NoteWorthy Shows

Art Is Back In Chelsea

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

One of the most astounding works in Western Art history. Albrecht Dürer’s, Melencolia I, 1514, right? No! Read on…

There were some dark times in Chelsea’s (unofficial) Art district these past 18 months, like there was everywhere on planet earth. Some galleries went out of business, many gallery staffers lost their jobs, some galleries moved elsewhere. Early this year, things were slow. There were some shows here but not nearly as many as the pre-covid norm, and few here had been vaccinated at that point making it tricky for gallery staff and would-be visitors. I stayed away until I got vaccinated.

Going, going…Metro Pictures on West 24th Street. I have seen many memorable shows here, including the fine Louise Lawler show that’s up now inside that open door. They said they decided to close because of the globalization of the Art market, which doesn’t suit their model. I’ll miss them. Seen in October, 2021.

In March, legendary Metro Pictures on West 24th Street, an anchor of the neighborhbood since 1996, announced they would close this year, for reasons unrelated to the pandemic, they said1.

Don’t believe the hype. Real New Yorkers never went anywhere.

This whole summer there had only been two shows on my list- Richard Estes: Voyages and the blockbuster Cèzanne Drawing at MoMA, which I wrote about here. As the summer wound down I was curious to see what the fall season, the busiest of the year in Art, would bring. What would the “new normal” look like in the galleries & museums? Around Labor Day, I suddenly found myself with something I hadn’t had in 18 months- a list of shows, numbering 20, to see- carefully.

(Not) Coming (anytime) Soon. An abandoned sign outside a former Chelsea gallery on West 25th Street, October, 2021. A few of these on this block are an eerie reminder of what once was.

As I made my way down into the all too familiar West Side canyons very curious about what I would find, indeed, there was much that was different. Some familiar spots were gone, (most) others remain and virtually all of those were open, with varying degrees of precautions. Most surprisingly of all, a number of new galleries opened in spaces that had been under construction before the virus hit the fan around the High Line, and under it. Given I don’t generally attend openings (even pre-covid), and avoid going during the busier times (like weekends), I cannot attest to the level of foot traffic, a main reason galleries are here. 

Forecast- cloudy. New and old on an appropriately grey day. The new skyline of Hudson Yards just north of Chelsea dwarfs the 100 year old buildings that have housed galleries for the past 30 years or so in better times, seen through the closed shades on the top floor of Pace’s new mega-plex gallery in October.

What I can say is that I notice there has been no slowing in the sheer mountain of new work that’s been created during these dark times, just as it was ever increasingly so as this new millennium has worn on. (Geez, it already feels like it’s worn on in 21 years?) Yet, in spite of the endless volume of Art for sale I have only seen a slight softening of prices, which I find surprising, and telling. Then again, these are usually “asking” prices. Actual “sold for” prices could be (and probably are) lower by an unknown amount. On the Art front, it turns out there are a number of good and very good shows up in Chelsea this fall. While there are still some on my list I haven’t gotten to see, of those I’ve seen thus far, some highlights include (in no particular order)-

Installation view. Untitled (The Cauldron), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 70 x 120 inches, left.

Robert Longo: I do fly / After Summer Merrily, at Pace, West 25th Street-

Untitled (Robert E. Lee Monument Graffiti, Richmond, Virginia), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 96 by 146 inches, and Dûrer’s Solid, Stainless Steel, 2021. See following picture.

This is Robert Longo’s first show with Pace, after being represented by Metro Pictures for an unheard of 40 years, until they announced their plans to close. Famously part of the so-called “Pictures Generation” with Cindy Sherman, et al, Mr. Longo is one of the finest practitioners of the rapidly becoming lost Art of Drawing we have. I’ve been surprised with his choice of subjects, but always impressed by his new work with every succeeding show I’ve seen going back well over 20 years. They always leave me marveling.

Untitled (Nascar Crash, Daytona), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 70 x 120 inches. Keep reminding yourself that these are Drawings.

His new show, I do fly / After Summer Merrily, kicking off a run of Robert Longo shows around the world over the next few years, is equally impressive. Most of his pieces are Drawings in charcoal, though in this show he also shows off his remarkable skill with graphite.

Robert Longo, Untitled (After Dürer’s, Melencolia I, 1514) 2021, Graphite on paper(!), 12 3/4 by 9 15/16 inches. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I first saw this. My jaw was open to the bottom of my mask.

In addition to creating new works often based on Photographs of recent events, the other thread in Mr. Longo’s work these past many years has been painstaking creation of his own versions of masterpieces of Painting, most notably his Gang of Cosmos works, monochromatic charcoal copies of Abstract Expressionist masterworks, which filled an entire show at Metro Pictures in 2014. Now, he has turned his eye and hand to Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I, 1514, which is an engraving. Mr. Longo has done his version in graphite! While the more unforgiving engraving may be the more challenging technique, to translate Dürer’s marvel to this level of detail is astounding. It appears every single line has been replicated, down to Dürer’s famous “AD” monogram signature in the shadow above the tools to the right. As if this wasn’t enough, he’s also created a Sculpture of his imagining of the famous “Solid” seen to the left of center, which was also on view a few feet away, as I showed earlier.

Untitled (Baseball Stadium, 2020), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 78 by 125 inches(!)

After all the work shown in his Metro Pictures shows this century, as well as museum shows, like Proof: Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo, which opened at the Garage, Moscow, then travelled to the Brooklyn Museum, the time has come for a full Retrospective of his work in this country. The last one was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989. One is opening in Europe in 2024. I hope it makes it here.

Zanele Muholi, Itha, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, from the first show to include her Paintings along with her Photographs in the second gallery.

Zanele Muholi, Awe Maaah! at Yancey Richardson- Zanele Muholi has established herself as one of the world’s great portraitists. Though she’s done far more, for my money that claim was sealed with Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, a book of Self-Portraits, published by Aperture in 2018, a masterpiece among PhotoBooks of the past decade. Now, for the first time, Awe Maaah! shows there is more to the renowned Photographer and visual activist. Stepping into the show, a fan of Ms. Muholi’s black & white Photographs might be shocked by seeing something new- color! It turns out she Paints, too! And quite well indeed as the debut selection of her Paintings in the show reveals.

Somile, 2021, Acrylic on paper

Known for her gorgeous black & white Photographs, her Paintings are FULL of bright, vivid colors. Zanele turned to Painting during the pandemic when Photographing others was not possible. Though in color, her Paintings share familiar elements with her Photographs. First, these were all portraits, of one or two sitters. Second, in many of her Paintings, the Artist is depicted, like her Photographs, n a variety of guises. Then, the eyes are the focus of both bodies of work. In some of her Photographs, they almost look like they are Painted. Compositionally, they both feature empty backgrounds, though some of the Paintings were colored. I was impressed with the range of approaches. Each Painting is different. Quite an auspicious first showing.

Zimpaphe I, Parktown, 2019, Gelatin silver print

But, for anyone new to her work, or in need of a refresher as to why she is one of the most respected Photographers working today, all that was needed was to take a few steps into the second gallery.

The second gallery of Awe Maaah! contains 8 stunning Self-Portrait Photographs (the one just shown is behind me in this shot)

There, a gorgeously selected group of her Photographic Self-Portraits was all the reminder needed. Not surprisingly, the entire show was sold out. Already one of the most vital Artists working in Photography, today, Awe Maaah! announces there are more sides to Zanele Muholi to recon with than we’ve seen thus far.

Looking in at a gallery of “hooded”/klan Paintings outside Philip Guston 1969-79 in October.

Philip Guston: 1969-79 at Hauser & Wirth- With a large, street-facing, gallery featuring Philip Guston’s “klan” Paintings I wondered if this show was a sort of “test balloon” after the controversial postponement of Philip Guston Now museum show. They certainly served to stop people on the street, who seemed perplexed as to what they were, and what they were about, from the conversations I heard walking past.

I think that many who are familiar with Philip Guston’s work wonder about them, too. Delving into their history sheds some light on them. I wrote about the history of Philip Guston’s hooded/klan (lower case, mine) works, saying- “I think it’s important to remember that they go back to when the Painter was about 18. In Philip Guston Retrospective, the backstory is relayed on pages 16 & 17. It begins by quoting Mr. Guston- ‘I was working at a factory and became involved in a strike. The KKK helped in strike breaking so I did a whole series of paintings on the KKK. In fact I had a show of them in a bookshop in Hollywood, where I was working at that time. Some members of the klan walked in, took the paintings off the wall and slashed them. Two were mutilated. That was the beginning.'”

Riding Around, left, and The Studio, both 1969, Oil on canvas, left

“(The text then continues) ‘The Ku Klux Klan, also known as the Invisible Empire, had a significant membership in California in the 1930s and 1940s, and Los Angeles County was its most active Klavern. Guston and several other of his friends also painted portable murals for the John Reed Club on the theme of ‘The American Negro.’ Guston’s submission was particularly volitile. Based on the Scottsboro case, in which nine black men were sentenced (many said on false and circumstantial evidence) to life in prison for raping a white girl. Guston’s mural depicted a group of hooded figures whipping a black man. The murals were eventually attacked and defaced by a band of ‘unidentified’ vandals. The experience of seeing the effect of art on life and life on art never left Guston, and the unsettling image of the hooded figure was branded into his visual imagination.’ In the 1930s, in addition to strike breaking, the klan also targeted Jews. Philip Guston, originally Philip Goldstein, was Jewish. Of course, their main target were Blacks…Philip Guston lived long enough to see that racism was deeply embedded in the fabric of American life, possibly even in his own life.” (End quote.) So, circa 1970, when he moved away from pure abstraction, he began including hooded figures in his work again.

Scared Stiff, 1970, Oil on canvas. Shocking, damning, incredibly daring. and unprecedented in Art.

This time, it seems to me, he was looking inside for signs of prejudice in himself as well as society at large. And so, these are somewhat unique works in Art history. Not many other Artists have been as open, daring, or had the courage to lay themselves so bare as Philip Guston may have been doing in them. And, they are part of his enormously fresh late period, a real breakthrough for the Artist stylistically, which was met with puzzlement when they were new.

Ancient Wall, 1976, Oil on canvas

A very nice selection of “other” work from 1969-79 was on view in the large, second gallery. Today, they have become hugely influential, though the hooded figure works remain puzzling or misunderstood by some. (My pieces on prior Philip Guston shows in NYC are here, on the 1950’s abstractions, and here, on his Poor Richard Nixon Drawings.)

Hung Liu, Portrait: Sharecropper, 2018, Oil on canvas. Hung Liu lived and worked among country laborers for 4 years after being sent there by Mao Zeodong’s government for “re-education.” As a result, Hung Liu shared a special bond with the work of FSA legend Dorothea Lange dust bowl Photographs, upon who’s work Hung Liu based some of her Paintings. Ms. Liu emigrated to California in 1984, where she lived & worked for the rest of her life.

Hung Liu: Western Pass at Nancy Hoffman Gallery- Beautiful, and bitter sweet is the only way I can characterize this wonderful show, which the Artist worked on with Nancy Hoffman Gallery right before her tragic passing on on August 7th. It opened a month later, on September 9th. Along with the major retrospective up as I write at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, it will serve as a fitting tribute to this terrific Artist who was just beginning to gain the wide recognition and acclaim I believe her work deserves when she passed away. Long a champion of the late Chinese-American Painter, Nancy Hoffman has been showing her work going back to at least 2010 as far as I can tell and they have published some exquisite catalogs for each of them which are still available.

Western Pass, 1990, Oil on canvas, silver leaf on wood, ceramics. I asked Phil Cai what was going on in this work. He spoke about how we’re seeing two prisoners about to be executed with an ancient Chinese poem between them. The poem speaks of having another glass of wine before you pass beyond the western pass where you won’t have any friends. Two empty wine bowls sit in front.

This show is a beautifully chosen selection of 31 years of her work, right up to earlier this year. It’s possible to watch her style change and evolve over time, a testament to her flexibility and talent. Her subject matter, however, doesn’t change. Like Alice Neel, “people come first” for Hung Liu, too, and much of what she shows us is based in the Photographs of Dorothea Lange, found Chinese Photographs, or her own Photographs taken during the 4 years after she spent in the countryside laboring in rice and wheat fields as part of her agrarian “re-eduction” under Mao Zeodong. So, it is easy for her to related to the FSA work of Dorothea Lange, and the lives of is based on her own personal experiences. Haunting and powerful work that effortless cuts across place, cultures and time. Work that will be around for the long haul, in my opinion. I was lucky enough to see this show with Phil Cai, Director of Eli Klein Gallery, who’s remarkable Cai Dongdong show I wrote about in 2018. Phil, one of the rising stars in the Art world, met Hung Liu and visited her studio in Oakland. He provided fascinating insights into her work that he has been looking at for almost a decade. “I hope to wash my subjects of their ‘otherness’ and reveal them as dignified, even mythic figures on the grander scale of history painting,” she wrote.

Leonardo Drew, Detail of Number 305, 2021, Mixed Media. Just one corner, plus, of this piece installed on all 4 walls of the large room.

Leonardo Drew at Galerie Lelong- I wrote extensively about Mr. Drew’s last two NYC shows in 2019, during which I met and spoke with the Artist. He returns this fall with his first show since, with all the work on view created in 2021. It says a lot to say that it took 5 people 4 days to install this show! The endless details in his work is only equalled today in Contemporary “Sculpture,” in my experience, by the shows of his great contemporary, Sarah Sze. Mr. Drew continues to reinvent Sculpture and to push the limits and the boundaries of what it can be including another work that seems to explode from the corner as his last show here had one exploding from the rear wall. Both “explosions” frozen in time. Whereas in his last show, he introduced color to his sculpture, which had been black & white to that point, here, he continues that with supreme taste in works that almost look like a new take on Abstract Expressionism, if I believed in such terms. I don’t, so the only term that remains applicable to this major Artist remains- Leonardo Drew. And, if this wonderful show of terrific new work isn’t enough, Mr. Drew’s Prints are on view at Pace Prints nearby. I have not as yet seen them. 

Number 294, 2021, Wood, paint and sand

At this moment, I imagine that the “bleeding” is going to continue in Chelsea, as it is in far too many other places and in many other fields, for some time. More galleries will close, consolidate or move. Yet, it seems to me that the mega-galleries building their own buildings in the neighborhood may actually draw other galleries here, depending on the asking prices for space. Maybe things are at or near the bottom? It’s too early to tell. 

After what I wrote during the shutdown last year, it seems that at least things have begun to bounce back after a very slow spring. But, Art is not life. Many other things have to be in place for anyone to be able to, or want to, see Art. It’s taken a long time for many of those things to get back into place here. I hope things are getting better where you are.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “How Can You Be Sure?” a B-side by Radiohead from The Bends Collector’s Edition-

“Seen all the good things and bad
Running down the hill
All so battered and brought to the ground

[Pre-Chorus]
I am hungry again
I am drunk again
With all the money I owe to my friends

[Chorus]
When I’m like this
How can you be smiling, singing?
How can you be sure?
How can you be sure?”*

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  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/arts/design/metro-pictures-gallery-close.html ↩

Cézanne’s Other Revolution

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“I will astonish Paris with an Apple,” Paul Cézanne said. And, he did.

What came first? The Artist, or the apple? Many Painted apples & fruit before Cézanne. None created a revolution in Art with them. Self-Portrait and Apple, 1880-84, Pencil on paper. The Cézanne quote above comes from the wall card for this Drawing. It goes on to say the work “establishes an equivalency between the Artist’s head and the fruit he so often depicted.”

Ways of seeing and the Art of Drawing are two of my bigger interests in Art. Both are combined in the landmark Cézanne Drawing show which closed this week at MoMA, and was, most likely, a “once in a lifetime” show. I’ve never heard of anything close to the 250 works on paper on view in it by the French master being exhibited anywhere previously. As big a revolution as his daring approach to Art, most widely known to this point through his hugely influential Paintings, his Drawings and works on paper have been seldom exhibited. Possibly their fragility and light-sensitivity has something to do with that, though the pieces on display seemed to be in remarkably good condition. As a result, they are far lesser well-known even 115 years after the newest of them was created. Yet they take things even further, and reveal more of his remarkable & unique vision, than even his remarkable Paintings, in my view.

One of those shows I’ll long walk around in my mind, continue to think about, and be inspired by. Late masterpieces, Still Life with Blue Pot, left, Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon and Sugar Bowl, right, both 1900-6, Pencil and watercolor on paper.

As a young Musician or Artist, many pupils are taught “Master the rules, first. Then, you can break them.” In Art, the theory is to gain a firm grounding in technique, composition, color, line and form, to have something to build your own style on. In Cézanne Drawing we get to follow his evolution & creative journey over half a century.

Umm…yeah he could Draw. From early on, as seen here. Detail of Standing Male Nude: Academic Study, 1862, Pencil on paper.

Cézanne applied to attend the Ècole de Beaux Arts in Paris, though he was rejected. He proceeded to take lessons at the Atelier Suisse, where they were offered free, a studio Courbet studied at. Early critics, including the great James McNeill Whistler, thought he couldn’t Draw. Evidence of his studies of the classical tradition were on display and show otherwise.

A gallery full of Cézanne’s figure studies contains numerous works taken from his Sketchbooks that belie his daily dedication to the craft & Art of Drawing throughout his life.

He drew every day for much of the rest of his life. In the next gallery, we are treated to numerous examples of his Sculpture studies. Ah…Drawing Sculpture. Something many students, including this one, get caught up in. Its allure never lessened for Cèzanne.

After the Ecorche of Michelangelo, 1881-4, Pencil on paper, from a Sketchbook. Cèzanne kept a plaster cast of this work in his studio.

Per the wall card- “According to a friend…’To the last day of his life, every morning as a priest reads his breviary, he spent an hour drawing Michelangelo’s plaster figure from every angle.”

And here it is-

Cèzanne’s personal plaster cast of Michelangelo’s Ecorche, seen in Cezanne’s Studio in 2017!  Photograph by Joel Meyerowitz from his PhotoBook, Cezanne’s Objects, 2017.

Soon he was Drawing like this-

Page of Studies, including a Centaur after the Antique, Pencil on laid paper, 1897-82. A drastic departure from the academic Standing Male Nude, shown earlier. No part of any of this is defined by the Artist with one line. His future is coming.

He took what he learned, and used it as a jumping off point. He began to loosen up  his approach. Much experimentation followed, as we see as this very large show progresses, until “he had discovered his own personality,” as Cézanne scholar Roger Fry put it 1.

Bathers, 1900-06, Watercolor on wove paper, page from a Sketchbook that measures 7 1/16 by 9 13/16″. This late work shows how far he took his figure Drawing. Though the figures almost seem to dissolve right in front of us, then almost seeming to be vibrating en masse from a short distance. Still, the composition miraculously holds wonderfully together

He developed a style of Drawing the figure that used multiple lines to “hone in” on the form, as seen in the Page of Studies with the Centaur, just shown, and, even more radically, the Bathers, here. He called his style couillarde (ballsy)2, indicative of his “attacking” approach to every aspect of his Art. Like his early subjects seen in the first gallery.

The Murder, 1874-75, Pencil, watercolor, and gouache on paper. In this small work (5 3/4 by 6 7/8 inches), the knife is held high amidst an idyllic landscape based on a real place, with an ominous cross lurking above.

Murder, abduction, rape, orgies, Drawn with passion, or Painted in oils at the time with a palette knife, all seemed created to grab the attention, shock and horrify. His whole career can be seen as one long attack on the rules, tradition and the status quo in Art.

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, ca. 1890, Oil on canvas, in The Met, and not included in Cèzanne Drawing. Met Photo.

Along with all of that, there is that eye, the way he sees things, and that unfailing sense for, and mastery of, color he had all along. Over time, his later Paintings achieve an almost surreal polish and finish, and achieve a complete solidity that is utterly convincing. Meanwhile, his Drawings often seem to delve into other dimensions. Objects are placed on seemingly impossible surfaces, or hang in space. The white of the paper becomes a star, an element the equal of any other in many works. These will seem a complete revelation to those who only know his Paintings, like me when I first walked in.

Rocks near the Chateau Noir, 1895-1900, Peincil and watercolor on paper. There is little in the world more solid than rock, but you’d never know it if you had only seen Cézanne’s series of Drawings of them near the Chateau Noir from 1895-1900. To me, they are a revolutionary marvel. Surface and forms dissolve right in front of our eyes.

As he put it all together, a MoMA wall card proved to be a revelation, particularly when thinking about his early training. In learning to draw the human body, one is taught to start by learning anatomy. Cézanne apparently applied this to his landscapes. “In order to paint a landscape well,” he is quoted on a wall card, “I first need to discover its geological structure.” It continues, “Cèzanne explored the relationship between rock and body throughout this series (of Drawings of rocks), in which the slabs take on the appearance of human bones and a cavern resembles the profile of a face.” And in this work, I see just that. The black lines form the “skeleton,” giving the piece a structure. Otherwise, the colors would be hanging in space.

Foliage, 1895, Watercolor and pencil on paper. At first glance it looks like an unfinished jumble of lines and colors with a lot of empty white space. Here, Cezanne is depicting leaves blowing in the wind. in so doing, he’s also blurring the line between representation and abstraction, which was a good decade off. Nearby, a full room of Still Lifes take things to the height of immateriality.

Still Life with Cut Watermelon, c.1900, Pencil and watercolor on paper. Of all the pieces on view, I’ve spent the most time studying this one. The table is “defined” with two brief lines, one a bit faint, on the right. The background is completely invisible and even the bottles in the back seem to be dissolving into space. Then, there’s the split open watermelon. At times it reminds me of an open heart.

His landscapes and his still lifes, with those famous arrangements of fruit on tables, have rightly garnered much of the attention and acclaim. They might originate from the gift of a basket of apple from his friend, Émile Zola in gratitude for Cèzanne’s rising to his defense against critics3, which would shed an entirely different light on them.

