A couple weeks ago during our whirlwind NC trip my bride and I (along with our hoochi-mama pal) saw the Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum. I had seen the last big retrospective at the Whitney back in 1992, and it had been important for me as a baby-artist to see. At that time I knew nothing about Basquiat's work, but had ended up working similarly, using crazy drawing, words, and a whole stew of materials and images. Seeing that show reinforced my confidence, and gave me a few things to steal, but it was also kind of unsatisfying - I felt that he was being puffed up as a greater artist than he had been.
The show in Brooklyn now was well-done, and I saw lots that I hadn't seen. Especially great were his massive head painting and a suite of drawings all hung together. I was troubled by the decision to really obscure his drug probems and his weird relationships with dealers. Barely mentioned in the wall- or audio-text were drugs but you could see them in the work, sometimes in the incredible kinetic quality of his mark-making, but also in the limp and crappy pieces that dominated the end of his life. I think this glossing over the drugs might have been a condition of his father's participation in the show - apparently he's very reluctant to speak publicly, but interviews with him were on the audio-text.
Seeing the show was, like the earlier Whitney retrospective, two-sided for me. On the one hand I was reminded of the energy and craziness of my own earlier work, and I saw many ways that he used drawing that I can steal from him. In his best work he creates a fantastic confusion that somehow adds up, like an Ashberry poem. He also has a direct and powerful way of drawing - a bombastic and confident barbaric yawp.
On the other hand, many of the pieces weren't great at all. He seems to have one way of drawing, one line to use, and everything gets processed through that single line. His compositions can work, but often don't, and while I've some to appreciate the crazy color he uses, at times it's not delicious bafflement, it's cacophony. It's really hard to make great work with a seat-of-your-pants method - I know, I've tried. Like most of us, Basquiat goes back to what he's comfortable with - for him it's cartoony lists of images and words. When I see a De Kooning, a Guston or a Picasso I see that same reckless improvisation, but with a wealth of moves at their disposal to make the piece work. Basquiat seems to have had one, maybe two tricks.
What's so frustrating is I can see an intelligence, both conceptual and mark-making, at work here that only sometimes comes through all the way. It could be his early success didn't let him have any time to self-criticize at all, and the drugs coupled with the rapacious dealers he worked with probably reinforced that. Of course he also died very young so had no chance to mature.
But in a way that doesn't matter - the work is what it is, and the vestments of genius still being woven around him are bunk. In essay after essay, article after article he's puffed up as Modernism's savior, as a master equal to the greats. He's not. He was a good artist with lots of drive, talent and potential who made several great pieces (and lots and lots of not-so-great ones) before dying. I think many curators respond so well to him because he gives them a double-shot - a multicultural artist who also provides them with lots of textual fodder to pore over and parse. They get their theory and they get to feel good about it too.
Despite all my criticisms of the work and the whirlwind around it, I do thinks it's a timely and good show. In a way Basquiat's short and uneven career can be seen as a plus for art - by pushing in the ways he did, but not dominating them, he's left open a lot of paths for us younger scribblers and drawers to explore.
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