaying. The graffiti that covered the subway cars was immediately covered by the footprints of the next graffiti artist. In this environment Basquiat began his career with the pseudonym SAMO (SAMe Old shit).
Jean-Michel Basquiat y Andy Warhol, OP OP1984-1985, Bischofberger Collection.
In the exhibition are the canvases of more than 3 meters in collaboration with brands such as Zenith, or the painting 6.99 surrounded by Basquiat’s black heads with their ferocious teeth, vacant eyes, and pointy crowns. Also an African work 10 meters long that they painted while Basquiat rolled his joints and Warhol recognized that Basquiat made him paint differently, once more by hand and with a brush. As you progress through the exhibition, the styles of Warhol and Basquiat begin to blur.
Jean-Michel Basquiat y Andy Warhol, Untitled (Collaboration 23) Quality, 1984-1985. Particular collection.
This relationship is usually approached from their differences in age, race, or in the popularity of each one at the time they met. However, they shared a lot, especially in the dramatic summer of 1968. On June 3, Valerie Solanas attempts to assassinate Warhol in her studio. The artist will spend eight weeks at Columbus Hospital and following a difficult operation he returns home with his torso stitched up. A month earlier, Basquiat had been hit by a car while playing ball in Brooklyn. At the King’s Country Hospital they treat his broken arm and various internal injuries. During his convalescence, his mother brought him a copy of the book of Gray’s Anatomya classic on anatomy that makes a deep impression on Basquiat and will influence the contributions of anatomical drawings in his paintings.
Jean-Michel Basquiat y Andy Warhol, Ten Punching Bags (LastSupper)1985-1986. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
On the top floor, a complex and mysterious work is installed. It is one of the most famous of the collaboration: Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper) (1985), with ten punching bags lined up where, as if they were the stations of a Via Crucis, Warhol paints a Christ with eyes closed and head cocked. The repetition of the image on the bags and the way in which Christ is represented give it the air of a pop icon. Above and below the face, on the forehead or under the eyes, the word “judge” appears repeatedly. The work is linked to the murder of the graffiti artist Michael Stewart, close to Basquiat, and to the most chilling years of AIDS. Also to the training they shared in his studio and to the poster photo of the 1985 joint exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. But beyond all this, it refers to the religious roots of both. Basquiat had started drawing when, as a child, his mother told him stories from the Bible. Warhol, whom his mother, Julia Warhola, took to mass every week, was marked by the saints, archangels and apostles that decorated the church. In the icons everything had a meaning: the color, the inclination of the head of a Virgin, the way of joining the hands. And so, like new American secular saints, he would later paint Marilyn, Liz, Elvis or Jackie.
Jean-Michel Basquiat y Andy Warhol, Paramount(1984), Private collection.
How would Basquiat and Warhol actually act on canvas? Basquiat explained it this way: “Andy would start a painting and paint something very recognizable, or a logo for some product, and I would deface it. Then I would try to get him to work on it more, to do at least two other things.” Warhol would specify: “First I would draw it and then I would paint it like Jean-Michel. I think that the pictures we do together are better when you don’t know who paints what part.”
Basquiat x Warhol, painting with four hands
Louis Vuitton Foundation
8, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi Bois de Boulogne, 75116 Paris
Curators: Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer
Until August 28
– Jenny Saville: Biography, Works and Exhibitions – – Alejandra de Argos –
1688376264
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