Wanna know why I still live in NYC? The chance to see incredible Art like this in shows like this. One of 4 walls in a large gallery of Cèzanne Still Lifes with fruit, including the one shown above, second from left here- some of the most innovative, visionary Drawings I’ve ever seen. (In some questionable frames.)

Seeing a large gallery full of them in 2021, they still seem completely fresh. As timeless as they are, Cézanne Drawing shows us there is much more to marvel at. Like his Portraits.

4 Portraits of the Gardener Vallier, 1904-6, Oil on canvas, 2nd from left, Pencil and watercolor on paper, the others. Endlessly fascinating, these 3 studies show remarkably similar poses to the Painting, yet with different backgrounds. They all share surprisingly undefined, nebulous, faces- unheard of in a traditional “Portrait.”

Though there are not many of them here, what is here makes a powerful impression, especially when seen along side, and in context with, his Drawings. Some years ago (in 2014), there was a show at The Met of Cézanne’s Portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, aka Madame Cézanne, which captivated and mystified me at the same time.

On loan from The Met, Madame Cèzanne in the Conservatory, 1891-2, Oil on Canvas, right, with a Study of her, from 1885-6, on loan from The Guggenheim, NYC, left. Cèzanne was very uncomfortable around female models (especially undressed) and rarely used them. He was very comfortable, however, having his wife pose for him. She patiently sat for him often and he created a fascinating body of work depicting her, these two examples rarely seen together.

The woman we see in those works was inscrutable. Yet the technique and use of color also fascinate, particularly in relation to his other work. I came away finally feeling that his portraits deserve more attention, even though they are “different” from what many expect from a “Portrait,” and not necessarily as accessible as his ever-popular Still Lifes or Landscapes.

Unknown Photographer, Untitled (Portrait of the Model for The Bather), 1885, Albumen silver print.

Also, regarding Cèzanne’s Portraits, the show touches on the Artist’s use of Photographs, particularly as source material for MoMA’s famous Painting, The Bather.

The Bather, 1885, Oil on canvas.

He was far from alone in doing this at this time, yet he and the work he created using them have entirely escaped any sort of negative connotations for doing so that so many more recent Painters have suffered, including the recently passed Chuck Close. Which makes me wonder why it suddenly matters. It doesn’t! Photographs are, and have been for many Painters, something akin to a sketch. It’s plain to see Cèzanne didn’t slavishly copy the Photograph as much as it became a reference.

The Bridge of Trois-Sautets, 1906, Pencil and watercolor on paper. This late work is unlike anything in Art history to its time (even by Kandinsky or Munch), especially his own Oil Paintings. Compare it with Monet’s Footbridges around the same time. Its atmosphere stands diametrically opposed to those of the great Painters of atmospheric skies, Turner or Whistler, and different even from Van Gogh, and strikes me as a work that has much to offer Artists today4.

While his Paintings are seen as the precursors of Cubism, Abstraction and a number of other “isms” I don’t subscribe to, Cézanne’s remarkable Drawings are impossible to simply characterize. Why are they so different than his Oil Paintings? I wonder if it had something to do with his lifelong disappointments in having work accepted by the Salon, the yearly Paris Art show. One observer noted Cèzanne carrying his canvases on his back like Christ carrying the cross to be seen by the judges2. He was rejected by them early and often. So, how would work like these late Watercolors be received by them? Well over 100 years later, they still have yet to have their day, particularly as influences on other Artists. Perhaps, Cèzanne Drawing will turn out to be that day. However, one great Artist has not only already been influenced by these works, he’s put his money into them. No less than 12 of the pieces on view in Cézanne Drawing are somewhat surprisingly labelled “Collection Jasper Johns”! Extraordinarily astute acquisitions that add yet another dimension to our appreciation of this legendary Painter who will be receiving his (covid-delayed) 90th Birthday Retrospective at The Whitney Museum shortly.

Self-Portrait, No date, Pencil on laid paper, One work from the Collection Jasper Johns.

Now that they’ve seen the light of day, perhaps Cézanne Drawing will inspire some to build on the Drawing’s ahead-of-their-time innovations and help them achieve some of the wide-spread influence on Art his Paintings have had. Their time has come.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Remember The Sun” by XTC from The Big Express, 1984.

“Squinting at the sun through eyes
Screwed up by a fireball
Tarmac on the road is soft
Chaff burns in a smoke wall
Yes, I’m weeping, a teardrop attack
I give emotion at the drop of a hat
When I remember days at school
I remember many things
But most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Sun that worked on overtime
Fueled our bodies, kindled fire in our minds”*

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You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. Roger Fry, Cèzanne- A Study of His Development, P.3 ↩
  2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩
  3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩
  4. I must admit, having had glaucoma in both eyes, that in looking at later Cèzanne or Van Gogh I can’t help but wonder if either or both suffered from vision problems. Most likely it was just sheer genius at work. Given how much speculation surrounds Vincent, in particular still, I think we would have heard more about this by now. ↩
  5. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩

The Met’s Alice Neel Love Letter To NYC

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
NYC has seen innumerable rough times. Too many for me to list here. Some of them I’ve lived through. During many of the hardest times the past 151 years The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870, has stood at 1000 Fifth Avenue where it remained open allowing countless citizens and tourists the opportunity to walk up its famous staircase and take respite in its hallowed halls among its countless masterpieces, a beacon of culture and a repository of some of the greatest achievements of creative mankind over the past 5,000 years.

Until March 12th, 2020, that is.

Home, again, for the first time in over a year. The Met’s Grand Staircase, March 27, 2021. Up to the left. Down to the right, please.

At 6pm that day The Met closed due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdown1. It remained closed until August 29th. Five and one half months. Unprecedented in its history. Unwilling to risk being indoors until I could be vaccinated I missed the shows The Met held during the first six months after its reopening.

When it announced Alice Neel: People Come First, conceived by Sheena Wagstaff, would open on March 22nd, 2021, I thought back to what I had said about Alice Neel: Uptown, one of my NoteWorthy Shows for March-May, 2017- “…the breath of fresh air it provided only hints at how much pent-up longing I think there is to see more of her work. The time has come!”

The entrance. The show opens with a nude. Pretty daring, but given how often Alice Neel asked her sitters to pose nude, fitting.

On March 27th that time did indeed come. Seeing the show a few weeks later once the vaccine kicked in I had one primary reaction-

What a terrific love letter to New York City! At a time when one may never have been needed more.

March 27, 2021.

Fittingly, when I went in March, only fellow New Yorkers were my fellow visitors. In Alice Neel: People Come First’s parade of over 115 works the endless variety of people from all races, colors, orientations, and occupations that makes New York City great and unique is what is REALLY on view in this show.

“For me, people come first. I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” Alice Neel2.

Yes, Alice Neel’s place among the Masters of 20th century Art, established, at long last, in her Whitney Museum Centennial Retrospective in 2000, is reaffirmed. Yes, there are facets of her work that have been overlooked and are now getting attention, like her use of abstraction. But, it’s all secondary to the first theme- as she, and the show’s title says, people come first. Alice Neel Painted “pictures of people,” as she said. She spent about 60 years doing just that and the show draws on her entire career in the generous 115 or so works on view.

Carlos Enriquez, 1926, left, and French Girl, 1920s, right. Mr. Enriquez, a legendary Painter in his own right, was Alice Neel’s first husband and father of her first child, Santillana, who died of diphtheria as an infant daughter, and her second child, Isabetta, to whom she would be estranged for much of Isabetta’s short life.

How was she able to have this career? Born and raised in Pennsylvania, after marrying Carlos Enriquez, who went on to become one of the most renowned Cuban Artists of the century, in 1925, Alice Neel moved with him to Cuba from 1926-7, then returned to Pennsylvania, where they broke up. From there she moved to NYC in 1927. Both of these early, marvelous, works strike me as standing apart from typical student efforts, showing the young, mid-20s, Painter breaking free to seek her own style, finding her essence, and achieving success as captivating works. Phillip Bonosky wrote of her in his Journal in 1957, “She’s worked out her own code of behavior, whose cornerstones are two: 1) her freedom to paint; 2) the well being of her 2 boys. For 1, she will surrender everything else, and what other people place high- the sanctity of one’s flesh in bed- she subordinates to this superior law of her life. And the second also comes lower- but higher than anything else but the first. What other people strive for and cannot live without- good furniture, good clothes, a conventional acceptance by society, etc., etc.- she gives up without any sense of loss whatsoever3.”

On this spot, behind the car, a brownstone stood in the 1930s where Alice Neel lived during the Depression, a few blocks from where I am writing this piece. It’s now part of a school building.

“Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto. I’ve lived all over this town,*” as David Byrne wrote in the lyrics for the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” the SoundTrack for this post.

She spent time living in  the Bronx and a few neighborhoods in Manhattan over 54 years here, including one a few blocks from where I am now, before moving uptown for good, first to East Harlem, and finally to West Harlem. She Painted wherever she was. Street scenes, still lifes, and “pictures of people,” related to her and not. No matter when, where or who she Painted, her work has the remarkable quality of both looking of its time and not looking dated now. That said, never fond of discussing possible influences, her style was always wholly her own and it evolved over her career.

“I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime. I might not ever get home,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

Ninth Avenue El, 1935. Night on West 14th Street at Ninth Avenue Painted at the peak of the Depression, the figures seem to carry the weight of the world with them. Looking at this now, and living in this area today, it’s hard for me, or no doubt most of my neighbors, to believe there was an elevated subway train here 90 years ago. It closed in 1940, only 5 years after this was Painted.

Standing on the same spot today in daylight. West 14th Street & Ninth Avenue, July 28, 2021, looking across to the Meatpacking District. The area is undergoing hard times, again. All the stores to my immediate left are For Rent, a large Apple store stands to my right. Today, there is not a hint that an elevated subway was once here.

“There isn’t much good portrait painting being done today, and I think it is because with all this war, commercialism and fascism, human beings have been steadily marked down in value, despised, rejected and degraded,” she explained in 19504.

Elenka, 1936, is a work that shows the way for much the Artist did the rest of her career with its subtle complexity. It’s a daring picture of a strong woman with an intense gaze reinforced by the strong colors and shapes surrounding her, contrasted with the femininity of what she wears. The background is partially nebulous and partially furniture or building. The somewhat straightforward pose gives the feeling of being caught off guard, which of course Elenka wasn’t.

It’s interesting that during her “today,” Artists including Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, to name two, were Painting portraits, though not nearly as well-known as they would become. Still, no matter what they, or anyone else was doing, Alice Neel, a humanist to the last, remained true to herself.

Futility of Effort, 1930. Alice Neel described this as one of her most “revolutionary” Paintings. Partily inspired by the death of her young daughter Santillana, partly by a news account of another infant death where the child choked on the bars of the crib while her mother ironed in the next room. It was shown on a wall by itself at the far end of a rectangular gallery.

She was also a survivor who persevered as a Painter as a single mother, virtually unprecedented among major Painters of the 20th century, or before, and a mother who lost an infant child,

Alice Neel, Nancy and Olivia, 1967, left, Vincent van Gogh, Madame Roulin and Her Baby, 1888. One of the highlights of the show was a gallery showing Alice Neel’s work in dialogue with Met Museum masterpieces by other Artists including Jacob Lawrence, Helen Levitt, Mary Cassatt, among others including Van Gogh, here. Alice Neel lost an infant daughter, and Vincent longed for a family fruitlessly his entire life. Knowing that, it’s hard not to read both of these works as autobiography, poignantly hung side by side.

But there were other sides to Alice Neel, the woman, besides the mother.  “I’m cursed to be in this Mother Hubbard body. I’m a real sexy person,” she once said[Met Alice Neel: People Come First Exhibition Catalog, P.2]. One way it came out is her penchant for asking her sitters to undress for their “picture.” A good number of them complied- men, women, pregnant women, and couples. Even Andy Warhol.

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around. This ain’t no Mudd Club, or C.B.G.B. I ain’t got time for that now,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

Andy Warhol, 1970, Oil and acrylic on linen. Alice Neel is revolutionary for the consciously “unfinished” look of a number of her Paintings, including this one, one of  masterpieces. Done less than 2 years after the assassination attempt on his life, according to Phoebe Hoban, the two Artists discussed doing the picture this way (half undressed) with eyes closed, making it close to an actual collaboration5.

The show featured a number of the nudes, including Alice Neel’s daring nude Self-Portrait, 1980, at age 80! She also trail blazed Painting pregnant women nude, and some of them were on view as well. Finally, there were numerous pictures of children, both hers, and neighborhood kids, as shown earlier.

“We dress like students, we dress like housewives. Or in a suit and a tie. I changed my hairstyle so many times now, I don’t know what I look like,*” from “Life During Wartime.”

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1972, all works are Oil on canvas, unless specified. “This captivating portrait …depicts artist and activist Irene Peslikis—a member of a new generation of revolutionary feminists that Neel began to paint in the early 1970s. Alice Neel’s relationship with second-generation feminism was sometimes strained, but she nonetheless supported—and was supported by—the movement.” @metmuseum.

Further to that quote from @metmuseum, I find the piece daring and free with a power that exudes from Ms. Peslikis’s gaze in a pose that is at once natural and ground-breaking, matched by an extraordinarily daring and free background. Alice Neel had gone on record6, powerfully, against Abstract Expressionism in its heyday. Her views changed over time. Here she is, using its techniques to marvelous effect in the background, as she does in a number of other works of the 1970s. She said then, “I don’t think there is any great painting that doesn’t have good abstract qualities.7.” I’ve been thinking about those words since I read that quote…

“I don’t know what you expect to do in the world, Alice. You’re only a girl.” Alice Concross Hartley Neel (1868-1954), Alice Neel’s mother8

Last Sickness, 1953, left, and City Hospital, 1954, Ink and gouache on paper. Alice Neel’s mother, was no fan of her daughter becoming a Painter, as the quote from her, above, shows, yet Alice never turned her back on her. She died of cancer shortly after the Painted picture. City Hospital shows her mother at the bottom with an overworked nurse looking over other patients at her.

Her mother, who took her to cultural events, Alice describes as “intelligent and well read” continued, “None of us will be remembered.” “Well, I am not so sure about Alice,” Alice remembered her father saying9.

Richard Gibbs, 1968- Everything about this work strikes me as daring. The pose looks like a very casual take on Rodin’s The Thinker. Mr. Gibbs’ shirt is a riot of color with lines that go in the opposite direction to the path laid out for the eye to follow from front to back. That path, itself, is an adventure. We are seemingly inside and outside at the same time. Part of a room or building occupies the right part of the piece, a sudden landscape occupies the left, leading to a shining sun high up top. This inside-outness reminds me a bit of Dali or de Chirico, but for Alice Neel, who is known as being a somewhat traditional Painter of portraits, or pictures of people, as she preferred, it’s quite daring. The shadows under the chair leave me wondering, too. What are they of? Then, there’s the skin tones. Marvelously flat on Mr. Gibbs’ legs, feet, arms and hands, and more layered and nuanced on his face.

Many of Alice Neel’s non-family subjects were people fighting for causes, people who lived what they believed, and that is what comes across in her “pictures” of them. Taken as a whole one of the things her work is is a miniature picture of New York during her lifetime. While there are some cityscapes, Alice Neel’s New York City consists of its people in all their ages, sizes, shapes and variety.

“Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?,*” from “Life During Wartime10.

James Farmer, 1964. The year this was Painted, the civil-rights leader was among those arrested at the 1964 World’s Fair for protesting segregation and racial violence.

Mostly an outsider to the big NYC museums and larger Art world during most of her lifetime (though she attended them and marched in protests of some of their more controversial shows), Alice Neel fought for her Art most of her life. She had to. She didn’t find a lot of supporters in the Art word until late in her life (the Whitney held a Retrospective in 1974, when she was 74, and the posthumous Centennial show in 2000, her last big NYC museum show before this one). Phoebe Hoban says that between 1927 and 1964 she had about 6 solo shows. From 1964 to 1984, she had over sixty11. The first full-length monograph of her work was finally published in 1983, a year before she passed (see BookMarks, below).

James Hunter- Where are you? Black Draftee-James Hunter, 1965. One of the most compelling works in Alice Neel’s career, Mr. Hunter appeared for one sitting and never returned. Alice Neel declared the work finished and its gone on to spellbind viewers ever since. (Including me, when I saw it last at Unfinished at The Met Breuer in 2015.) Drafted for Vietnam, his name does not appear on the Wall in Washington, DC. To this day, what happened to him remains unknown.

Listening to her recorded interviews she always makes a compelling case for work and anyone interested in her Art should seek them out online and watch or listen to those first before reading anyone else speak about her work. In this interview, I love how she immediately corrects anything the interviewer says about her Art that she doesn’t agree with!

“Transmit the message, to the receiver. Hope for an answer some day,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

The line for Alice Neel: People Come First on March 27th. I imagine it’s significantly longer now.

Standing in line at The Met, in the very halls she frequented, I couldn’t help wonder what she would have felt seeing the line of visitors stretching all the way down the long hallway waiting to see her work. The same work she mostly kept in her archives, as a picture in the show, below, depicts.

The archive of her work lining the walls of her apartment. Alice Neel hated to part with one of her Paintings and was known to Paint a copy when she did.

“The sound of gunfire, off in the distance. I’m getting used to it now,*” from “Life During Wartime.”

Living in Manhattan these past 30 years, it’s easy to relate to the solitary, single-minded sense of purpose her life exudes. “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do,” the age old quote goes. Alice Neel survived a lot of tough times. Now her Art is helping New Yorkers survive this horrible time by reminding us of who we are and what our strength is.

BookMarks-

The poignant inscription in a signed copy of Patricia Hills’ monograph says it all. Alice Neel died the following year. Photographer unknown.

The Alice Neel bibliography is relatively small but growing. Here are a few recommendations based on living for at least a year with each recommended book, each  used in preparing this piece.

Alice Neel: People Come First, Met Museum Exhibition Catalog, is the most up to date monographic overview of her work and career. It features the most current research and has the most images currently (mostly the works in the show which were exceedingly well chosen) in very good quality on good paper, many in a large size. Recommended as a first, or go-to, monograph on Alice Neel until a more complete look at her whole career is published.

Alice Neel, by Patricia Hills, will always be NoteWorthy for being the first full length hard-cover monograph on Alice Neel and the only one released during her lifetime. Many good sized illustrations in color. It was also done with cooperation with the Artist. It holds up well today and copies in Very Good or better condition are still reasonable. Recommended as a 2nd monograph on Alice Neel, it remains a valuable reference book for the reasons I mentioned.

Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, by Phoebe Hoban is another Art biography from Ms. Hoban. I found this one better than her Jean-Michel Basquiat bio, particularly when it comes to addressing the Art (a serious weakness of the J-M Basquiat book in my opinion). At the moment, there is no other full-length Alice Neel biography. Given Alice Neel’s steadily increasing popularity, and her increasing stature as an Artist, a woman and an influence, I suspect that will not be true indefinitely and a more definitive biography may be still to come. Done after the Artist’s passing it does not have Alice Neel’s input but it does have quotes from family members. Includes 23 pages of small illustrations in color and black & white. The binding is exceptional- rare for a large 500+ page paperback. Recommended, for now.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Life During Wartime,” with lyrics by David Byrne by Talking Heads from Fear Of Music, 1979. Regarding the references used above, check out the annotated lyrics on genius.com. Here it is performed live, at The Mudd Club, LA, of all places, on August 13, 1979-

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  1. The PBS series Inside The Met shows behind the scenes leading up to, during and after the shutdown. ↩
  2.  Mike Gold, “Alice Neel Paints Scenes and Portraits from Life in Harlem,” Daily Worker, December 27, 1950, p.11 ↩
  3. Phoebe Hoban, Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, P.236 ↩
  4. Mike Gold, ibid, p.11 ↩
  5. Phoebe Hoban, ibid, P.310 ↩
  6.  “I am against abstract and non-objective art because such art shows a hatred of human beings. It is an attempt to eliminate people from art, and as such it is bound to fail.” Mike Gold, ibid, p.11 ↩
  7. Met Alice Neel catalog, P. 104 ↩
  8. Met Exhibition Catalog, P.12 ↩
  9. Met Exhibition Catalog, P.18. ↩
  10. See the annotated lyrics, here. ↩
  11. Phoebe Hoban, ibid, P 254 ↩

Francisco Goya: Modern Art & Photography Begin Here

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

The seemingly all-seeing eye. Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 1, 1799, Etching, aquatint, drypoint, burin. The wall card reads- “In the first plate from the Caprichos, Goya presents himself as a sardonic observer of contemporary society.” Exactly what we’ll see in the rest of The Met’s Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Francisco Goya’s Paintings are on the “must-see” lists of many museum goers, particularly the 200 or so portraits he did of royal, aristocratic or upper-class patrons over his 39 years as a court Painter1. Like this one-

Francisco Goya, Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792), 1787-8, Oil on canvas. One of the most charming Paintings in The Met for many. I can’t help but think it’s also more. An allegory about the end of  innocence? On the right, small birds in a protective cage. On the left, a magpie is eyed by cats. Any wonder this was the last Goya portrait commissioned by the child’s father, the Count of Altamira? Herein lies a hint of what lurks in Goya’s Graphic work. Its young subject died at age eight, 4 years after posing for it. A final touch- the magpie holds Goya’s card with his signature in his beak. Met Museum Photo of the work unframed.

But, to get the full picture of Goya’s Art, I believe his graphic work deserves every bit as much attention. Yet, chances to see his Drawings & Prints in depth are rare due to the fragility and light sensitivity of the originals. In 2015, a complete set of Goya’s timeless Print series Los Caprichos (the Caprichos) was shown at The National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, which I wrote about here. 2015 also saw the last large Goya Retrospective in the U.S., Goya: Order and Disorder, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which I actually made a day trip out of town to see and wrote about in the same piece. 

Goya after Velazquez, A False Bacchus Crowning Drunkards, 1778, Etching. Goya achieved, and demonstrated, his mastery of of the challenging medium of Etching copying the earlier Spanish master as in this remarkable Print done when Goya was about 32. And, he had the confidence to modify the composition of one of the greatest Painters of all time.

In the intervening 4 1/2 years, I’ve been preoccupied, if not obsessed, with exploring Photography & PhotoBooks, so when I finally got to see Goya’s Graphic Imagination at The Met in April with about 118 Drawings & Prints, I wondered if I might be able to spot Goya’s influence on Photographers and Photography, and on Modern Art in general for that matter.

“Both types of works on paper are closer to one another than they are to Goya’s painting. Paintings are a public expression. By contrast, an album of drawings is intimate and personal. These smaller-scale works served as a platform for Goya to think through his most private ideas.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Goya’s eye, which seems to look askance at us in the Self-Portrait that opens Los Caprichos, up top, apparently never rested. He recorded much of what he saw in his Sketchbooks, which have largely survived. Over time, his beliefs ran in and out of sync with those of the powers that be, so he became adept at keeping his opinions to himself. It is in the privacy of these Sketchbooks that he gave full reign to what he felt about all he saw around him while keeping his position at court. He eventually rose to the exalted position of First Chamber Painter in 1799.

Title page to the first edition of Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), 1863, 24 years after the invention of chemical Photography. Met Museum Photo. Due to the low lighting in the show I was unable to take satisfactory pictures of much of the show without a tripod, so in those cases, I am using The Met’s Photos. This page was not included in the show.

A number of his Drawings became the basis of his Prints, including  Los Caprichos and later, inspired by the Peninsular War, 1807-14 and the Madrid Famine, 1811-12, Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). It was the 10 or so Prints from this series, equal parts “graphic” and revolutionary, on view in The Met’s show I looked forward to seeing most. Due to those ever-changing political winds, it wasn’t until 1863, thirty-five years after Goya’s death, that the world got to see his Fatal Consequences of Spain’s Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices, as he had originally titled a set of 85 Prints that he gave to an associate during his lifetime, when it was finally published under the title Los Desastres de la Guerra with 80 Prints2.

Plate 15 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘And there is nothing to be done.’ (Y no hai remedio.) Met Museum Photo.

“Every figure in Los Desastres de la Guerra plays a specific role, defined by gesture, expression and costume. Nothing is superfluous.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17

The series shows things never before seen in Art to that time, including graphic depictions of the horror of war, imprisonment and famine. About two hundred thirty years earlier, circa 1633,  Jacques Callot published his Print series Les Grandes Miseres de la guerre or The Miseries and Misfortunes of War. Of them, the Art Gallery of NSW, Australia, which owns a set, says– “Callot’s series is less an indictment of war than a moral tale about the unhappy consequences that befall the undisciplined soldier.” Callot’s Prints are in a long landscape format, and show what they depict at a distance. It is thought Goya owned a set of them, and they may have been an inspiration for him. In his series, Goya puts the action full frame presaging the words of Robert Capa, famed for his 20th century war & conflict Photographs, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

Plate 1 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Sad foreboding of what is going to happen (Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer), ca. 1815 (published 1863), Etching, burin, drypoint and burnisher. Met Museum Photo.

As powerful & profound as they are, there’s an element of them that is particularly puzzling. In more than one work, Goya’s caption gives the viewer the idea that what he’s showing are things he actually witnessed. DID Goya see the things he shows us?

DID he? Or, didn’t he actually see this happen? The title says he did. Plate 44 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘I saw it.’ (Yo lo vi.). Met Museum Photo.

There is some debate around this. Wikipedia says repeatedly that he went around and saw the battles of the Peninsular War- without quoting a source for these statements I have seen no where else. While it seems it would have been hard for him to miss the daily effects of the Madrid Famine going on around him, the Artist going to battle scenes is harder for me to imagine. He was in his 60s and had suffered a serious illness that left him completely deaf. If he didn’t actually go to them, he could have been inspired by news accounts or from the accounts those closer to the action.

Preperatory Drawing for Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.) Prado, Madrid Photo.

Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.). Here an extremely rare opportunity to compare the Drawing, above, with the final Print. Met Museum Photo.

At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain how much of what we’re shown, if any of it, the Artist actually personally witnessed first hand. I’ve come to feel that thinking about this is a waste of time. Goya was an Artist- not a Photographer. He was working before the invention of chemical Photography and setting down his ideas by hand on paper, stone or canvas. With all due respect to the skill of Artists who Drew and Painted down through history, Drawing & Paintings done from life or memory are incapable of showing us the real world as it existed. Time is a key element in Drawing & Painting and in the time it takes to make one the world has changed. The people in it have moved. The light has changed. Things have happened and finished. In war, particularly, things happen way too fast to be captured accurately in a Drawing, let alone a Painting. They can give us a sense of what happened. What Goya is showing us is “something else” than the full reality of the moment- even if he did see it happen right in front of him. It’s his vision of things. If he tried to render it accurately to the scene in front of him, it’s still only an approximation. We’re seeing it through his eyes, and, as becomes apparent as you look at his Drawings & Prints, he does have a point of view.

The line for Goya extends further down the hall to the left than you can see here. April, 2021.

After seeing them in the show, it’s hard for me to think that these unprecedented images are not precursors of so-called war and conflict Photography. After the show I began to look to see if the Photographers, themselves, acknowledged this. In 2005, the renowned British Photographer Don McCullin, renowned for his coverage of the Vietnam War, among numerous other conflicts over his long & eventful career, told the BBC “When I took pictures in war I couldn’t help thinking of Goya.” Elsewhere he said, “…if what happened in front of my eyes was like a scene out of Goya. I wasn’t there to make icons. I had to bring back information that could possibly prevent other such miseries.” In those words I feel a simpatico with what Goya might have been trying to accomplish in Los Desastres de la Guerra .

Garroted Man, 1776-78, Etching. Done at about age 30, Goya’s second etching! A forerunner of Los Desastres, is also one of his most unforgettable images. According to Janis Tomlinson, Garroting “was considered one of the more humane forms of execution3.”

If a Drawing is incapable of showing us the complete “reality” of a scene, then it is what some might call today, “conceptual.” I was struck by some similarities of Goya’s Prints with so-called “conceptual” Photographers, who modify or create scenes from scratch that they then Photograph, like Duane Michals, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson or Deana Lawson. Goya, too, may have been creating a scene on paper to make it express what he saw in his mind’s eye (keyword= may).

Plate 30 from The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra). Proof, without caption. Without the titles makes them infinitely harder to decipher. According to the wall card, here, people fall to the ground after a building explodes.

Yet, no writing about these work exists in Goya’s hand besides the captions on the plates.

“It is important to emphasize that the inscriptions are not titles. They are captions that encourage a potential understanding. The captions do not explain the work for us. The meanings are often unclear, but this isn’t because Goya was being obtuse. He was thinking through drawings and prints for his personal purposes, and as such, there is no need for him to explain their significance to himself. His works on paper are so internal and layered that they would have sparked multiple associations, even for Goya.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

So, the captions add another layer of mystery to what we’re seeing! Duane Michals captions many of his Photographs right on the print itself. Robert Frank wrote directly on the image as his career went on, and so does Jim Goldberg, among others. Coincidences? Possibly.

Jim Goldberg, Ron E., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 2014, Magnum Photos Print.

During the lockdown I read Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris. Among Photos taken from 1855 until very recently, Mr. Morris examines the work of the 1930s Farm Services Administration (F.S.A.) Photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the evidence that they may have modified the scenes of some of their most iconic F.S.A. images from the 1930s. Modifying a scene to make it closer to what the Artist or Photographer is seeing in his or her mind’s eye would make them kin to what we see in Goya’s Drawings & Prints. So, it doesn’t really matter all that much if Goya was actually present when the events he shows us were happening. “The FSA collection (in the Library of Congress) therefore offers scholars an unparalleled opportunity to place masterworks, such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), in the context of companion images taken on the same day. This visual evidence offers a much more reliable guide to the photographer’s original intent than the artist’s recollections recorded decades after the fact,” James Curtis, the author of Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered, said here. (The other images Dorothea Lange took that day in the archive may be seen here.) In my view, it doesn’t matter if the F.S.A. Photographers, “posed” subjects or modified scenes as Mr. Morris’ and Mr. Curits’ books suggest. Like it doesn’t matter if Goya saw “I saw it.” Even if, say Dorothea Lange, did modify the scene somehow4, she did not change the woman’s situation, which is the real and lasting point of the Photograph. At the end of the F.S.A. chapter in his book, Errol Morris concludes, “It is the idea that the photograph captures that endures 5.” It seems to me, regardless of their genesis, it’s exactly the same with Goya’s Prints & Drawings.

“The demise of Goya’s fortunes at Court has been attributed to his objections to the repressive nature of the restoration regime. Yet he had long survived within politically charged surroundings, and it seems likely he would have kept his political opinions to himself.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.221

Goya, Self-Portrait, c.1796, Brush and point of brush, carbon black ink, on laid paper, seen at the show’s entrance.

After escaping trouble for his views after the Peninsular War, it finally caught up to him leading to his leaving Spain and becoming an exile in France near the end of his life, where he died at 82 in 1828. His remains were later exhumed and reburied in Madrid in 1919. As far as being the possible “Father of Modern Art” goes, I think a great case can be made for his nomination. Goya’s extremely wide range of subjects, from the royals to the incarcerated preshadowed the work of many Artists & Photographers of the past century. And he never minced the Drawn line, or words, when calling out those he felt were wrong. When I say “Modern Art & Photography Begins Here,” I’m not so much referring to the stylistic innovations though they are there for all to see, and his later Paintings were certainly ahead of their time, I’m referring to the content, and the depicting of what was not seen in Art to that point. Goya’s Drawings & Prints, and his Paintings, like the 2nd & 3rd of May, 1802, break away from the chains of Pontifical or Royal commissions. They show us a world that is all too familiar to us today. A world that has seen no end of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

In considering Goya’s candidacy as the “first modern,” it feels that he lived too long ago to be considered. Yet, it’s interesting to realize that Goya was born in 1746 and died in 1828. J.M.W. Turner, who’s work is often seen as “modern” lived from 1775 to 1851. Charles Dickens, who’s novels captured the “modern world” as soon as anyone else’s, lived from 1812-1870. Edouard Manet, often mentioned as one of the first moderns lived from 1832, only 4 years after Goya’s passing, to 1883.  James McNeill Whistler 1834-1903 and Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890, was born 25 years after Goya’s passing. Chemical Photography was introduced to the world in 1839- eleven years after Goya’s death. Goya seems perfectly situated chronologically.

The Custody of a Prisoner Does Not Call for Torture (La seguridad de un reo no exige tormento)
ca. 1815; published ca. 1859. While not a part of the posthumous La Guerre set, Goya included a number of Prints of prisoners in the set he gave a friend during his lifetime. I’m also including this as an example of the show’s low, protective, lighting. This may be seen with better lighting in a Met Museum Photo, here.

Between his Paintings, his Drawings and his Prints, taken as a whole, Goya shows the full range of people, from all layers of society, from those of privilege to prisoners without privilege. People living in the utmost splendor to people starving to death, extending on what Rembrandt had done. Some of it was timely, referring to people and events only known to specialists and historians now. Much of it is timeless since human nature hasn’t changed. Met Curator McDonald sums this up-

“Not much changes. The same idiocy, cruelty, and violence take new shapes, but Goya captured those universal anxieties. So much of what we are dealing with now can be identified in Goya’s art—there’s politics, conflict, bloodshed, and ignorance of the impact of our actions fueled by stupidity and bad choices—the same old problems.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Plate 79 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Truth has died. (Muriola verdad). 1814–15, published 1863. The penultimate Print in the series. Met Museum Photo.

It was interesting to me that Goya’s Graphic Imagination. was on view a few hundred feet away from another major show of the work of another Artist who was focused on people: the famous and the already forgotten- Alice Neel: People Come First. It’s also interesting that both shows were up during the pandemic: our own 21st century horror show. As big a test of the resilience of New York as I hope to ever see.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Outside of Space & Time” by David Byrne & St. Vincent from their classic album Love This Giant.

BookMarks-
The Met’s catalog for Goya’s Graphic Imagination is exceptional. It features large, often full page plates of all the works on view on very nice stock and includes very insightful text from the show’s curators. These texts include numerous insights that weren’t included on the wall cards in the show. And so, it’s one of the better books on the subject of Goya’s Drawings & Prints and a very good place to start for those who want to know more about the show or the subject. Highly recommended.

The best overview of the work of Goya known to me is Janis A. Tomlinson’s Francisco Goya y Lucientes : 1746-1828 , published by Phaidon, which is my go-to book for all things Goya. In fact, I’ve relied so heavily on it that I am now on my second copy. Beware of nebulous listings on Amazon! This is a large book- in both hard & soft cover editions. There is apparently a subsequent smaller softcover edition I have not seen. For studying the Art, the large edition, which has over 250 images, is the one you want. Out of print, but quite inexpensive in Very Good condition, the hardcover is the way to go especially since it is really no more expensive than the softcover and its binding should last longer. 

The best overview on Goya’s Drawings is called simply that- Goya Drawings. Published by the Prado Museum, Madrid, who hold the world’s greatest collection of Goya’s work. It was one of my NoteWorthy Art Books of 2020. It also contains a few Prints but most of its 250 reproductions are of his Drawings, sectioned from all through his career with insightful text in English in a nice, smaller size.

Janis Tomlinson has also written two books about the prints.Graphic Evolutions The Print Series of Francisco Goya (Columbia Studies on Art) and Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la Guerra. Both are excellent and recommended, the latter the most comprehensive book on Los Desastres available. They are a bit harder to find in very good condition, but worth seeking out. Goya’s War contains reproductions of the all 80 published Prints in Los Desastres. It was only published in softcover. 

Photography Related-

Errol Morris’Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography is a fascinating deeper look at iconic Photographs starting with Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimean War, 1855, to current events, causing the reader to question his or her beliefs about just what these images say and what they conceal. Extremely wide-ranging it’s an essential book for Photographers, Art lovers, Art writers and anyone who cares about images.

James Curtis’ Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: Fsa Photography Reconsidered (American Civilization) is lesser known and a ground-breaking look at the work of the Farm Services Administration Photographers, including Walker Evans, Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange. It puts their most famous images into the context of the Photographer’s work that day and analyzes them in a bigger picture way revealing much that is not apparent in the one, famous, Photograph that was widely circulated.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

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  1.  Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.1 ↩
  2. Also, as Janis Tomlinson points out- “For if, as the artist himself admitted, only twenty-seven sets of Los Caprichos had sold in much better times, how could he hope to find buyers in a capital devastated by war for these images of brutality, sadistic indifference, and tragic resignation?” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17 ↩
  3. Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.44 ↩
  4. James Curtis interview with Errol Morrisin Morris’, Believing is Seeing, P.138 ↩
  5. Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing, p.185 ↩

Gerhard Richter’s Met Blockbuster: Open For Just 9 Days!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

UPDATE- July 16, 2020- The Met now lists Gerhard Richter: Painting After All on its “Past Exhibitions” page1, meaning it will NOT reopen!

After checking every day, the show appeared on the “Past Exhibitions” page on July 17th. I’ve enlarged the date section for legibility and added the red text…My original look at the show follows-

What if they mounted a blockbuster and nobody got to see it? 

Ahhhh….A major show covering TWO whole museum floors with about 100 Paintings? My idea of heaven…

As I write this in early June, 2020 what is known is that Gerhard Richter: Painting After All will be remembered as the last major show to be mounted at The Met Breuer (TMB) before The Met’s lease on the Marcel Breuer’s Madison Ave at East 75th Street building ends in July and The Frick Collection moves in while the renovations of their 1 East 70th Street home take place. What’s still unknown is how long the show ran for. It opened on March 4th, then “temporarily closed” after I saw it on March 12th, due to the coronavirus shutdown. That’s all of NINE days! The Met’s site says “Closing Date To Be Announced” on its listing, but what are their options for reopening it? With The Met’s lease on the Breuer Building ending in July, reopening it there would seem to have to come in June, which we are half-way through. On May 19th, Met CEO Daniel Weiss said that The Met “hoped” to reopen on August 15th, “or a few weeks later.” His announcement made no mention of TMB, but that timeframe would seem to rule out a TMB reopening. Moving it to 1000 Fifth Avenue might seem to be an option, terms of loans and space requirements for shows previously planned permitting. That might also put any number of employees at risk of the virus, though. Then, there’s this-

The X Factor. The show’s listing in the coming attractions section of MOCA’s site with a start date of August 15th.

This show was scheduled to open at MOCA, LA, on August 15th. So, there remains a chance Gerhard Richter: Painting After All (GR:PAA, henceforth) won’t reopen in NYC. IF that does come to pass, its 9 day run will be the shortest for a major show at a major museum here in my memory. That would be a shame considering the last major Gerhard Richter show in NYC was 20 years ago, a chance missed to assess how his older work looks now and see his more recent work. I started looking closely at Mr. Richter shortly after that NYC show, so in the past 20 years I’ve seen his gallery shows (of mostly new and recent work), but I’ve never seen 100 of his Paintings in one place. Being that Mr. Richter is 88, this may be the last major show of his work during his lifetime. The Artist did not attend the opening, though members of his family did, I was told by Met staffers.

Installation view, showing part of Strip, 2013, in the final gallery, seen on March 12th- hours before the show “temporarily closed.”

SPOILER ALERT! Since The Met’s site still says “Closing Date to be Announced” for this show, my hunch is that they will find a way to reopen it, especially because The Met originated GR:PAA (which is co-curated by Met Modern & Contemporary Art Chairman Sheena Wagstaff), and so has a sizable investment in it. My bet is that they will get an extension on the Breuer lease and use that to give this show a proper run, and The Met Breuer the fitting end I think it deserves. So, if you don’t want a peek at it yet, you may want to wait before proceeding. This piece will still be here when it doesn’t reopen! In which case, you’ll have to go to L.A. to see it, and I will be among the very few to have seen it here.

Installation view of the lobby on the 3rd floor, the concluding floor of the show. Surprisingly for a show called “Painting After All,”  works in glass greet the visitor on both floors. Mirror, 1986, shown here, right.

Installed on the 3rd and 4th floors of the Breuer, and beginning on 4, GR:PAA is not a retrospective and not a “greatest hits.” It lies somewhere between the two. It covers the whole of his career and juxtaposes many very familiar works, alongside some that are barely known to many here. I can’t help but wonder about the Artist’s involvement in GR:PAA, because the selection and arrangement of it has a bold feel to it. For a show that covers such a long period of time, it also has a bit of a sparseness, the work is not crowded together. Each piece has space to breathe. In the documentary Gerhard Richter: Painting, the Artist and his staff are shown using mockups of exhibition spaces and miniatures of each Painting as they work out and assess the placement of each. It’s hard for me to think that something similar didn’t take place with GR:PAA, though Ms. Wagstaff and her staff have repeatedly shown they are more than capable of mounting extraordinary shows without the Artist’s involvement, so in wondering, I mean to take nothing away from their achievement here, which is yet another Met Breuer show that will live on in memory and in discussion. Here, you have a major, living Artist. If you can get his involvement in your show, why wouldn’t you use it2? Whatever the case is, the selection and arrangement of the work take GR:PAA to another level.

“Art requires freedom…in dictatorships there is no art, not even bad art.” Gerhard Richter.

He would know. Gerhard Richter has lived in two countries where there was no freedom. He was born in Dresden in 1932, 11 months BEFORE Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. His father was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1938 and sent to the horror of the Eastern Front. The elder Richter didn’t return to Germany until 1946. Gerhard finished growing up in East Germany before managing a crafty defection to West Germany in 1961. He’s lived in Nazi Germany, Communist East Germany, West Germany and (the Federal Republic of) Germany in his lifetime.

Table, item #1 in the Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonne, though not his first work. In the Catalogue, this is listed under “Household Icons” in the “Photo Paintings” section of his site, yet, with its abstract elements it seems to straddle the fence between the two categories of Paintings his work is broken down into there.

These experiences have continually informed his work3 be it in the people, places and things he’s encountered in them, or in things that went on while he was living there that he didn’t personally encounter (like the Holocaust) in a career that is closing in on 60 years. Officially, the first work listed in his Catalogue Raisonne (CR 1), Table, is dated 1962, 58 years ago. Among works that pre-date Table are a Mural he Painted in 1955, and the work Elbe, included in this show in a Print version, was created in 1957.

September, 2005, Oil on canvas, 20 1/2 x 28 3/8 inches. Painted four years after 9/11, it’s one of the more haunting works done relating to the tragedy I’ve seen, perhaps because it mimics the view I had of 9/11 from my window. Placed in the show’s first gallery, it greeted this viewer like a cold smack in the face. It’s also the only work that references NYC in the show. Mounted on the same wall with Table, it’s another work that abstracts reality, from 40+ years later, reinforcing the fact that Photographs have been one source of Mr. Richter’s Paintings for at least 5o years.

In the intervening years, Gerhard Richter’s work has been marked by a variety in output that has ranged from Prints, Drawings, Artist’s Books, Sculptures, Films and Paintings. On his website, his Paintings are broken down into two main groups- “Photo Paintings” (further broken down to 36 categories!), and “Abstracts” (in 8 groups by date and 6 other groups).

Self-Portrait, 1996, Oil on linen, 20 1/16 x 18 1/8 inches. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at Gerhard Richter’s work. Now, his Photo-Paintings, to use his term, like this one, look fresher to me than I had remembered and fresher than a number of his Abstracts.

“To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing, what language can communicate.
Painting has nothing to do with that.” Gerhard Richter, 1966, quoted in the Documentary Gerhard Richter Painting.

Eight Student Nurses, 1966, Oil on canvas, refers to the mass murder of 8 young women by Richard Speck in Chicago, 1966. These are from his Grays, which evoke the effect of black & white Photographs.

As I walked through Painting After All, I was struck by how fresh the Photo Paintings looked…

S. with Child, 1995, (both)

which I didn’t get from a number of the Abstracts.

Seven Abstract Paintings, 2016, Oil on wood, each 15 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches. In these later abstractions, it looks like the Artist is using other techniques besides only the “squeegee” to modify the paint he had applied.

Part of the latter feeling may stem from the discovery that the late Jack Whitten had been extensively mining the squeegee technique Mr. Richter’s Abstracts are known for a full decade before he did. I’ve seen reference to Mr. Whitten using a squeegee in 19694, but he may have started before that5. The earliest Gerhard Richter squeegee work I seem to be able to find is from the mid 1980s.

Jack Whitten, Siberian Salt Grinder, 1974, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, seen at MoMA in 2019.

Still, some of the Abstracts did stand out.

Three of the six Cage Paintings, 2006, each Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 feet square, which get their own room, the other three facing these.

The legendary Cage Paintings were much more stunning in person than in the book of the same name, especially in a group of all six of them, set off in a central gallery of their own on the 4th floor. Seeing them, and being able to be able to walk right up to them and see the details of their layers was one of the highlights of the show.

Four Birkenau Paintings, 2014, Oil on canvas, each 8′ 6 3/8 x 78 3/4 inches faced four Prints made from them in the next to last room of the show.

The other highlight, among the Abstracts, and of the whole exhibition, was the chance to see his recent Birkenau series of Paintings and the Prints he made after them. Installed in the show’s penultimate room along with the only four existing Photographs taken by Sondernkommandos surreptitiously in the titular Nazi Birkenau death camp, Gerhard Richter had wanted for decades to do something regarding the Holocaust. He originally started by using the Photographs as the basis for his work, but soon started over from scratch, abstractly. The results are remarkable and unforgettable. They, literally, drip with pain, bloodshed and horror.

4,900 Colors, 2007, Enamel paint on aluminum.

And there were other “kinds” of abstractions, like 4,900 Colors…

Strip, 2013, Inkget print on fine art paper between acrylic and aluminum.

And Strip, 2013.

Strip began here. Abstract Painting, 1990, seen on the 4th floor, was digitally manipulated in Photoshop hundreds, maybe thousands of times until the thin bands of color we see in Strip are achieved. These would have to be magnified to see an actual image.

This version of Strip, seen in the show’s last gallery on the 3rd floor, began life as Abstract Painting, 1990, seen on the 4th floor. The process Mr. Richter used to create the works in his Strip series is outlined in the Artist’s book, Patterns, in which he took his Abstract Painting (CR: 724-4) and manipulated it in Photoshop, using a mirroring process, he then repeated over and over until the results were reduced to the fine lines of color seen in Strip.

My results after Step 1.

Using his process, I took Abstract Painting, 1990, which I just showed, and began to create my own Strip from it.

My results after Step 2.

I got to the third stage.

My results after Step 3.

Already you can see where this is going, given a few hundred, or more, steps. Even these preliminary results made me feel that this exercise was fascinatingly making some sort of order out of the seeming “chaos” of abstraction.

Installation view of the 4th floor, with the lobby, where the show begins to the right.

Or course, it will be a long time before the final assessment of Gerhard Richter’s work is done, and hopefully, a long time before he stops creating it.

Early, and recent work. Here, early, Four Panes of Glass, 1967 in front of Elbe, 1957/2012, along the back wall, Originally paint roller on paper, 1957, eprinted as inkjet prints in 2012.

“In 2020, art can be made from literally anything. So why still paint?” Met Museum Primer for GR:PAA

Recent. Installation view showing House of Cards (5 Panes), 2020, Glass and steel, the most recent work in the show. That’s the view across Madison Avenue coming in through Marcel Breuer’s window to the left, reflected in the glass.

Though works in other medium are included, as seen above, even with these forays, his Painting have continued, and continued to be the main focus of his work. Highlights from many of the major categories of Painting that Mr. Richter has worked in are included, including his hugely influential landscapes, like Seascape, 1975.

Seascape, 1975, Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 inches by 9 feet 10 1/8 inches. I was stopped by this work when I came across it.  It spoke to me of so much going on at that moment- the looming covid shutdown, which would begin for Art in NYC a few hours later, and along with it, the status of this show. How the world would be different after…Are the clouds clearing, or is a storm coming? Is that light a dawn, or a sunset?

For me, the title Gerhard Richter: Painting After All  has multiple meanings. It can be read as a statement that Gerhard Richter has continued to Paint, or gone back to Painting, after exploring other mediums, his entire career. It can also be read as a statement about all the tumult that has gone on in the Arts over his lifetime, during which time Painting has received unprecedented challenges from Photography and other mediums which have attempted to take it’s prime place among the visual Arts. Regardless of how I, or anyone, feels about a work here or there, the one thing that remains is that Gerhard Richter has consistently shown what Painting can do, what it’s capable of giving us, that other mediums can’t- including Photography, to this point. In doing so, he has set signposts for other Painters to follow to continue to mine what Painting is uniquely capable of.

It can, also, be read as a statement about the survival, and ongoing importance of Painting. After all.

Particularly after my 3+ year immersion in Modern & Contemporary Photography, I’ll go with that one.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is the album Richter 858 by Bill Frisell, that was originally released along with a volume of Gerhard Richter’s Abstract Pictures 858-1 through 858-8. In 2005, then rereleased on Soundlines.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

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  1. Here ↩
  2. This is probably discussed and clarified in the show’s catalog. Due to the shutdown, which has closed all bookstores, I have not seen the catalog. I may update/correct this when I do. ↩
  3. In works in the show, like Uncle Rudi and others, and work that are not here, like the intriguing October 18, 1977 series. ↩
  4. Here ↩
  5. In his remarkable book, Notes From The Woodshed, Mr. Whitten, a master woodworker, writes about  the making of the tools he used to make them- “The Developer” he called a large one. ↩

Vida Americana: Revolutionizing American Art

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

The museums and galleries will reopen.

The revolution comes north. The first major work by one of Los Tres Grandes in the USA. José Clemente Orozco, Reproduction of Prometheus, 1930. Jackson Pollock made a trip to see it, then called it “The best painting in the contemporary world.” He  kept a picture of it on the wall in his studio throughout the 1930s1.

Exactly when that will be in NYC is unknown at moment. Near the end of the voluminous list of unfortunate and tragic occurrences resulting from the pandemic in NYC is that the Year in Art shows, 2020, had gotten off to an exceptionally strong start here. A number of very good and important shows were forced to close early in their run, meaning relatively few got to see them. Unfortunate, not tragic. I’ve already looked at the most NoteWorthy, as I’m fond of saying, gallery show I’ve seen thus far this year- Noah Davis at David Zwirner. The most NoteWorthy museum show I’ve seen in 2020 is the landmark Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945 at the Whitney Museum, which opened on February 17th and “temporarily closed” on March 12th.

The entrance of Vida Americana (“American Life”), seen on March 11, 2020, the day before it “temporarily closed” for the coronavirus pandemic.

With over 200 works by 60 Artists, Vida Americana makes the heretofore overlooked case for the influence the Mexican Muralists, particularly Los Tres Grandes (“The Big Three”), Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, had on American Artists & American Art between 1925 to 1945. It does so convincingly in side by side installations and bringing to the fore little studied connections a number of major American Artists had with their Mexican counterparts. 10 years in its planning and 4 in creation, Vida Americana succeeds in making its case in resounding fashion with wonders seen now and likely never again according to the show’s curator, the inimitable Barbara Haskell, who’s been at the Whitney since 1975 2.

Times are hard everywhere as I write this as April, 2020 comes to a close. In researching Vida Americana, I was reminded that a little over 100 years ago, in 1918, the “deadliest pandemic in history” (according to John M. Barry’s book The Great Influenza) left 100 million people dead worldwide. A sobering thought at this moment.

Things can always be worse.

300,000 Mexicans died. Luckily, the three Artists at the center of Vida Americana, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, were not among them.

The first work in the show. Diego Rivera, Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928, Oil on canvas. Rightly famous for his incredible Murals, he was also a terrific easel Painter for his entire career, work that has yet to receive the attention on the level of his Murals. Are those some remnants of his passion for Cezanne, particularly in the clothes worn by the lead gentleman?

Though the decade-long Mexican Revolution ended 100 years ago in 1920, the final death toll may never be known. Today, estimates range between one million and three million, (not including that 300,000 who died in the 1918 pandemic). Diego Rivera spent the entirety of the Mexican Revolution studying in Europe on a grant from the governor of Veracruz to further his Art education. He precociously devoured the work of the great European Painters of the time, as can be seen in his easel Paintings that wonderfully echo El Greco and Cezanne, around 1913, and his adoption of Cubism, from 1914-18 or so. He knew Picasso and Georges Braque and was something of a competitor of theirs as he tried to make his own name, before finding his own style. In 1919, towards the end of his European period, Diego Rivera met David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was also in Europe on an Art scholarship. Vida Americana (American Life) takes its name from the sole issue of the journal Vida Americana that contained a manifesto of sorts written by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

José Vasconcelos, date unknown. As minister of education, he commissioned Artists, including Los Tres Grandes, to Paint Murals. And so, he had a major influence on Mexican history, and unintentionally, American Art history,

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, after the Revolution ended in 1920,  a profound change swept across Mexican society. New president Alvaro Obregon’s government enacted progressive social reforms that empowered workers and farmers. This transformative project wasn’t so simple. “There was no shared culture. No sense of a Mexican national identity,” Barbara Haskell said3. “The Mexican Revolution led to the need for Art that depicted the history and everyday life of the people.” President Obregon appointed José Vasconcelos as director of the Universidad Nacional de Mexico (National University of Mexico). He reached out to Diego Rivera in Europe in hopes of recruiting him for the campaign to create a new national culture. Backed by a Mexican government stipend, Diego Rivera, took a trip to Italy to study the great Italian Renaissance frescoes during the winter of 1920 in Verona, Padua, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, and Rome, where he saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. After he was sworn in as Mexico’s minister of education in the fall of 1921, José Vasconcelos commissioned Artists, including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to create grand public Murals depicting the history and everyday life of the nation’s people, and “Los Tres Grandes” were born. They rose to the challenge, and in the process, reintroduced the Mural to Western Art.

Installation View. My mission? Get this shot without people in front of the Art, which includes two rarely seen works by Frida Kahlo.

Vida Americana is so big, with so many pieces drawing one’s attention, so many connections leaving much to study and ponder, in the one visit I was able to make I had to focus on, first, seeing it all, and second, on how the Mexican Muralists directly influenced Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, two Americans who’s paths have long intrigued me.

One example of how extraordinarily this show was hung throughout. Jackson Pollock, Untitled, c1938-41, Oil on linen, 22 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches, David Alfaro Siqueiros, War, 1939, Nitrocellulose on composition board, 48 5/8 x 63 7/8 inches, Jackson Pollock, Composition with Flames, 1936, 26 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Our Present Image, 1947, 87 3/8 x 68 11/16 inches, Pyroxylin on fiberglass, 87 3/8 x 68 11/16 inches, left to right.

Fast forwarding from 1920 to my own teen years, Jackson Pollock and Edward Hopper were the two Artists who planted stakes in my mind for modern American Art, after centuries of European domination that culminated at the time with the all-encompassing brilliance of Picasso. Of course, they had come on the backs of almost 200 years of earlier American Artists before my time, yet American Art seemed to be playing second fiddle the Europeans until the post-Second World War years. It was easy to get lost in the Americanism of Messers Pollock and Hopper and easy for me to relate to them particularly since both spent most of their career in NYC. Greenwich Village was home for Edward Hopper for about 50 years, and Jackson Pollock legendarily frequented the Cedar Tavern and other bars in the area, while living with his wife, Lee Krasner, in Springs, Long Island, where I indelibly visited his studio in 1999. In looking through his career, it was well-known that he came here to study at the Art Student’s League with Thomas Hart Benton. “He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into non-objective painting,” Jackson Pollock later said reflecting on studying with Thomas Hart Benton4.

Jackson Pollock, Untitled, 1938-41. This “pre-drip” period fo the Artist’s work remains understudied and under-appreciated in my view. Whereas the journey Mark Rothko took from figuration to abstraction is interesting, Jackson Pollock’s is downright fascinating. Here, in this stunning work, the figures break up with such intense rigor and stunning color, it really does make you wonder where it was all going to lead. It also makes me wonder how many other Artists would have been content to continue Painting just like this, a very brief period in Jackson Pollock’s brief career.

After leaving Thomas Hart Benton, what always mystified me was how Jackson Pollock became “POLLOCK” to quote the title of the film made some years back- the Artist who burst on the scene, with a never before seen style that revolutionized what Painting could be in the late 1940s and early 1950s before his tragic death on August 11, 1956 at 44. I even wrote a piece with that title after the most recent MoMA Jackson Pollock show in 2016, Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey 1934-54. Truth be told, looking back on it, though there were some clues in that show, I remained puzzled at how the Artist came up with his style, which has been called everything from “dripping,” to “splash and dash” to fill in your own, here. We know now that all of these terms sell Jackson Pollock’s formidable technique very short, as is demonstrated here.

“I simply paint the life that is going on at the present—what we are and what the world is at this moment. That is what modern art is.” José Clemente Orozco

Jackson Pollock, The Flame, 1934-38, Oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, left, and José Clemente Orozco, The Fire, 1938, Oil on canvas, right. Seeing these works side by side was an eye-opening revelation for me.

José Clemente Orozco was the first of Los Tres Grandes to visit the USA in 1917-19, living in NYC and San Francisco. In 1930, he was commissioned by Pomona College in Claremont, California to paint a mural in the student cafeteria. Prometheus became the first true fresco ever painted in the USA.  Jackson Pollock made a special trip to see it. He called it, “The best painting in the contemporary world5,” and kept a picture of it on the wall in his studio throughout the 1930s. At the Whitney, there is a large, though reduced, reproduction of Prometheus (see the first picture in this piece), along with a few other, smaller, works by José Clemente Orozco that are hung next to early works by Jackson Pollock. HERE was the long-awaited first eureka moment in my quest for insights into Mr. Pollock’s work. The similarities in elements, even styles, between  them when seen side by side were beyond compelling. They were revelatory.

Jacob Lawrence, Selections from The Migration Series, 1940-1, Casein tempera on hardboard. On the wall card, it says, “Lawrence credited Orozco in particular with inspiring his ambition and his use of bold colors and architectonic forms.”

On an adjacent wall was an installation of selections of the work by Jacob Lawrence that seemed to take Mr. Siqueiros’ ideas in different and unique directions. I looked up to see if there was a now lit lightbulb hanging over my head. It wouldn’t be the last time.

David Alfaro Siqueiros, center, and Jackson Pollock, right, in Union Square, NYC, 1936, Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution Photo.

David Alfaro Siqueiros was the last to arrive in the USA. While each of Los Tres Grandes were on the cutting edge, if not the edge, socially and politically, he took it further. He believed that revolutionary ideas required revolutionary materials and techniques. In 1936 he established the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop in Union Square, a stone’s throw from where I sit writing this, which he referred to as a “Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art.” Some 30 years later another Artist would explore “new materials and techniques” when Andy Warhol moved his Factory to Union Square. Among the students at the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop was Jackson Pollock, who was about 24, and who had been without a teacher since Thomas Hart Benton moved from New York to Missouri in 1935. “One anecdote recalls Siqueiros constructing something resembling a Lazy Susan, filling it with paint, and spinning it atop a horizontal canvas ”a predecessor to Pollock’s later drip technique6.”

David Alfaro Siqueiros, The Electric Forest, 1939, Nitrocellulose on cardboard, 28 x 35 inches, left, Jackson Pollock, Landscape with Steer, c.1936-7, Lithograph with airbrushed lacquered additions, 15 7/8 x 22 7/8 inches.  It’s interesting that while David Alfaro Siqueiros’s works are often political, Jackson Pollock’s don’t appear to be.

Later in the show, Gallery 11 is devoted to the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop. Here, a David Alfaro Siqueiros was hung next to a Jackson Pollock, and now I could feel the figure breaking down even more. Complete abstraction is not far away. The technique was getting wilder and more experimental. Now, it wasn’t that big a jump at all in my mind from works like Landscape with Steer to a work like his 20 foot long Mural, 1943, in a genre that itself would appear to be a nod to the influence of Los Tres Grandes. For me, this was the biggest takeaway among many, from Vida Americana. But, the joys of the show weren’t solely technical or historical.

Finally! The scene shown earlier, sans viewers. Frida Kahlo, Me and My Parrots, 1941, 32 5/16 x 24 3/4, left, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Calla Lily Vendor, 1929, 45 13/16 x 36 inches, center, and Frida’s Two Women, 1928, 27 3/8 x 21 inches, right. All three are Oil on canvas.

Walking through the show, all three Artists are well represented, as are a number of other lesser-known Mexican Artists of the period. Frida Kahlo is not one of them. Perhaps as popular, if not more popular, than any other Artist represented in the show, her possible influence on American Artists from 1925-45 is curiously not touched on. Perhaps, it’s taken for granted that her example and influence have never stopped influencing Artists and the general public?

Out of focus shot of the installation showing the 2 Fridas, far right, facing 2 works by Diego Rivera.

Even not as well known is that it was an American who was Frida Kahlo’s first important collector. In 1938, when she was still an unknown in the US, the actor and Art collector Edward G. Robinson visited Diego Rivera in Mexico City. After selecting some works by Mr. Rivera, the Artist led him into Frida’s workspace. He bought 4 Paintings from her for $200.00, each(!), her first major sale7. To that point she had often given her work away. After Edward G’s purchases she said, “This way I am going to be free.” She didn’t have to ask Diego for money. This American had had a real influence on this great Mexican Artist. 

Frida is represented here by two beautiful examples of her work, including the stunning Self Portrait Me and My Parrots, 1941, beautifully installed facing two large works by the husband she married twice, Diego Rivera.

In looking at the work of Diego Rivera, it’s interesting to me that his figures seem to vary between the stereotyped and the specific and you’re likely to encounter either as you move from work to work of his. In both of these works, depicting specific people doesn’t seem to be his point. In many other works, including Man at the Crossroads, 1933, which he Painted for Rockefeller Centers, his inclusion of a portrait of Lenin, and his refusal to remove it, led to the work’s destruction. Elsewhere, he includes a number of his lovers, his wife, Frida Kahlo, and numerous other known persons, including Charlie Chaplin, and self-portraits.

Diego Rivera, Man Controller of the Universe, 1934, reproduction of the Mural at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

None of the three members of Los Tres Grandes were strangers to controversy, with, perhaps, Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, 1933, Rockefeller Center commission being the most legendary incident. Man at the Crossroads was produced in a revised version as Man Controller of the Universe or Man in the Time Machine, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), Mexico City, in 1934. A stunning reproduction of it occupies the entire wall, and windows, that face the High Line, and is accompanied by a huge study.

In Gallery 3, titled “Siqueiros in Los Angeles,” another of the highlights for me were two loans of major works by the great Philip Guston.

Philip Guston, Bombardment, 1937-8, Oil on canvas, 42 inches.

Bombardment, 1937-8, one of the Artist’s masterpieces, from the Philadelphia Museum It’s as near to a “perfect Painting” as one can imagine, unique in Art history, and a work that deserves even more attention than it already has, if one can say that about a masterpiece. Securing the loan of it for this show was a major coup. My look at Philip Guston: Painter at Hauser & Wirth a few years back proved a bit controversial, but I make no bones of my admiration for his work before and after his “abstract period,” which I have continued to try find a way in to. It’s gotten easier. But here, in Bombardment, we have a work that is a one of a kind. A rare modern circular Painting (harkening back to the Tondo in the Renaissance, one of Philip Guston’s favorite periods of Art) in which motion, energy, death and destruction find no resting place in a brilliantly orchestrated “explosion” of paint. A work like this would be impossible in a Photograph. It’s also hard for me to look at and not think of Picasso’s Guernica, a mural, also from 1937, and both inspired by the Spanish Civil War, though they couldn’t be more stylistically different. Stylistically, it does make one think about the possible influence of David Alfaro Siqueiros, who Philip Guston had served as an assistant for. Looking at it closely, though it’s “only” 42 inches in diameter it feels a bit like a mural, not unlike another major work by the Artist nearby. 

Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Jules Langsner, Reproduction of The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism, 1934-5, Dimenseions and materials not stated.

Here was an amazing model for Philip Guston’s legendary early Mural collaboration with Reuben Kadish and Jules Langsner, The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism, 1934-5, something I never even knew existed. Murals on walls are not tranportable. Yet, throughout this show the curators continually find innovative ways of “bringing” them here and making them a part of the show- like this, and like Prometheus, shown up top, and the study for one of Diego Rivera’s “Portable Murals” for MoMA seen further below. Amazing. 

Detail. I would guesstimate this space is about 12-14 inches tall. The real one is over 1,000 square feet.

Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish were both about 23 when David Alfaro Siqueiros called them “the most promising young painters in either the US or Mexico.” He urged them to come to Mexico where he helped them secure a 1,000 square foot wall where they Painted The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism in the courtyard of the University of Michoacan, Morelia. Due to controversy over its depiction of the catholic church, the Mural was hidden from view for 40 years until it was accidentally discovered in 1973, yet it languished for a further 30 years until efforts began to restore it. Though very small, the model gives the viewer a sense of wonder that the Artists could envision the daring and monumental composition they created.

Thomas Hart Benton, Six Panels from American Historical Epic, 1920-28, Oil on canvas mounted on wood, varying sizes. Though panels, these terrific works were begun before Los Tres Grandes created their Murals, yet they share much in common, particularly its depiction of history. On the wall card it states, “Believing that art’s role was to tell the truth, Benton refused to sanitize history. Thus this mural cycle celebrates American history while also drawing attention its environmental and social injustices.” Exactly what we see in the work of the Mexican Muralists.

Diego Rivera, with his wife Frida Kahlo arrived in the US in November, 1930 to open a retrospective of his work in San Francisco, which was followed by one at the newly opened MoMA, NYC the following year. By that point, he was considered “the hero of the Western world, who embodies the spirit of the Mexican revolution8.” “His idea about creating a national epic (in his Murals) was something that would also be very influential on American artists,” Barbara Haskell added9.

Diego Rivera, Pneumatic Drilling, 1931-2, Charcoal on paper, 97 1/4 x 76 7/8 inches. Apparently a full size Drawing for one of the Portable Murals the Artist did for MoMA in 1931. About this work, MoMA said in 2012, “The day after Rivera arrived in New York City, the New York Herald Tribune reported on his plans to “paint the rhythm of American workers.” Rivera later identified this scene as depicting preparations for the construction of Rockefeller Center, which was still in its early stages when he arrived in New York10.” These are the kinds of scenes many American Muralists would do in their WPA FAP Projects, commencing a few years later.

The influence of the Mexican Muralists on the WPA Federal Art Project, 1935-43 is another revelation of Vida Americana. Reintroducing the Mural in Western Art brought it out of the church and into the realm of Public Art. At its peak in 1936, the Federal Art Project employed 5,000 Artists, possibly double that over the 8 years it existed, producing 2,566 Murals and more than 100,000 easel Paintings. It’s obvious, to me, that in looking at the Murals they produced many of them seem to follow in the footsteps of their Mexican counterparts, stylistically, and in their content, many of the Murals belied the influence of the Mexican Artists who’s works were steeped in history and the life of everyday people and workers.

Michael Lenson, Mining (Mural Study for Mount Hope, West Virginia Post Office), c. 1933-34, Tempera on wood, top, Xavier Gonzalez, Tung Oil Industry (Mural Study for Covington, Louisiana Post Office), 1939, Gouache, pen and ink, on pencil on paper mounted on cardboard.

Once you start looking for the influence of the Mexican Artists included in Vida Americana, particularly that of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, you begin to find it turning up all over and in surprising places. Add to this the incalculable influence of Frida Kahlo, as an Artist, as a woman, and as an unconquerable human being, it turns out, as Vida Americana finally demonstrates, the influence of Mexican Art on American Artists from 1925-45 rivals that of any other.

March 11, 2020. A Whitney staff member speaks about “Siqueiros in Los Angeles.” It might be a while before we see this again.

It will be very interesting to see how the Whitney, and all the museums, handle their schedules, and the virus, when they reopen. Will shows that were up when they temporarily closed be extended? What will that do to their future exhibitions and loans? It all remains to be seen.

The curtains have been drawn. For how long? A view of the Hudson River from the fifth floor behind the show. The former Department of Sanitation complex directly across the West Side Highway, which I mentioned in my piece on the Whitney building, has now been dismantled in preparation of…? What will the future bring?

As I write this in early May, it looks like Vida Americana will reopen giving others a chance to see this landmark show, in my view, the first one mounted in the Whitney’s new building (Thus far, I’ve written about their new building, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Stuart Davis, Grant Wood, Laura Poitras, the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and other smaller shows). In the meantime, having the chance to see it once has given me much to think about during this pause. While the world on the other side of the pandemic will be different, so too will be the way I henceforth look at 20th century American Art history.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Mexico” by Morrissey from You Are The Quarry.

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  1. Whitney Museum introductory video ↩
  2. Comments from Ms. Haskell in this piece are excerpted from her remarks at the Press Preview, unless otherwise noted. ↩
  3. Here. ↩
  4. Here ↩
  5. per Barbara Haskell ↩
  6. Here ↩
  7. Here. ↩
  8. Whitney Museum video ↩
  9. Here ↩
  10. Here. ↩

Noah Davis: The Art of Vision

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Art & Artists can come from anywhere at any time. Even from unexpected places, like a housing project. Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque, 2014, Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches. Pueblo del Rio, 1941-2,  is a housing project designed by Paul Williams at 52nd Street and Long Beach Avenue, Los Angeles, one of two works in the show set there. African-American Architect Paul Williams was a big influence on Noah Davis, according to his chosen curator Helen Molesworth, and he set other Paintings among Paul Williams buildings.

There is, sadly, no shortage of brilliant younger masters who left us far before their time. The tragedy endures but their Art prevails, and in the end, assumes a life of its own. In Contemporary Art, perhaps no one known to me seemed to do more as an Artist, curator, and visionary in as short a time as the late Noah Davis did before he passed from a rare soft tissue cancer at just 32 on August 29, 2015. Now thirteen years out from my own cancer treatment, the variety of cancers I hear and read about never ceases to astound me. One thing my journey through it taught me was that no two journeys are alike. Unlike mine, in Noah Davis’ case, cancer ran in his family, claiming his dad a few years before it took him. For some perspective (no comparisons intended)- Mozart died at 35. Raphael was 37. More recently, Jean-Michel Basquiat was 27. Music has Jeff Buckley, at 30, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, both 27, among a long list of others. Photography has Francesca Woodman, at 22. Literature, and humanity, has Anne Frank, at just 15, and on and on…

Untitled, 2015, Oil on canvas, 32 x 50 inches. Of this late work, show curator Helen Molesworth spoke about the line between the two women on the couch in her gallery talk. The separation and isolation between two so close together on barely half of the couch is compelling in a Hopperesque way, yet, I haven’t been able to summarize everything this fascinating piece says to me because every time I look at it, I see something else. I see some of what I see in Deana Lawson’s work, some of what I see in Kerry James Marshall’s, Francis Bacon, and there’s a Rothko-with-a-difference in the background, yet what strikes me most is that in this work, as in any number of other works on view Noah Davis is entirely on his own. He has studied, learned, assimilated, and then staked out his own turf as a wholly formed Artist to be reckoned with does. In the moment I shot this picture, the feeling that I was standing in front of a masterpiece was undeniable.

I’ve been blessed with knowing some, and working with some others, who left far too soon. I met the incandescent Jaco Pastorius in 1976 at the release of his now classic debut solo album at Peaches Records Store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I watched as he put his hands in wet cement on the store’s “walk of fame” outside along Sunrise Boulevard (which I believe is still there) that evening never imaging he would leave us a scant 11 years later. I spoke to him a number of times over those years and we both wound up (independently) in NYC shortly before his tragic murder at just 35. I worked with the late, brilliantly talented, Mark Ledford, and worked with the equally brilliant Thomas Chapin, on three albums, both of who passed at, or before, 40 in the early stages of the prime of their careers, and their lives. I think of all three of them every single day. Though the passage of time eases some of the pain, in my experience, loss is something that does not go away.

Waiting Room, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 80 x 65 inches. In many of his works, a space opens up that sometimes seems to be an abyss. Here, the abyss is above us and two figures in the upper distance appear to be looking down on the scene below. Is the Waiting Room an “abyss,” where the outcome (possibly to be revealed  behind those large white doors) is unknown as is the effect it might thave on life to come? It can also have that surreal, “Is this really happening?” feel to it. Like any work of Art, it’s open to whatever the viewer may see in it. This was, however, Painted at about the time Noah Davis was diagnosed with cancer, after his father was.

But, thank goodness we have what they created- their Art, their Music, their words, and what they taught us. Us. Everyone whose lives were touched by all of these Artists are part of their legacy.

I never had the good fortune to meet Noah Davis, who was born in Seattle, and studied at Cooper Union in Greenwich Village, becoming something of a sensation here about a decade ago before leaving without graduating around 2004 (because he felt that his education was no longer pushing him, it is said), and moving to L.A.. I was only casually familiar with his work until I walked into David Zwirner on 19th Street, where his Art and his legacy filled no less than three entire galleries.

Imaginary Enemy, 2009, Oil on wood panel, 84 x 98 inches. Does the figure in white on the right, with what appears to be a cup on his head, have one foot on a portal? Or? The figure approaching on the left appears to be n flames. The strange, angular plane behind him has the effect of another dimension, as in Cubism. I’m still enjoying wrestling with this one, too, but I will say there are elements that remind me of Neo Rauch.

My mind was blown by all I saw. Noah Davis was, and is, a major figure in the Art of our time- in more ways than one.

Untitled (Birch Trees), 2010, Oil on canvas, 54 1/2 x 36 1/2 inches. Many of Noah Davis’ Paintings include nebulous, mysterious faces and heads. Maybe I’ve been looking at too much Francis Bacon this past year, but I find them unique and surprisingly compelling, given their frequent lack of features.

My perception had been that at 32 he was still developing, pursuing his own style- as most Artists in their early 30’s are. Ha! As I moved from work to work, I saw an Artist who was completely in control of a full range of styles, which he could dip into at will and which only hinted at influences in tantalizing and intriguing ways, while being wholly his own. Work after different work. How is this possible? The range. The depth. The power. It was all there in the service of his vision.

The Last Barbecue, 2008, Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 inches. Here, the faces are more defined. The group portrait on the left in countered by the odd triple portrait on the right behind the lid of the barbecue, and the scene in the center is surreal, disturbing and puzzling. It is an explosion, or? Looking at it, it was hard not to think of Kerry James Marshall’s Bang, 1994, a 4th of July barbecue scene.

Flashback- November 12,2016 at Kerry James Marshall: Mastry at The Met Breuer. KJM’s Bang, 1994, Acrylic and oil on unstretched canvas(! Notice that it’s tacked to the wall.), 103 x 114 inches.

Before he passed, Mr. Davis asked Helen Molesworth (who, a few years ago gave us the landmark Kerry James Marshall: Mastry Retrospective that I wrote about after its Met Breuer stop) to be his curator. The Zwirner show, which Ms. Molesworth has brilliantly selected and installed, is not arranged chronologically, which I am thankful for. It serves to downplay the “end” and the tragedy of Mr. Davis’ early loss and put the focus squarely on his Art and his accomplishment, where it belongs. (By my count, only 3 of the works did not have owners listed on the checklist.) Each work dialogs with other pieces from a few years later or earlier in ways only someone intimately familiar with the Artist and the work could bring us, which, by itself, sets this apart from most gallery shows of deceased Artists. Her work hasn’t ended here. Ms. Molesworth, who was controversially fired from her post at MOCA in 2018, has also been busy creating an upcoming monograph on Noah Davis, interviewing those who knew the Artist, due to be published this fall, which should be a slam dunk candidate for one of the most important Art books of the year, if not the decade.

1975 (8), 2013, Oil on canvas in artist’s frame, 49 q/w x 73 1/2 inches.

The show featured “fantastical” work, like Imaginary Enemy, alternated with domestic and family scenes. 1975 (8), 2013, was based on a Photograph from the 1970s Davis Family Photo Archives. It reminds me of the mural his mentor and friend Henry Taylor did a few years ago for NYC’s High Line.

Single Mother with Father Out of the Picture, Date unknown, Oil, acrylic, and graphite on canvas, 40 x 30 1/4 inches. There’s an elegance and a timeless, haunting, beauty to this work, which though all too common in our world, I can’t recall having been the subject of a Painting before.

Mr. Taylor has written eloquently about his friend who was 30 years his junior and the effect and influence Noah had on him, his work and his career. One of the more important Painters of our time, reading his words is eye opening, an important testament to Noah Davis’ legacy.

Untitled (Moses), 2010, Oil on linen on wood panel, 8 x 10 1/4 inches.

Perhaps none of these familial works is more poignant than the smallest Painting in the show, Untitled (Moses), 2010, 8 x 10 1/4 inches, showing his son, which may be based on another Photo from his family archives. In this remarkable, small, work, unique among Artist’s portraits of their children known to me, His son Moses has one foot in the water in the sink and one out, as if already leaving. The world shown in the window is dark.

But, as the remarkable, both precocious and fully formed mature works his Paintings are, there was more. Much more.

The Underground Museum is an ongoing Monument to the legacy of Noah Davis. Here, a model of it, showing its facade, with a mockup of the show ARTISTS OF COLOR, 2017-8, curated by Noah Davis. Mr. Davis left the plans for 18 shows for the UM, as it’s known, when he passed. After finding the space, Noah, his wife, Karon, and their baby, Moses, lived in the UM while it was under construction.

Having dealt with galleries early on, Noah Davis was one of those who came to feel the gallery model doesn’t work for them (something I’ve heard in innumerable conversations). Not an “established” Artist with big resources by any means, he nonetheless then dared to set out to forge his own path. With his wife, Sculptor Karon Davis, he took over 3 storefronts at 3508 West Washington Boulevard in the West Adams section of L.A., and opened what they christened the “Underground Museum” to bring museum quality Art, for free, to an area that was “underserved” by existing institutions.

“Noah wanted a space where he could show the work of himself and his friends. He wanted a space that could exist outside of the gallery/museum matrix,” Helen Molesworth said in a talk she gave at the opening.

The daring of that is only topped by his vision.

Noah Davis speaking in front of LA Nights, 2008, Oil on wood panel, 25 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches, which was also in this show. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriquez/WireImage.

In the first show he mounted at the Underground Museum, Imitation of Wealth, Noah recreated well-known works of Art by Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, On Kawara, Robert Smithson and others that he wasn’t able to borrow the originals of so that the people in this underserved area could experience them. For me, it’s another indication of wide-ranging his knowledge of Art history and his taste was. Robert Rauschenberg famously erased a De Kooning Drawing, but I can’t think of any other Artist who has done such a thing and created an entire show of “pseudo reproductions.” As a first show, Imitation of Wealth was both an auspicious “Hello,” and a shot across the bow of the Art world.

Noah Davis’ first Underground Museum show, Imitation of Wealth, reinstalled at MOCA’s Storefront space in 2015.  The imitation of a “date” Painting, Imitation of Om Kawara. Oct 7, 1957, left, happens to be his father’s birthday. Noah Davis’ Imitation of Marcel Duchamp, 2014 (Bottle Rack) is in front of it, Imitation of Don Flavin (lamp) behind the door, and on the far right, behind his Imitation of Jeff Koons (vacuum on a vitrine), and his Imitation of Robert Smithson with sand and mirrors to the far right LACMA Photo by Fredrick Nilsen.

Helen Molesworth, at the time, Chief Curator of MOCA was impressed enough with his idea to make a three year arrangement with UM to collaborate! An arrangement like this is unheard of. Tell me the other case where a world class museum has made an arrangement like this with an Artist in his early 30s to lend Art and work together to present shows in THEIR space. MOCA reinstalled Imitation of Wealth in their Storefront space in 2015, where it opened the day he passed away. He did live to see works from MOCA lent to the Underground Museum.

Noah Davis knew what was “right” for his Art, and as part of that he also had a vision of the future, of bringing Art to the people, for free. But even by 32, he moved past the vision to create the reality. Today, the UM is an important venue, one that has featured the work of Kerry James Marshall, William Kentridge, Henry Taylor, Kara Walker, and Deana Lawson, Kahlil Joseph, Noah Davis’ brother, among others.

Of all the works in the show, Painting for My Dad, 2011, is the most haunting for me- perhaps the most unforgettable Painting I’ve seen in years. It was Painted while his father was in hospice with terminal cancer. We see his Dad about to embark into an unknown, dark, land with a lantern. The landscape, which strikes me as being distantly descended from Cezanne (which I also felt in Imaginary Enemy, shown earlier) in Noah Davis’ own way, is typical of how Mr. Davis took influences from across Art history and made them his own.

It’s fascinating (and something you can’t help but notice) to spot the possible influences from Art history in Noah Davis’ Paintings, and where he’s taken them. Kerry James Marshall’s Paintings set in projects, Henry Taylor’s way with figures, Francis Bacon’s nebulous portraits, Surrealism, and on and on. Every time I look at his work I see more of them, but in each and every instance he has made them his own. He’s not showing off a copious knowledge of Art history, he’s building on what others have done in the service of expressing himself with his own voice. Henry Taylor, Kerry James Marshall, Francis Bacon- these aren’t mentioned by way of comparison- I don’t believe in qualitatively comparing Artists, but just the fact that you can mention Noah Davis in the same sentence with those older masters says quite a bit about the man’s work. Walking through these rooms and looking at his work, even the selection of it shown here, I see someone who was, already, a master Painter, who’s work is going to remain important, in my view. Not only that, Noah Davis hung their work in his shows! In fact, he was one of those who take credit for “discovering” the now renowned Photographer Deana Lawson in 2009, when Mr. Davis served on a jury for a prize that Ms. Lawson submitted for. Ms. Lawson was subsequently featured in the show Deana Lawson: Planes at the UM.
The world not only lost a great Artist when he passed, it lost a budding brilliant curator, one who might have help fill the huge gap that exists in bringing Art out of the galleries and museums to the people. It also lost someone who broke the mould of the Artist/gallery matrix and found his own way. Whatever you think of his Paintings, his example is an enduring, important model for Artists today and in the future. That he was able to make his own way at such a young age has got to inspire countless people who come after him- maybe not to establish their own museum, but to find what works for them1. In the end, that on its own is an amazing, and major, legacy.

February 22, 2020. Closing day in the third gallery, designed to look a bit like the office at the UM, visitors watch videos and films by Kahlil Joseph, Noah’s brother, and others. I’m holding the camera above my head. Such were the crowds, it took me five minutes to navigate from this spot to the door to the right.

As I sit here now that this unforgettable show has closed, I’m left to wonder. What will last longer…what will have the bigger impact on the future- Noah Davis’ Art, or his example, manifested in the Underground Museum? His vision is their common thread. In the example he set, it seems to me that there is much for Artists to learn-now and in the future.

Letting the UM flag “fly high,” as Jimi Hendrix once said on the closing day in gallery 3. Long may it wave.

You can support the Underground Museum here, or by visiting it. The Noah Davis show is scheduled to open there “soon.”

*- Soundtrack for this post is “Bold As Love,” From Axis: Bold As Love, by Jimi Hendrix.

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  1. As many are, and have been doing in their own ways, all around the world. ↩

Jean-Michel Basquiat, At 59

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (except *)

Part 3 of a series…

In January, 1983, Henry Geldzahler asked Jean-Michel Basquiat- “Is there anger in your work now?
He replied, “It’s about 80% anger1.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat, at about age 20, walks with his clarinet at the intersection of East 88th Street and 5th Avenue across from the Guggenheim Museum, circa 1980-81 in a screenshot from the movie, Downtown ’81, directed by Edo Bertoglio and written by Glenn O’Brien. 39 years later the Guggenheim has mounted a show of work the Artist would create over the next few years. *

The Brant Foundation’s Jean-Michel Basquiat was the largest show of the five going on in NYC this year featuring the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat (J-MB, henceforth), or about him. Though it provided a rare opportunity to see a broad range of his Paintings through most of his career, there was no context to the show, beyond it being an exceptional, diverse, collection of his Paintings. My impression was the attention paid to presenting groups of work by theme consisted of a group of portraits in the rear gallery on the 4th floor, a room half full of Paintings of Boxers and a wall of Paintings with unusual stretchers, both on the second floor. The lack of a theme or themes is mitigated by the fact that in many of his works there are multiple themes present allowing viewers to piece together their own narratives in, and between, pieces. Yet, as time goes on, and the focus of J-MB studies turns away from the well-worn biography and more and more to the “less discovered land,” i.e. his work, some of the themes lying just beneath the surface are starting to finally get the attention they deserve.

In that same interview with Henry Geldzahler, J-MB said that “royalty, heroism and the streets” were his favorite subjects. Over on the sixth floor of the Guggenheim Museum, in Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story, the only museum show of the five J-MB and J-MB related shows going on in NYC this year, all three of those themes were featured, with “the streets” perhaps most front and center. The show’s overriding focus was the death of Michael Stewart, a 26 year old Artist who died of injuries he received “on the streets,” after being arrested by the Port Authority Police on September 25th, 1983, for allegedly drawing or writing in the 14th Street L subway station two weeks earlier on September 15th.

The scene of a crime. The 1st Avenue Brooklyn bound L Subway Station, currently under construction. It’s a narrow platform as subway platforms go with nothing obstructing the view from one end to the other. The only entrance/exit, the one Michael Stewart must have entered and been removed through, is just to my right rear. Seen in October, 2019.

A public outcry and numerous protests ensued. The effect was immediate, deep and lasting, as the show reminds us, bringing us right back to the moment. The downtown community of Artists that Michael Stewart, J-MB, Keith Haring, and many others, were a part of, also responded with their creativity. In his “Chronology” in the Whitney Retrospective catalog, Franklin Sirmans writes, “Basquiat always conscious of racial realities is deeply effected by the death of Michael Stewart on September 15th…Basquiat, perhaps in fear, practices a form of denial. He consciously distances himself from the situation. No matter what his art world status might have been, incidents such as this were a constant part of his life2.” He continues, quoting Keith Haring, “One thing that affected Jean-Michel greatly was the Michael Stewart story…He was completely freaked out. It was like it could have been him. It showed him how vulnerable he was.” He then quotes J-MB as saying, “It could have been me. It could have been me3.” Michael Stewart died 8 months or so after J-MB said his work is “about 80% anger.”

Keith Haring’s Cable Building studio after Defacement was cut from the wall to the right of center, where he created it, 1985. *Keith Haring Foundation Photograph.

The show’s centerpiece is a work that has come to be called Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983, that J-MB created on a wall of Keith Haring’s Cable Building studio at some point between September 29th and October 5th, 19834.

Keith Haring’s Bedroom, Greenwich Village, 1989. *Photograph by Nancy Elizabeth Hill, Keith Haring Foundation.

When he moved out of the Cable Building, Mr. Haring had it cut out of the wall and framed. In an indication of how he felt about the work, it hung over his bed, where it remained, apparently, until he died, in February, 1990, almost exactly a year and a half after J-MB.

Along with it, in the first gallery were 6 other Paintings and two limited edition prints by J-MB. In the second gallery, the rest of the show recounts the tragic story highlighted by vintage posters announcing protests, newspaper articles and ephemera, accompanied by Art by Keith Haring, David Hammons, George Condo, Lyle Ashton Harris and Andy Warhol. A moving highlight of the show is the inclusion of very rare examples of Michael Stewart’s work, which I have never seen before, from his family’s collection. At the time of his death, Mr. Stewart was planning his first show. Seeing these works now, the sense of lost possibilities remains undimmed 36 years later. Of him, Fred Brathwaite (aka Fab5Freddy) says- “Michael Stewart was a new artist making moves on the scene and one of the few people of color in the mix downtown at that time. He came from an intellectual educated family and wanted to find a place where he could express himself in a cool way around like-minded people….When he was killed and the police claimed he was writing his name on the wall in the subway-which was surprising and seemed unlikely to us- the media jumped all over the idea that he was a graffiti artist. …It was like a chill going through you, realizing that it could be me- it could be any of a number of people I knew. Even though we all knew that Michael Stewart was not the graffiti artist they were portraying him to be, it could clearly have been any person of color, particularly myself and the numerous others I knew who were making art and would occasionally tag a wall, or had that background. That was frightening5.”

Andy Warhol, Daily News (Gimbels Anniversary Sale), ca. 1983, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 24 x 16 inches.

Mr. Brathwaite’s testimonial is excerpted from an interview he gave for the show’s exceptional catalog, which deserves special mention. Informative new essays by curators are followed by almost 60 pages of recollections by Artists, journalists, and other figures were were part of this period in NYC history, each based on new interviews conducted by curator Chaédria LaBouvier in 2018 and 2019 that were edited into concise statements for this publication- an amazing list that includes Mr. Brathwaite (Fab5Freddy), Dianne Brill, Michelle Shocked, Kenny Scharf, Eric Drooker, Lyle Ashton Harris, Jeffrey Deitch, Annina Nosei, George Condo, Tony Shafrazi, ABC-TV reporter Lou Young (who did over 60 pieces on the Michael Stewart story), Ronald Fields (a member of the first grand jury in 1983) and Carrie Stewart, mother of Michael Stewart. Their contributions bring the reader, as the show does, right back to the place and time in the kind of detailed recollections only those who lived it on the front lines could relate. When I’ve spoken in Parts 1 & 2 about the need for those who knew the Artist to step up and speak, this is a shining example of what those with first hand knowledge to bring to the table. Anyone interested in Jean-Michel Basquiat, Michael Stewart and/or his tragic end should find their way to the catalog before it goes out of print. Many exhibition catalogs have a notoriously short shelf life after shows end.

Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983, Acrylic and marker on plasterboard, 25 x 30 1/2 inches.

In the first gallery, a long, rectangular space leading to Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983, as the work is now known, due to the fact the Artist has written “¿Defacement©? ” in the upper center, are other works by J-MB that revolve around the themes of the police, royalty and the death of kings. Defacement feels like a dream, or nightmare, due to the presence of “clouds” of blue, pinkish and black paint. Painted on a white background, the blue figures, with pink/red skin, of the police frame and tower over the central black figure, apparently seen from the back. There are parts of what appears to be two circles in black around the head of the center figure, who’s hands and feet are not visible. Apparently, some of the marks on the work may have been added by others, like the letters on the right side that appear to be (“ZERLOL”), but it appears these circles are under the blue paint and so may have been done by J-MB. One of the policemen appear to be looking out at the viewer.

Francisco Goya, The Third of May, 1808, Oil on canvas, *Prado Museum.

One thing that stands out to me is the composition in context of Art History, particularly, in works of Goya and Picasso. In Goya’s legendary The Third of May, 1808, the soldiers stand decidedly to the right- the same side as the viewer.

Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951, Oil on canvas, *Picasso Museum, Paris.

In Picasso’s Massacre in Korea, 1951, the viewer is placed right in the center, with the soldiers on the right, and the victims on the left, one or two of who look out at the viewer. In Defacement, J-MB has also placed the viewer in the center, between the policemen, and directly behind the black figure/Michael Stewart, who appears without hands or feet. The effect made me feel like being in line to run the gauntlet- like you’re next in line, in line with his reported feeling “It could have been me. It could have been me.” It’s hard not to take the Painted “¿Defacement©?” as a double entendre. Did Michael Stewart really deface the subway station? And, why are the police “defacing” him, removing his face from the world?

La Hara, 1981, Irony of a Negro Policeman, 1981, both Acrylic and oilstick on wood panel, both 72 x 48 inches, Untitled (Sheriff), 1981, Acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 51 1/2 x 74 inches, from left to right.

On the right hand wall are three Paintings featuring policemen. All three are different. One has a white officer, one a black officer, one a grey officer (the two in Defacement appear to be pink-ish red). Two have white backgrounds, one red. All three are extremely nebulous (at least to me), even in the nebulous work of J-MB. All three are terrifying, and so perfectly set the stage for, and compliment Defacement.

The prints Back of the Neck, 1983, 50 1/4 x 102 inches, which I saw 14 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum (See Part 1Part 1), who is is on loan from, and Tuxedo (1982-3), 102 1/4 x 60 inches, both prints are editions of 10.

On a wall facing it are the limited edition print, Back of the Neck, also from 1983, my old friend from the 2005 Brooklyn Museum Retrospective on loan from the museum, and another print, Tuxedo, 1982-3, a work that references kings. As others have pointed out, Back of the Neck could be a reference to the injuries sustained by Mr. Stewart.

CPRKR, 1982, Acrylic, oil stick, and paper collage on canvas, mounted on tied-wood support, 60 x 40 inches, Self-Portrait, 1983, Oil, acrylic and oil stick on two wood doors and wood panel, with graphite and ink on paper, 96 3/4 x 63 3/4 inches, and Charles the First, 1982, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, three panels, 78 x 65 inches, left to right.

On the 4th wall are a stunning trio centered around the Self-Portrait, 1983, and two works that pay homage to another of J-MB’s “Kings,” Charlie Parker. Both of those relate to (his) death, and the death of kings. To the left is, perhaps, the most poignant work the Artist did referencing Bird, CPRKR. In it, he memorializes his death, listing the place and date, under a crown, with the moniker, “Charles The First” written below. And so, it fits with Defacement. Right next to it is the Self-Portrait, 1983, which in this show is impossible to think about without considering the year it was Painted, particularly since on its right-hand panel, the words “To Repel Ghosts” are Painted. To the right of these is Charles the First, 1982, with it’s equally haunting words “Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off” written along the bottom. Of the “young kings” referenced in this room, Michael Stewart died at 26, J-MB at 27 and Bird at 34. Charlie Parker turns 100 on August 29, 2020. Michael Stewart would be 61 today. As I pointed out in Part 2, J-MB should be 59 years old RIGHT NOW, in mid-career as the museums call it. Both should be living, vibrant, forces. Not ghosts.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1987, Andy Warhol, Daly News (Gimbels Anniversary Sale), 1983, Keith Haring, Michael Stewart- USA for Africa, 1985, left to right.

Not mentioned anywhere that I’ve seen, this is the only time Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, the three figureheads of the Art of their time in NYC ever addressed the same event, (as far as I know). I’m not saying Untitled, 1987, shown in the group above, seen in the second gallery, is a reference to Michael Stewart- I don’t know, but Defacement is. Describing the amazing Keith Haring work, the defunct website basquiatdefacement.com said, “It depicts a black man being strangled while handcuffed to a skeleton holding a key. People from all nations drown in a river of blood below, while others shield their eyes from the scene, and the green hand of big money oversees the scene6.”

Michael Stewart poses for Dianne Brill Menswear, 1983, from the show’s catalog. “Michael was buried in a suit I designed,” Dianne Brill writes in her piece in the catalog (P.107).*

Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story is one of the most powerful, smaller shows I’ve seen in years. Though it depicts events that took place 36 years ago, its relevance was, I’m sure, not lost on a good number of its viewers.

Alexis Adler, Jean-Michel Basquiat (the exact title is unknown to me).

Two other shows, the last two I saw in the group of five7, document little seen sides of J-MB. In The 12th Street Experiment: Photographs of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Photographs in question are by embryologist and former J-MB girlfriend and roommate, Alexis Adler, who lived with the Artist from 1979-80.

Alexis Adler speaks about Jean-Michel Basquiat and her Photographs of the Artist at The Bishop on Bedford Gallery, Brooklyn, May 18, 2019.

A veritable Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this was a show that, along with the items in Ms. Adler’s archive J-MB left behind in, and on, her apartment (on tour in museums shows elsewhere at the time, most recently at the Cranbrook Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and in Europe), form an important and unique collection. In my research, I’ve come to see that J-MB’s formative period after he left home for good has gone largely overlooked and understudied. Alexis Adler has stepped forward, sharing her experiences and her knowledge, in books, essays and traveling around the world speaking about her time with Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1979-80 and his Art, in addition to sharing her collection in the shows I mentioned. As she walked me through the show of her Photographs at The Bishop Gallery on Bedford, Brooklyn, I was amazed at both the J-MB work that Alexis has documented in Photographs and the range of experimentation the young Artist was undertaking- extending down to his continually evolving hairstyles! Lacking funds, he worked with whatever he found, whatever was at hand- including the doors, walls, and floor of the apartment, and whatever he found on the street, making him part of the line that includes Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, among others.

A Performance piece that involved installing a television set in a refrigerator. J-MB wears one of his hand Painted helmets here in one of a series of Photographs documenting the performance.

There is an element of performance in a number of these Photographs and in the work, which took place at the time he was performing with his band, Grey (and he is seen practicing his clarinet). Personally, I find this work fascinating and remarkable- on its own and for what it anticipates. A good deal of it might surprise many only familiar with his Paintings and Drawings.  This period seems to me to be more than only “early experimentation,” as it contains the roots and beginnings of much that came after, including his Painting. That he was Painting on everything he could find (out of a lack of funds for traditional Art materials, no doubt), presages his later Paintings executed on doors, like Self-Portrait, 1983 in the Guggenheim show, to fence slats, like Gold Griot, seen at The Brant in Part 2, among others.

Alexis Adler, Basquiat in the apartment, 1981. Note the work by Bacon right behind his head. In another of Alexis Adler’s Photos, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is seen attached to the wall. More evidence of J-MB’s Beat connection I mentioned in Part 1.

In addition, Ms. Adler said that J-MB studied her Art textbooks from the classes she was taking at the time. I found fascinating evidence of this in this Photo of hers, where a work by Francis Bacon is mounted on the wall. I wondered in Part 2 what Francis Bacon would think of J-MB’s Untitled, 1981. Here is the proof that J-MB knew of Francis Bacon’s work that very year.

Alexis Adler, Painted television in the apartment, c.-1979–1980. It’s amazing this Photo of the work exists, but I would love to see it in color because there’s nothing else like this in his subsequent Paintings!

Ms. Adler, who spoke about having her ear to the ground and priding herself on being aware of what was coming next, said she “knew” J-MB was an important Artist almost immediately. “He said he would. I was definitely the first one to believe him. Everyone else was like, ‘Sure Jean.’ He was brilliant. I could tell. His spirit — everything about him. He was an amazing person, a very deep-thinking individual.” It’s only because she acted on that feeling and bought a camera that we have a record of these works which would otherwise be lost to history.

Alexis Adler, Refrigerator in the apartment, ca. 1979-80, Untitled (Famous Negro Athletes), 1980-81, left to right.

Seeing the show, I came to feel that this early period of J-MB should be appreciated as a “period” of his work every bit as much as his later work has been broken down into periods. It stands apart. While it’s formative and precocious and different from what he’s “famous” for, it’s a part of the whole. It has the same spirit of freedom, of experimentation, the unexpected, of seeing new possibilities that characterize all his work.

Lee Jaffe was a Musician at the time who had just recorded and performed with Bob Marley when he met J-MB. The two struck up a friendship and traveled extensively together. In the fifth and last show I saw, Lee Jaffe’s Photographs of J-MB at Eva Presenhuber Gallery, show him in relaxed settings, where the Artist is just being himself. He’s seen as just another tourist, mugging with other tourists, and looking extremely at ease.

Lee Jaffe, Jean-Michel Painting in St. Moritz, 1983-2019, Dye sublimation on aluminum, 60 x 209 inches.

The highlight of Mr. Jaffe’s show for me was this fascinating montage showing J-MB creating a work in St. Moritz, virtually from start to finish, something I don’t recall seeing anywhere else.

Four Untitled works, 1985, far left, with three black & white works from 1984-2019. J-MB, as a real person. About two hundred feet behind that wall on the right, Jean-Michel Basquiat lived from 1983, until he died, on August 12th, 1988.

Somehow, these images felt jarring to me after reading so much drama-soaked biography and anecdote. Compounding this “reality,” ironically, the show was installed at 39 Great Jones Street, just a few doors west of 57 Great Jones Street, where J-MB lived, and died, which I showed at the very beginning of Part 1 of this series, bringing this five-month journey full circle.

Coincidentally, right around the corner from The Brant, on B and East 10th Street, is Charlie Parker Place, where Bird lived from 1950 to 1954, in the building to the right with the woman in white on the stairs. May, 2019.

A few weeks after seeing The Brant show, I took a trip to “Charlie Parker Place,” on Avenue B where Bird lived from 1950 to 1954. Taking stock of everything I’d seen, I sat across the street in Tompkins Square Park and listened to Bird, trying to hear him through J-MB’s ears. The soaring, unexpected majesty, the spontaneous “flights” of imagination, the beauty (much of it created in the sordid world of 1940s nightclubs, rife with drugs, crime and of course alcohol), the daring, the guts to be different, to be yourself…to be free, inside yourself, and then outside. I was sitting a mere 4 blocks from The Brant Foundation, and around the corner from where J-MB lived with Alexis Adler. As such, ironically, I was at a sort of center of this whole journey I’d been on, right across the street from Bird’s former residence, a man who’s been a part of my evolution, too.

I kept thinking back to the fact that J-MB lost his spleen, his (blood) filter, when he was hit by a car at age 6. That’s what his work looks like. It includes everything, everything around him, at the time, or in his experience. So much is going on in modern life, how else can you really depict it? The only “filter” in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat is that of his unique eye and sensibility.

The Artist @OR1EL poses with his work which includes what appears to be a Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat next to his left knee. I note a J-MB Crown on his left shoe. Seen at the 8th Avenue L Station- 4 stations west of the L station Michael Stewart was arrested in, May 28, 2019.

Alas, Jean-Michel Basquiat isn’t 59 right now. He’s a ghost, a spirit. His Art is only 31 to 40 years old. It remains very much alive- speaking to, and moving, an extraordinary number of people. In the 31 years since his own tragic end his influence seems to still be increasing.

Charlie Parker Place, June 7, 2019.

As I left Charlie Parker Place that June day, I was startled to see what someone had written on a newspaper box right on the corner. Downtown 81 is the film that J-MB starred in made in 1980-81, a still from which I showed at the beginning of this piece. In the same style as the Film’s logo, someone had appended “DOWNTOWN 18.” Jean-Michel Basquiat learned from those who came before him, and today others are learning from him.

Portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat and his associates Keith Haring and Andy Warhol flank Frida Kahlo at 22nd Street & 10th Avenue in Chelsea, looming over the Chelsea Art galleries behind me.

Art history is a continuum. Pass it on.

To answer that question I asked in Part 1– Over these past five months, five shows, all the books, and now three long pieces on his Art, I have come to side with the believers. I’ve come to believe that Jean-Michel Basquiat was, perhaps, the most important Painter known to me to emerge in the 1980s. His work is here to stay.

Postscript-
It turns out I’m not the only one who’s come around to the Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Tonight, I went the Preview for the “New MoMA.” And, lo and behold in one of the very first galleries on the 2nd floor, I saw this-

Well? They borrowed it from a “Private Collection.” But, that it’s here is a big statement, and possibly a reversal of their assessment I wrote about way back in Part 1. Now? It appears they feel it’s not only “worth the storage space,” his work is worth giving pride of place to, too. By the way? It’s clear that MoMA’s researchers need to take heed from J-MB’s own words that he was “not a graffiti artist,” which I quoted in Part 1. They also left out that Glenn O’Brien wrote the screenplay for Downtown ’81, which I showed a still from up top. He cast him in the Film after featuring J-MB regularly on his cable access show…which brings this piece full circle, too.

– Soundtrack for this Post is “Donna Lee’ by Charlie Parker as performed by the Charlie Parker All Stars featuring the legendary Bud Powell on piano and that other immortal of Music, Miles Davis, on trumpet. Miles was 21(!) when this recording was made, live, on August 5, 1947. In 1976, when I was coming up as a bassist, another genius, Jaco Pastorius, (to my mind, the “Jimi Hendrix of the bass), blew everyone’s minds by beginning his debut solo album with a performance of “Donna Lee” on his bass. Jaco, who I met and spoke with over the years, was tragically killed in September, 1987 at at 35, less than a year before J-MB’s death. Both performances are pillars of the Art of Music. Here’s Bird & Miles-

*My thanks to to Alexis Adler, May Yeung of the Guggenheim Museum, and to Lisa for pulling my coat to Alexis Adler’s talk.

This is Part 3 of my series on the five Jean-Michel Basquiat and related shows going on in NYC this year. Parts 1 & 2 are under this one, or here and here. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
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  1. Henry Geldzahler was the former Curator for American Art at The Met, later Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for NYC. He interviewed J-MB in January 1983, for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, as reprinted in Jean-Michel Basquiat, published by Charta, 1999, P.LIX, ↩
  2. Whitney Retrospective Catalog, P.243 ↩
  3. from an interview with Suzanne Mallouk. ↩
  4. Defacement Exhibition catalog, P.19 ↩
  5. Defacement Exhibition catalog, P.104 ↩
  6. Here, footnote 22. ↩
  7. I wasn’t able to get to the sixth show, Basquiat x Warhol, which was 3 hours outside of NYC. ↩

Jean-Michel Basquiat At The Brant Foundation

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

This is Part 2 of my series on the five Jean-Michel Basquiat related shows going on in NYC in 2019. Part 1 is below, or here.

Outside looking in. The most important show in NYC known to me thus far this year was a show I would be extremely fortunate to see.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the first exhibition at The Brant Foundation’s new East Village location is a NoteWorthy show because it is a major, museum-quality show mounted at a private institution of the work of a single major Artist with more Paintings on view than all the major NYC institutions, combined, could mount- multiplied twelve-fold. This led me to wonder- What other major Artist-Contemporary, Modern, or Old Master- has so much of their work, and so many of their major pieces in private hands?

The East Village, NYC, May 13, 2019. Looking towards the Empire State Building (rear, left of center). Bad weather, no ticket for the show, no sleep, no umbrella. It was going to take more than that to keep me from seeing this show, AND something close to a miracle to allow me to do so.

It’s easy to have mixed feelings about this. I’ve read some complain that it’s another case of the 1% at its worst; that this show is a case of the very rich showing off. On the other hand, it seems to me that there is a stronger case to be made admiring the vision, and the guts, of the collectors who stepped up and bought much of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat (J-MB henceforth) when he needed it most, not to mention go through the trouble of sharing it with the public, who, in the case of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Art, are largely dependent on them doing so to be able to see it. Showing off? Yeah. I guess.

Almost every Artist in the early stages of their career needs the support of buyers and collectors to survive and to continue to create. Yet, it’s also easy to forget that most of these  collectors possibly also bought Art by Artists that have long since been forgotten, (which is one reason I strongly believe in only buying Art you love– if it becomes worth less- even substantially less- than you paid for it? You can always display it and enjoy it.) And? As I wrote in part 1 of this series, the NYC museums, except the Whitney, collectively passed on his work at the time- and continue to do so. The only way they’re likely to fix that now is by gift or donation. The affordability train has long ago left the station for anyone else besides that 1%. The Big 41 had their chance. In the case of some institutions- chanceS, as I outlined.

Unnamed on the exterior, in classic East Village cool, The Brant Foundation, 421 East 6th Street, 10am, Monday, May 13, 2019. If I’m up at 10am, and not STILL up, you know there’s a special reason why. That cab exiting stage right is leaving with my umbrella. See ya.

At The Brant Foundation, a show of 70 Paintings and 1 Sculpture was on view, making it the largest show of Basquiat’s Paintings in NYC since the Brooklyn Museum’s Basquiat Retrospective in 2005, which I saw. Combined with the Basquiat work in the other five 2019 shows, the total approximately equals how many were shown in Brooklyn in 2005. The Brant show largely includes work in the collections of Stephanie and Peter Brant, alongside pieces on loan from the Broad Museum, (a private museum of the collection of another early collector, Eli Broad, who own at least of 13 of J-MB’s Paintings), among other significant loans. Since so much of his work is in private hands who knows how long it will be before we see a bigger or similar number of J-MB’s work here again. So, the six Jean-Michel Basquiat related shows in NYC and vicinity this year (counting the Warhol x Basquiat show going on in Kinderhook, NY, which proved too far for me to get to) might be the best chance I’m going to get to reassess and reconsider his work that it’s barely been 40 years since he began creating it.

The first order of business was getting in to The Brant show and actually seeing it. After all my efforts to get a ticket failed, I resorted to drastic measures. I took the unprecedented step of getting up with 3 hours sleep at 9am and going down to The Brant on May 13th, the last day the show was open, or the day before it closed- I’m still not sure. As I got there at 10am, right as it opened and visitors for the the first timed slots were arriving, I quickly realized this was going to take an act of fate. Compounding things, it was raining and I’d left my umbrella in the cab. I decided to take a Zen approach and stand off to the side, where that tree is to the left, above, and see what happened.

About 30 minutes later, Jessie, the on-top of everything Brant staff person manning the entrance, who knew I was casting my lot to fate, called me over from the door. A lady had arrived and told him she had an extra ticket. Really? A real-life Angel of Providence had appeared when I SERIOUSLY needed one. I walked over and met Lisa, and yes, she had an extra ticket that she was willing to let me use. Miracles really do happen. The fact this piece exists is solely due to her generosity. Seeing it over the 3 and a half hours I spent in it allowed me to flesh out the portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s accomplishment that began for me at Xerox, adding the best look at his most important work I’m likely to get. Any assessment of J-MB’s work and achievement begins with his Paintings. I’d seen 100 works in 2005 at the Brooklyn Retrospective, but I hadn’t prepared to see them. Now IS the time. Lisa’s generosity not only enabled me to create this piece, it also permits me to create the multi-part series on 5 of the 6 Basquiat-related shows I wanted to do, now that she made it possible for me to see the “centerpiece” show of the group. I’m also grateful to Jessie for thinking of me. Due to both of their kindness and consideration, I am thrilled to be able to share what I saw with you.

For a while, it looked like I wasn’t going to get to see this. Standing at the entrance to the show- the lobby of the 4th floor, just after exiting the elevator 90 degrees to the right.  You can see the variance in the lighting in the main gallery from here. Outside, to the right of center is Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1982.

The elevator took us to the 4th floor, where everyone starts and then walks down to the floors below, the show being installed on all 4 floors. It should be said that the group of new visitors getting off the elevator each time on 4 was surprisingly small. The galleries were pretty sparsely filled- incredibly so for a major show on either it’s last day or next to last day. Well, there was well over 1 billion dollars of Art on display, so they opted to keep the crowd manageable.

Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1982, Oilstick and ink on paper, 30 x 22 inches. The first work in the show.

Though the urge might have been to hurry into the large, main gallery shown above, I was stopped in my tracks by the work hanging to the right just outside. There was Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1982, one of the most unique Self Portraits I’ve ever seen. I wondered what Picasso would have thought of it. The colors, and then particularly the black background fascinates me as I ponder at what stage J-MB added it. And then I wondered what Clyfford Still would think of it. Like a number of J-MB’s “heads” from 1981-2, he flattens everything to the picture plane, something not seen all that often in Art. 4 floors of J-MB still to go. What an auspicious start!

A real-life Angel of Providence. Lisa studying Self-Portrait with Suzanne, 1982, in the main gallery on 4.

It turns out that Lisa is a school teacher and an Art lover with superb, wide-ranging, taste that runs from Brancusi through Morton Feldman as I found out as we chatted while going in.

Self-Portrait with Suzanne, 1982. The compelling work Lisa studies above shows the artist with Suzanne Mallouk, the subject of Widow Basquiat, in 2010. It’s the only work known to me created by J-MB showing the Artist with one of his lovers. Beyond this, it’s fascinating to study the way he’s rendered himself here compared with the other “heads” and Self-Portraits from 1981-2.

Before I get too far into the show, I’ll say the building looked brand new, the restoration of the former Con Ed Substation being first class from top to bottom. I have mixed feeling about it’s suitability for the display of Art, but honestly, I get some of those feelings almost everywhere I see Art. In my experience, the #1 problem in seeing art is lighting, combined with the scarcity of truly non-glare glass or acrylic. As my friend, Corinne, co-owner of NYC’s legendary City Frame, tells me- currently, it’s expensive. Then again, not all Painting is glazed. Increasingly, Artists, including Raymond Pettibon and Kara Walker, and Photographers, including Gregory Halpern, have shown their work without frames, often just tacking it to the walls at the corners. Still, glazed or not, lighting- artificial or natural, is a problem that rears its head in almost every show I see. The same was the case at The Brant.

I don’t care how rich I was, I don’t think I’d install a pool over irreplaceable Art.

The fourth floor is the top floor and features a skylight, apparently, filled with water- unless this had collected from the rain? I don’t know. They must either have Lloyd’s of London insurance, 8 million tons of confidence in whoever installed it, or both, to hang a few hundred million dollars worth of one of a kind Art underneath it, including more than one of J-MB’s greatest works, in my opinion. But, beyond this, being a cloudy, rainy, day, the large skylight wasn’t letting in as much light as it might have at other times.

Hanging a few feet from the skylight/pool (as you can see in the installation view earlier) is Untitled, 1981, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 81 x 69 1/4 inches, from The Broad, L.A., the upper half of which was in a shadow during my visit.

Typical of all the works on view in this room, the upper half of Untitled, 1981, on loan from The Broad in LA was in a shadow. Still, the power of seeing this work in person was staggering. I took all of it in from a distance when I first saw it, then walked over to see the other works in the room. Finally, I walked back over to look closely at it at length.

Detail of Untitled, 1981.

The difference in the experiences is remarkable, as you can see. But, no matter how closely I looked, minding the security rope you can see at the very bottom of the picture above, it was still drawing me closer. Like a Rembrandt, or Van Gogh, where I’d like to study each brushstroke for it’s content, here I was being drawn in to look at each detail. The feeling I got was that each small part of it was a world unto itself, yet irrevocably part of the whole. What, exactly, are we seeing? It’s not a skull because there are eyes and there is hair, at least part of a beard, and some teeth, though others are missing. And there are what appear to be stitches and possibly some letters over all of it- a cryptic message, like the figure, in a language no one had ever seen before. (Compare this to the work on view in Xerox that I looked at in the first Part! There, the details were, largely, words.) This is 1981- a year after the first show the work of J-MB appeared in. It’s a work from near the beginning of his post-SAMO© career as an Artist. And, it’s one of the most remarkable shots across the bow in Art history, possibly since Picasso’s Les Damoiselles or Duchamp’s Bride Stripped Bare. When I’ve seen it in books, I haven’t been able to stop looking at it. Seeing it in person it felt like I’d never really seen it. But, even saying that? There’s literally nothing like this in Western Art history to 1981. In his book, The Art of J-MB, Fred Hoffman makes a case for this being among J-MB’s “key” works. I don’t have a list, but I won’t argue with that. I just keep wondering if Francis Bacon, who outlived J-MB, passing away in 1992, saw it and what he thought, or would think, of it.

Per Capita, 1981

Across from Untitled was the incredible Per Capita, also from 1981, with it’s central figure in Everlast boxing trunks, a halo over his head and his outstretched left arm holding a torch that sure looks to me like that of the Statue of Liberty. Over the halo are the words, “E PLURIBUS…,” or, “out of many,” leaving out the equally famous, “UNUM,” or “one.” The title (which may or may not be the Artist’s title- I simply don’t know), “Per Capita,” means, “per unit of population; per person,” in one definition, per American Heritage Dictionary, and “equally to each individual,” in another. Along the left side appears to be the beginning of an alphabetical list of states with the per capita income of its citizen next to them. Even on a partial list, that manages to include states in 3 of the 4 corners of the country, the variance is striking. Fred Hoffman wrote at length about this piece in his essay in the catalog for the 2005 Brooklyn Museum Retrospective, where he also listed it among J-MB’s key works, where he says the central figure is Cassius Clay, as Muhammad Ali was known when he won the gold medal at the 1960 Olympics (The Art of J-MB, P.129.), which could also make that an Olympic torch.

As I looked at this fascinating work, I couldn’t help wonder if the “UNUM,” or “one” E PLURIBUS was seeking with its … was the solitary figure, as in “Out of many, THIS one.” J-MB’s love of boxers is well known and was to be seen in most of an entire gallery on the 2nd floor, as well as in his portrait (in which he wears Everlast boxing trunks) in the famous Warhol*Basquiat poster for their joint show a few years later in 1985 at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, which could also make this a Self-Portrait.

It’s hard to write about this show and not include every work in it- many are major, many others important for any one of a number of reasons, and they all deserve mention.

Untitled (Car Crash), 1980, Acrylic and lipstick on canvas with exposed wood supports. So much of J-MB’s story and his Painting begins in this work where he recreates the accident where he was hit by a car at age 6 that hospitalized him for a month and caused the loss of his spleen. Seen in the small rear gallery on 4.

On 4, there was also a small rear gallery along the rear of the building. Here, too, lighting was a question. The far wall was lined with a floor to ceiling window, which, you guessed it, let in a lot of light- even on this dreary day. I have no idea if they cover it/partially cover it in full sun.

Untitled, 1981, Oilstick on paper. Seen in the small, gallery in the back of the 4th floor. There’s so much that’s revolutionary in this extraordinary work, and at the same time it gives us another take on the two Untitled (Head) Paintings in the show, this time the “head” is seen from the front and not from an angle and has been flattened, like the picture plane. The right side is almost Cubist.

Down on 3, the lighting was better.

3rd floor. Installation view.

The main source of natural light being another picture window, but this time it was at the end of a large rectangular space and didn’t interfere with the most of the large works on view, including this one-

Untitled, 1982, now in the collection of Yusaku Maezawa, while on loan to the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at The Brant Foundation, May 13, 2019.

In May, 2017, this Painting, Untitled, 1982, by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold at Sotheby’s for 110.5 million dollars. As someone who prefers to consider Art for what it is without the shadow of dollars, as much as possible, this fact gives even me pause for thought. Here it was, on a corner wall of the third floor, appearing as another work in the show as opposed to something “special.” I applaud this decision.

Do I think it’s “worth” 110.5 million dollars? Anything is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it (And, there were multiple bidders for it). Given that the question of whether something is, or isn’t “Art” won’t be settled during any of our lifetimes, only hundreds of years hence if the work continues to speak to people, the question of commerce- supply and demand, is what is rearing its head in Contemporary Art auctions, in my view. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s public career as an Artist only lasted a few months over 8 years, from June, 1980 to his death on August 12, 1988. Though he was extraordinarily prolific during that time, creating 1,000 Paintings and 2,000 Drawings2, included in it are only so many major works (a number that I personally feel is larger than some others seem to think), and Untitled, 1982, happens to be one, in my view. Looking at the lists of the highest prices paid at auction for Art reveals that many, if not most, of them are the best works available as most of the major work by established Artists of, say, Picasso’s time or earlier (considering he passed away in 1973), are in museums which are not likely to part with them. The works auctioned are certainly not the most important works by any of the Artists on the list, as I’m sure most would agree (perhaps not the purchasers), though it’s subjective. The $110.5 million for Basquiat’s Untitled, 1982, is for a major Basquiat, in my opinion.

But, the more astonishing thing for me to realize (Hey? It’s not my money) is that at the time of the auction, in May, 2017, Jean-Michel Basquiat would have been 56 years old! Untitled, 1982, is a work he Painted when he was 21 or 22 years old. People talk about this sale marking the highest price ever paid for a work by an African-American Artist. Others mention the highest price ever paid for a work by any American Artist.

They never mention that this sale makes Jean-Michel Basquiat the YOUNGEST Artist in HISTORY to have a work sell for over 100 million dollars- either by age at the time of the sale (56), or age when he created the work(21-22)!

At 56 in 2017, he would be considered to be in “mid-career” as the museums call it. At 58, right now(!), he should still be every bit the vibrant, revolutionary force in Art he was for the 8 short years of his career. That he already feels like such a part of history is indicative of it being already thirty-one years, this August 12th, since his passing.

Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), 1983, left, Big Shoes, 1983, Hollywood Africans, 1983, right, a work on loan from the Whitney Museum. The two to the left are in private collections. In 1983, after they were created, these three works hung on the same wall (with other works) at Larry Gagosian Gallery, LA, as is shown in the Whitney Retrospective catalog, P.251

Also on 3 was this striking group of three works, each from 1982, which included a work from an NYC museum!- Hollywood Africans, from the Whitney. These were fascinating contrasts to the collaged work on view at Xerox, Museum Security and Hollywood Africans both featuring words more than image, but were done exclusively in paint, as far as I could tell.

Gold Griot, 1984, Acrylic and oilstick on wood, 117 x 73 inches. You can get a sense of how big it is in the installation view, above.

The somewhat monumental Gold Griot is a very well known work and is memorably recalled in Fred Hoffman’s The Art of J-MB (P.63) as having originated from slat fencing (possibly that referred to in Phoebe Hoban’s book, P.140, that his assistant Matt Dike had acquired from a fence behind Larry Gagosian’s LA house). Mr. Hoffman’s book includes a picture of J-MB creating the work where we see the Painted head looks to be about 8 times larger than his own. Mr. Hoffman references Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn, 1962, in speaking of the work’s “pop” influence, with the figure isolated from the gold background, before saying, “The figure is as much a divine apparition as a living human being. With its ethereal gold background surface, the figure of Gold Griot pays homage to sculptural representations of the divine in various sub-Saharan African cultures.3.”

Detail of Gold Griot, 1984.

Looking closer, it’s fascinating to see how J-MB’s depiction of the head has evolved in 2 or 3 years. Gold Griot reminds me of the innovations of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, when it comes to Painting surfaces, though it’s resolutely its own work.

2nd floor. Installation view. The work on the immediate left is See Plate 3, 1982, Sculpture in two parts, Acrylic and oilstick on wood, canvas, mounted on wood, the only Sculpture displayed in the show.

The second floor is a bit of a strange space for displaying Paintings. A very tall space, which at first it seems more conducive to the work of monumental Sculptures, like Richard Serra’s, and lined with brick walls. The curators made it work, choosing to install the Paintings in a single row on the two side walls, then salon style on the third wall. While this made seeing the works in the top two rows challenging, it did allow for the maximum number of Paintings to be shown. As a result, I learned to live with it. In hindsight, I’d say they made the best use of the available space throughout the building, though I feel the building was less than ideal for this show because of the uneven lighting and the very high walls on the 2nd floor.

Untitled (Yellow Tar & Feathers), 1982, Pork, 1981, Discography II, 1983, left to right.

Along the sides, important works like Untitled (Yellow Tar & Feathers), 1982, were joined by others not as well known. Discography II contains a list of the details of a Miles Davis Allstars recording session which is historically noteworthy because Charlie Parker performed as a sideman for Miles for one of the only times in his career. To that point, Miles was exclusively a sideman for Bird.

Now’s The Time, 1985, Oilstick and acrylic on plywood, 92 1/2 inches in diameter.

While on the opposite wall, the work referencing Jazz continued with the very cool Now’s The Time, 1985, an homage to the 1945 Charlie Parker record hangs. It also compliments the work on the large wall hung salon style, being they all have unique, experimental stretchers holding their canvases.

On the salon style wall, one thing each of its 16 works share are the unusual stretchers. One thing about J-MB’s Paintings that you don’t hear much about today are his unusual mounts. Constructed for J-MB by his assistants, including Stephen Torton and Matt Dike, there were other examples on the upper floors, and they are another thing that makes his work unique.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dos Cabezas, 1982, a portrait of Andy Warhol and a Self-Portrait that presaged the Warhol- Basquiat collaborations in 1985.

The 2nd floor also included a rear gallery, which featured 4 portraits of boxers and 3 other very power portraits.

Rear gallery on the 2nd floor installation view.

J-MB had a deep fascination with boxers, and they appear both as Self-Portraits and as homages. Sometimes both. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which.

“St. Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes showed the boxer, one of Basquiat’s heroes, encircled by sharkish white managers. ‘That was Jean-Michel,’ said Suzanne Mallouk.” Phoebe Hoban. Basquiat, P.113. Early on, Paul Simon attempted to buy it for $8,000., but was thwarted by Rene Ricard. According to the iPad next to it, seen in the installation view, which served in lieu of wall cards, it now belongs to the Brants. (ibid, P.114).

Muhammad Ali changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964. As Cassius Clay, he won the gold medal at the 1960 Olympics, becoming a hero to many, including J-MB, who references it, here, by using his name at the time, in this work from 1982.

Untitled (Boxer), 1982, Acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 76 x 94 inches. Fred Hoffman calls this immensely powerful work, “… the expression of the black man’s physical and spiritual attributes.” (The Art of J-MB, P.133)

I almost missed the works installed on the first floor. Luckily, I spotted the small sign pointing to them right as I was beginning to look for the exit. Thank goodness I didn’t as it included some of his largest and at least one of his most important works.

Unbreakable, 1987, Acrylic on canvas, 98 x 111 3/4 inches.

I’d never seen a J-MB work like Unbreakable prior to seeing it. Given it’s dated 1987, perhaps this is a glimpse into where his work was heading. In it, he synthesizes everything he’s been using- images, words, and color.

Grillo, 1984, Acrylic, oil, paper collage, oilstick and nails on wood, 96 x 211 1/2 inches- close to 20 feet by 8 feet!

What a powerful, stunning, incredible work Grillo is! It’s taken Robert Rauschenberg’s Combine Paintings in an entirely new direction. I love the juxtaposition of the two panels with figures (one left, one right of center) with the panels immediately to each of their right. I do wonder if this piece was meant to sit on the floor or be raised a foot as it is here.

Detail of the right of center panel.

As I looked closer at Grillo, I noticed a good many color Xeroxes collaged on. Yet, the two figures hold the key to it, I think. On the left is a figure holding a torch. Over his head there’s a pice of wood with nails sticking out of it. That sure could be interpreted as a “crown of thorns.” Around him are various repeated words, including- “Soap,” “Oil,””Butter,” Carbon,” and “Stretch,” along with at least two Bebop song titles- “Well You Needn’t,” by Thelonious Monk and “Half-Nelson,” recorded by Bird. What this figure represents I don’t know, but there are elements of the martyr and the heroic included. The other figure, apparently a king, wears a large crown, accompanied by small attendants to its right, and has his hands raised, like the boxers seen upstairs. He appears to be looking towards the left side figure, and both figures have their internal organs shown, perhaps yet another reference to Gray’s Anatomy.

And, there’s this- The left hand figure, how has a board with nails over his/her head, possibly a crown of thorns?, holds a torch…

The work speaks volumes about how J-MB’s Art has evolved in 7 short years, and the unlimited potential the future held for it, and for him.

…which reminds me of the one seen 3 floors up in Per Capita, 1981.

A few days later, Lisa shared her thoughts on the show. “I thought the Basquiat show was quite spectacular. There were so many works that I had never seen before. In particular, I was struck by the great thick black oil slicks. There is something about this sheen, like shoe polish, that you can’t truly appreciate unless you see the paintings in person. They give the works a lot of dimension and texture. They also remind me of Franz Kline – totally dynamic and emotive in gesture. The oil slicks are bold and grimy, like New York. His compositions tend to mimic graffiti on the street – throw ups, wheatpaste posters, and tags on a wall/single canvas.”

There was a bit of the feel that the show was something of an afterthought to the just completed Louis Vuitton show. A “Hey, we’ve got all this work assembled, why don’t we just put it up in NYC?,” kind of thing. I quickly moved past it, the lighting and other questions with the space I’ve mentioned. Nothing dulled the effect of seeing so much work that STILL looks fresh, vital, and contemporary, in spite of countless imitators, commercial “appropriations” of his symbols and the passage of over 30 years since he left. What I saw at The Brant was the work that has defined the legacy of J-MB- in quite a few of his more well known Paintings, works characterized by his characters, in which his words take much more of a back seat than they did over at Xerox. Thinking about J-MB at The Brant four months later, the show has become more monumental in my eyes.

While Peter Brant may represent what many call “the 1%,” so does Jean-Michel Basquiat. For me, J-MB represents that extraordinary, and extraordinarily rare, group of people who are able to overcome unfathomable difficulties- racially, socially, financially, educationally and, apparently, familial, and some difficulties that appear on the outside to have been self-inflicted (though quite possibly resulting from the others- I’m not a doctor or a therapist), then somehow surmount ALL of that and go on to rewrite Art history in about a decade. How many people can this be said of?

How ever many you choose to include? I’m not sure it would even equal 1%.

This Post is dedicated to Lisa, with my undying thanks. My gratitude is due to Jessie for his consideration. Anyone reading this owes them their thanks as well.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Bold As Love,” by another brilliant Artist who died at just 27, Jimi Hendrix, which concludes the timeless Axis: Bold As Love.

“Anger he smiles towering in shiny metallic purple armor…
My red is so confident that he flashes
Trophies of war and ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring
But very unsteady for the first go around
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I’m trying to say it’s frightened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
[Chorus]
But they’re all bold as love
Yeah, they’re all bold as love”

In lieu of the immortal Hendrix original recording here’s a cover to inspire you to seek out the original-

This is Part 2 of my series on the five Jean-Michel Basquiat related shows going on in NYC in 2019. Part 1 is below, or here.
My prior pieces on Painting are here. 

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  1. I’m speaking of Manhattan’s museums, only, here and leaving off The New Museum who have no permanent collection. ↩
  2. according to the Brant Foundation. ↩
  3. ibid P.65 ↩

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s The Time

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (except *)

Part 1 of a series.

It’s hard to believe that not even 40 years have passed since Jean-Michel Basquiat burst upon the Art scene, (after his career as part of the legendary graffiti duo SAMO©), when the month long The Times Square Show opened 39 years ago on June 1, 1980 at 201 West 41st Street. Just eight years, one month and eleven days later, on August 12, 1988, he would be found dead from a heroin overdose at the infamous age of 27 at his home and studio at 57 Great Jones Street.

What appears to be an anonymously applied silhouette of the late Artist looms large here at the one time stable at 57 Great Jones Street, NYC, seen in May, 2019. Back in the day, it was owned by Andy Warhol who rented it to Jean-Michel Basquiat, who lived here from 1983 until he died here on August 12, 1988. His studio was on the ground floor, his living quarters upstairs. By the way? In an interview with Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat said, “I don’t really consider myself to be a graffiti artist, you know?1” That might surprise those attempting to cover every square inch of the building now.

He didn’t live to see the Art market crash (unrelatedly) the following year, from which it has since recovered and grown many, many fold larger than it was during the bubble of his day, nor did he live to see the end of the controversy around him and his Art. It’s never subsided-

He Was Crazy, 1979, Mixed media on canvas, all of 5 x 3 inches, the earliest and smallest work on view at Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox.

-Robert Hughes titled his obituary “Requiem for a Featherweight.”

-“He was essentially a talentless hustler…,” according to Hilton Kramer in a piece titled,  “He had everything but talent” in 1997.

-“Come on…Basquiat? Really? Sort of an art hoax. Just the incoherent rantings of a tortured soul obsessed with drugs and a deluded quest for acknowledgment, which he did achieve. Doesn’t make it good.” A direct quote from the comments more recently here.

Yes, there are still plenty of haters hating on the work on Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The now infamous cover of The New York Times Magazine from February 10, 1985 by Lizzie Himmel shows the Artist in his studio. The article, by Cathleen McGuigan, included a look at the Artist that seems surprisingly balanced today given all the controversy surrounding him at the time.”The extent of Basquiat’s success would no doubt be impossible for an artist of lesser gifts,” she wrote.

On the other hand, there are the countless other members of the Art viewing public for who Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work has continued to speak since he started making it, and Painting that speaks to people over time is what comes to be accepted as “Art” a few centuries on it seems to me. Yet, the Art viewing public is not the only group divided on the work of Mr. Basquiat. On page 44 of the book, The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Fred Hoffman, one of the curators of the 2005 Brooklyn Museum Basquiat Retrospective and a man who produced prints with Jean-Michel Basquiat (J-MB henceforth) for 2 years, writes, “Herbert and Leonore Schorr offered the Museum of Modern Art the opportunity to choose a painting from their collection as a gift. The museum replied that having a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat was not even worth the cost of the storage.” On May 26, 2017, this quote appears in the New York Times, “‘It’s an artist who we missed,’ said Ann Temkin, the chief curator of paintings and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, which does not own a single Basquiat work2. ‘We didn’t bring his paintings into the collection during his life or thereafter3.’”

6 year old Jean-Michel Basquiat’s membership card to the Brooklyn Museum. It’s not well known that J-MB was an avid museum goer, attending the Brooklyn Museum and later, frequenting The Met with his friend Fab5Freddy. Credit 2015 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, via ARS, New York; Hiroko Masuike, via The New York Times.

In fact, as I write this? Of NYC’s “Big five” museums, only the Whitney owns a Basquiat Painting- they own 3, according to their online collection catalogue (none are currently on view as of my last visit, this past month. Also, I should note that among the 5 Manhattan museums The New Museum has no permanent collection. By the way, The Brooklyn Museum owns one print, seen below, and a Drawing.)

None of those feelings were mine though I wasn’t a “fan” of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Then, as now, I was focused on Artists I felt were overlooked. My feeling in the 1980s was that too much money was being spent on, and too much attention given to, Contemporary Artists with no track record. Artists whose work hadn’t stood the test of time, hadn’t stood up to critical, and historical, assessment, whose work wasn’t in major museums, and on and on. By default, though not in particular, that included the work of J-MB. Still, I’ve always kept an open mind. There are very very few Artists or Musicians who’s work I will never, ever love- no matter what. But, there are some. Hitler was a painter- lowercase “p” for once- remember?

May 12, 2005. The only picture I was able to get (quickly) just outside the Basquiat Retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, since pictures were not permitted inside. Back of the Neck, 1983, Screenprint, right, seen in the lobby and the show’s poster to the left. Glare was a problem in 2005, too. You can see the show in official shots, here.

So, on May 12, 2005, I went to that Brooklyn Museum Basquiat Retrospective that Mr. Hoffman was a curator of. When I got home, I wrote, “His work still doesn’t speak to me, beyond the fact that I so admire his freedom. The show was very well done.” I also came away struck by his love of Jazz. Anyone who loves classic Jazz is OK with me. I also remember being surprised at how prolific he was in such a short time, which reminded me of Van Gogh, who’s Painting career lasted only about a year or so longer. Looking back on it now? My head was elsewhere. I was drawing on a daily basis in a representational style, and so I was lost studying Ingres, Hopper, Richard Estes and Rembrandt, who I had recently gone to Chicago to see a show of. But? Having bought one at the show, I began wearing T-shirts with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Art on them. His work just fits walking around NYC.

Untitled, 1980, the white on yellow original of which is in the Whitney Museum’s collection, is a work that was shown at New York/New Wave in 1981 at MoMA PS1, now appears on a Uniqlo SPRZ NY Women’s T, seen in June, 2019.

Slight digression- I’m not for giving a free ad here, but I must give props to Uniqlo for putting the Art and cover Art of so many great Artists and Musicians4 on their SPRZ NY line of T shirts. Some of the Art line is co-sponsored by MoMA. In turn, Uniqlo pays for the free Friday nights at the MoMA, which countless thousands attend each week. Uniqlo has continually featured J-MB’s work on their clothes, in spite of the problematic history of Basquiat and MoMA. Fred Hoffman in The Art of J-MB (P.175, footnote 2) relates this story about Untitled, 1983, a limited edition print of 10 copies he did with J-MB- “Untitled was given to the Museum of Modern Art in 1984. After it was in the catalogue for the MoMA 1984 exhibition An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture, the work was completely overlooked by the museum, and excluded when the museum first put its collection online. It was not exhibited in the galleries until 2015. Only with the collaboration between MoMA and Uniqlo beginning in 2014, when a cropped image of Untitled was used as the signature image for the marketing of the ‘SPRZ’ collection of iconic artist images applied to clothes, did the museum finally recognize the work as part of its collection.” 2015! To this day? I still wear Uniqlo J-MB T’s, even though I wasn’t a “fan.” End digression.

Jean-Michel Basquiat appears to be admiring  Nick’s Basquiat tattoo in one of Alexis Adler’s Photos of him at Bishop Gallery. Nick is an Art Teacher.

Ok. So, who’s “right?” The haters, the non-believers, and the NYC museums, who, unanimously, minus one, passed on acquiring his Paintings? Or, the incalculable number of members of the Art loving public to who the Art of J-MB speaks, perhaps, like that of few other Artists today, judging by how often I see others wearing his Art and icons, along with the innumerable Artists who’ve been influenced by his work, and those few collectors who bought up the bulk of his best work shortly after he created it?

All I can show you- pictures were not allowed in the show.

Fast forward. On May 7th, 2019, I went to see Picasso’s Women at Gagosian on Madison. It’s one of those shows that, though small, reminds you, as if you need to be, why Picasso was one of the towering creative geniuses of 20th Century Art, in my view. Each and every work is in a different style, and most were masterpieces. Yet, it’s a show that will only live on in the memory of those who saw it as no photos were permitted. I walked out through the building’s lobby, my head spinning. Just before I exited, next to the front door, I spotted this-

Minutes after I saw this poster my mind began to change.

Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox. I asked the guard where it was. “On 3,” he replied. Still recovering from Picasso, I pondered if I could clear my head enough for about 5 seconds, then I went back in and went up to Nahmad Contemporary on 3.

3 hours later, I left, realizing I’d never really seen the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat before. I had missed it. In Xerox, the term “Painter,” all of a sudden feels too small, even for an Artist notorious for getting paint everywhere- including on his multi-thousand dollar Armani suits, as can be seen in the infamous cover of The New York Times Magazine shown earlier.

But, this is a show that features his under-known multimedia works that include photocopies- color Xeroxes being one of his favorite tools, one he loved so much, he bought his own color Xerox machine. (I’m sure there are many others, but right now? I can’t think of many Artists who made color Xeroxes as big a part of their work- particularly Painters.) As a result, here images recur- his own images, exclusively, which is down right refreshing in this age of copious “reappropriation.” Drawings or Paintings that the Artist has Xeroxed and pasted onto canvas which he then proceeded to add to and modify in any number of ways, including Paint on.

Installation view. I was completely unprepared for the depth and endless detail in this body of work I had previously not known.

As a result, in Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox, we see J-MB the collagist as much as we do the writer, or the Painter. Suddenly, his work looks different. The figures recede, words come to the fore. Many, many words.

Odours of Punt, 1983, Acrylic, oilstick and Xerox collage on canvas, 40 x 83 inches

Odours of Punt, 1983, was one of the first works in Xerox and it was one of the first works to get to me. A “non-fan” up to that moment, something clicked in me when I saw this. In it, J-MB borrows Painting techniques from all over Art History on his way to making something…else. The history of Painting from 1947, on, was staring me in the face, to the left, while something entirely new and different was vying for my attention on the right. On the left, I felt Clyfford Still being channeled underneath Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet yet what he created is something distinctly his own- a remarkable thing in itself. And extremely abstract, at least to my eyes. While its right side felt like it was coming from another world, made up of fragmentary images. Neither side would seem to “go” with the other at first glance, yet, somehow, as my eye and brain moved between the two “worlds” of the work, they manage to hold together almost miraculously well. This is something I’ve felt in the presence of the greatest works of Abstraction, including those by, say, Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock from 1947 to 52, Mark Rothko, Jack Whitten, and Mark Bradford today. It’s incredibly hard to do, which is evidenced by the fact that almost none of them (who’s careers have completed), except for Kandinsky, (who was 77 when he passed away, and Painting abstractly for about 35 years), were seemingly able to do it indefinitely. Jackson Pollock seemed “to lose his fastball” in his last few years and his style began to change, and Mark Rothko lost…his life (I’m not saying that’s related to his Art). Perhaps these are only coincidences. J-MB didn’t make it to 30 years of age.

Detail of the upper center.

On the right, equally abstract to me was what seemed to be a new creative language. “BIRD OF GOD,” “VENUS VII,” “COSTOXIPHOID,””BLUE RIBBON,” and on and on, accompanied by innumerable drawings and diagrams. Man, there’s A LOT to see in this! Even now, almost 4 months later? I feel like I’ve only begun to look at it. For only one example- Costoxiphoid is a ligament that connects the ribs. At age 6, J-MB was injured in a car accident. While he was hospitalized (his spleen, i.e. his “filter,” was removed), his mother brought him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. It would be a sourcebook for his Art for the rest of his life, and possibly here for “1. Cranial Cavity, 2. Facial,…” to the left of center. The title (assuming this is the Artist’s title- many of his works were “named” by others) is also an enigma. “Odours” referring to “any property detected by the olfactory system,” per Merriam-Webster, and “punt” have multiple meanings, including “an open flat bottom boat with squared ends.”

Untitled, left, and Peter and the Wolf, both Acrylic, lipstick and Xerox collage on canvas, both 1985, both 110 x 114 inches, seen from about 15 feet away, the figures in these pieces are almost entirely swallowed up by everything else.

Walking through Xerox, it was impossible not to begin to understand that J-MB‘s work is deep. Deeper than just about anyone has even written about so far. These works contain a staggering, almost obsessive, amount of detail, and details that swallow up the figures, one of the things the Artist is most famous for. Figuring out what’s going on in all of this detail is going to take 2 things- #1, an expert, most likely one who knew the Artist, or #2- A long time.

Not having known Jean-Michel Basquiat, I, like those born after August 12, 1988, can only look at his work and see what it says to me. In a short time, my looking thus far has given rise to some threads that I am going to continue to study.

First among them is Jazz. Being a former Musician, who produced Jazz records and wrote for a national Jazz magazine for 4 years, perhaps I am pre-disposed to spotting them. Fair enough. While many people talk about J-MB and Hip-hop, looking at the work in this show, I failed to see even one reference to it. This struck me, particularly because one thing that stood out to me at Xerox to the point that I couldn’t overlook it was the CONTINUAL, and extraordinary number of, references to Jazz- be it Jazz Musicians, records or song titles. In fact, they were so prevailing, you’d have to look hard to find even one work here without a Jazz reference somewhere in it (which I may, or may not, have).

Untitled, 1985, Xerox collage mounted on panels, 48 x 85 inches.

In Untitled, 1985, a collection of color Xeroxes mounted on panels, the Jazz references are almost overflowing.

Almost right in the middle of Untitled is this portrait of Miles Davis, playing, or holding, his horn.

Fittingly, smack dab in the middle of it is this portrait of trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis. Which reminds me of this still from a Miles Davis video from the late 1950s-

Miles Davis performing “So What” in a 1958 film called The Sound of Miles Davis in a group that also included the great John Coltrane.

And then there’s the work shown in the Xerox poster, King of the Zulus, 1984-5. “King of the Zulus” is, also, the name of a Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five record from 1926.

The work from the poster seen in the flesh. King of the Zulus, 1984-5, Acrylic, oilstick and xerox collage on paper mounted on canvas, 86 x 68 inches.

Detail of the lower left corner of King of the Zulus. This gives a little idea of the depth of what’s going on in this work.

The lower left corner of King of the Zulus includes a drawing of another Louis Armstrong record, “Potato Head Blues,” which some feel is at the top of the list of his finest recordings (those are some mighty brave folks. Miles Davis once said that Louis played everything you can possibly play on the trumpet. He would know. I’d never dare a guess at “greatest.” It doesn’t exist.). In his 1979 movie Manhattan, Woody Allen (who is also a Jazz Musician) has his character say that “Potato Head Blues” is “one of the reasons that life is worth living.”

Red Joy, 1984, Oilstick and Xerox collage on canvas, 86 x 68 inches.

Later, I came across the transcription of an interview with J-MB by Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis in which Becky Johnston asks him-

“BJ: What music do you like?

J-MB: Bebop’s I guess my favourite music. But I don’t listen to it all the time; I listen to everything. But I have to say bebop’s my favourite.”

Detail of the lower right corner of Red Joy. That’s a portrait of the great saxophonist and composer Charlie “Bird” Parker, with a musical quote from his composition “Red Cross” on the top.

“Bebop” was a revolutionary, new, style of Jazz that Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Christian developed in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Louis Armstrong predated and outlived Bebop (which peaked in the 1940s), so it’s obvious that J-MB listened to Jazz from other periods as well as Bebop. Regarding the work that might omit a Jazz reference? Interestingly, look as I might, I didn’t find any Jazz references in Odours of Punt, seen earlier, rare among the works in Xerox. Unless the repeated “BIRD OF GOD,” near the upper left is a reference to Charlie “Bird” Parker. What else could it mean? My guess is that it is- until an expert comes forward. When he died, it’s reported in Pheobe Hoban’s biography that crates of Jazz records belonging to the Artist were thrown out, along with a carton of copies of Ross Russell’s 1973 Parker bio, Bird Lives!5.

Jean-Michel Basquiat holding a copy of The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac. He was reported seen carrying one around in Pheobe Hoban’s biography of the Artist. *Photographer unknown.

As for the second thread, the proliferation of words in the works included in Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox got me to look closer than I ever did before. Then, in my research, I discovered something interesting. Jean-Michel Basquiat had a love of the Beats. At various points he is reported to be continually reading William Burroughs Naked Lunch (a picture of him with a copy of it was taken by Alexis Adler was shown earlier- the picture with Nick’s tattoo, in which Naked Lunch is shown mounted on the wall behind J-MB) and Junky, as is reported in Pheobe Hoban’s Basquiat: A Quick Killing In Art, (eBook P.75). Later on, he is reported to be carrying around Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans, as is seen above. These struck me. Then, I discovered something more. J-MB knew both William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and can be seen with both here! He was also Photographed by Allen Ginsberg, a terrific and still somewhat overlooked Photographer in his own right. While others make cases for J-MB being a member of this or that “group,” how crazy is it to make a case for J-MB as a descendant of the Beats? There’s more direct evidence for it than there is for some of the claims I’ve seen. Some have made the case for J-MB the Poet. From his SAMO© days to what we see in his Notebooks, he does have one of the most unique ways with the English language of any writer known to me.

Detail of the lower left section of Untitled, 1987, Acrylic, oil stick, and Xerox collage on canvas, 100 x 114 inches, reveals lists of song titles, under two semi-circular Drawings of record labels.

It’s become apparent to me that the cult of personality surrounding the Artist, and his fame (which, he longed for while he was homeless early on, and chased later, which makes him, at least partially responsible for) has, also, served to delay the serious critical assessment of his work. I’m not saying there isn’t any. There is. There are some very fine essays in the catalogues for the shows done so far, beginning with Richard Marshall’s excellent piece, “Repelling Ghosts,” in the catalogue for the very first J-MB Retrospective, at the Whitney Museum in 1992, and, as I said, Fred Hoffman has done a yeoman’s job of pointing the way to where Basquiat scholarship may be finally going, but the need for this is most urgent in my opinion, before the work is left to those who did not personally know the Artist. From what I’ve read thus far, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Art was best “understood” by those who knew him. Some of them have already passed away, taking with them whatever they didn’t write down or share in interviews about the Artist and his work. Since the real critical assessment of his work has taken so long to get underway, there is, it seems to me, a real danger that if this continues to happen, J-MB‘s Art will remain an eternal mystery, like say, Vermeer’s, is to us today. Part of this is due to the fact that museums have been slow accepting J-MB‘s work, or even borrowing it to mount shows of it. Museum shows generally result in new scholarship published in the accompanying catalogs. The pace of museum shows has picked up over the past decade, both in the US and in Europe, but, in my opinion, when it comes to actually studying the work, the scholarship has been spotty so far. So? Anyone delving into the work of J-MB for the first time, as I am, is left with a lot of biography and a little Art criticism to fall back on- no matter how many books you see. As a result? I was largely left to make of it what I can- like viewers who weren’t alive in J-MB‘s time are.

Untitled, 1985-6, in front of Embittered, 1986, Graphite, paint and Xerox collage on wood.

Also apparent from some of the pieces written thus far that people fall all over themselves trying to “claim” J-MB for this school or that, from so-called “primitivism” to so-called “expressionism” to so-called “neo-expressionism,” to (more recently) so-called “conceptualism”- none of which J-MB, himself, used for his work, which is the only thing that matters, in my opinion, to hip-hop.

Jay Z, who did not know him, said this in his autobiography, Decoded, published in 2010, on page 95-“…People always wanted to stick B in some camp or another, to past on some label that would be stable and make it easy to treat him like a commodity. But he was elusive. His eye was always on a bigger picture, not on whatever corner people tried to frame him in. But mostly his was probably on himself, on using his art to get what he wanted, to say what he wanted, to communicate his truth. B shook any easy definition. He wasn’t afraid of wanting to succeed to get right, to be famous…”

The visual evidence in the work itself shows me, at least, something different from all the claims I mentioned before Jay Z. Jean-Michel Basquiat belongs in one “box,” and one “box” only- the “Jean-Michel Basquiat box.” Though he definitely belongs to the continuum of Art History, as Richard Marshall lays out in detail in his excellent essay in the Whitney Retrospective Catalogue, which probably surprises many, Jean-Michel Basquiat is unique unto himself. Period.

Kokosolo, 1983, Acrylic, oilstick, and Xerox on canvas, 43.3 x 82.6 inches.

Meanwhile, back at Xerox, I love the use of paint here. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work is about layers and here it’s hard to know what’s on top and what’s on the bottom layer. J-MB spoke many times about his use of crowding out words and letters and said one of the reasons he did it was to make the viewer look closer. I can’t help wonder if he’s doing the same with the yellow here- making us look closer at what’s under the yellow. 

Galileo Galilei, 1983, Acrylic, oilstick, and Xerox on canvas, 78.75 x 51 inches.

In Galileo Galilei, 1983, I was struck by a number of things, first, from a distance, the circles, ostensibly the outline of the moon. But the circle is quartered, which is not like the moon. It’s something done in graphs and in Drawing. That reminded me- Drawing a circle is something that has a long and legendary history in Art. The great ancient Greek Painter, Apelles, and later the Renaissance master, Giotto, both used their ability to draw perfect circles freehand as calling cards.

Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Two Circles, c.1665, *Kenwood House, London.

I am one of those who believes Rembrandt followed suit, leaving his own “calling card” as their heir in his Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Detail, or rather, Details. Note the multiple lines that make up the circles and the repeated list. I recognize these part words as being a list of songs from Charlie Parker’s Savoy recordings because I have these records. “Koko Take 1,” and so on. As for everything else going on in this work? I’m hoping someone who knew J-MB will come forward and discuss it.

Here, we happen to have two, or parts of three, drawn circles. Was J-MB aware of the Apelles/Rembrandt circles? 

This body of work is an example of one of the last vestiges of reproduction in Art before the digital age took hold. Seeing this now does really make it feel like more than 35 years have passed, yet, they don’t look dated. Nor do the beginnings of this work, the “(Anti) Product Postcards” he created, many with Jennifer Stein, who speaks about them here.

Early on, J-MB created Postcards, including these, many hand labelled “(Anti) Product” on the verso, which he sold for $1 each. Andy Warhol bought one when J-MB first met him while he was eating at a restaurant with Henry Geldzahler. They are among the earliest examples I’ve seen of J-MB’s collage. Some of these were collaborations with Jennifer Stein.

I returned to see Jean-Michel Basquiat / Xerox twice more since it proved to be a “personal rosetta stone” into the Art of J-MB. It was an extraordinary gallery show in many ways. The 33 works on view that ranged from He Was Crazy from 1979, shown earlier, through 1987, covering all but the final year of his Painting career and his life. Alas, even in three visits, I can only hope to scratch the surface layer of all that lies in these work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. But, there was something else. Alone with the security guard in the show for most of the 7 or 8 hours I spent there over 3 visits, I was struck by something else.

Silence.

A silence that was singing in a way that would bring a smile to John Cage’s face. If there’s been too much of any one thing around the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat to this point, it’s noise. A byproduct of his tragic death far too young is there are no more “Page 6” scandals, no more gossip, no more rumors. Only the work remains, hanging silently in these rooms. That silence said it’s time to let that Art speak for itself. And it’s time that those who knew and/or worked with the Artist to share what they know, and provide whatever insights they have before those, too, are lost forever.

Current and older books on Jean-Michel Basquiat and his work. Of these, the catalogs for the J-MB Retrospectives at the Brooklyn Museum (first, upper left) and the Whitney Museum, 2nd from left, front, were the two I referred to most often. The Unseen Notebooks (4th from the right, top) is also excellent. Fred Hoffman’s books are available for download from his website and are recommended. While it contains images of the most works available in print, I found the new Taschen XL, far right, problematic. A catalog for Alexis Adler’s traveling show, seen bottom left, of her collection is a revelation.

After I left Xerox for the last time, I, too felt the clock ticking. I immediately launched a deep dive into Basquiat monographs, in and out of print, and read everything I could get my hands on. As my research began, I quickly came upon a startling fact- Jean-Michel Basquiat: Xerox (which ran from March 12 through June 1st) is one of no less than SIX shows of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work, or pertaining to the Artist, going on in the NYC vicinity in 2019!

The other five are-
Jean-Michel Basquiat at The Brant Foundation, March 6 – May 14th
The 12th Street Experiment: Photography of Jean-Michel Basquiat By Alexis Adler at Bishop on Bedford, Brooklyn, May 3 – June 13th
Lee Jaffe: Jean-Michel Basquiat at Eva Presenhuber, June 28th – July 28th
Basquiat x Warhol at The School/Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY, June 1 – September 7th
Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story at the Guggenheim Museum, June 21st – November 6th
and…two Paintings from the collaboration of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, along with ephemera from their collaboration, were on view in Andy Warhol at the Whitney Museum earlier this year, which I wrote about, here.

First? I wondered- Why six shows now?

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960 and died 31 years ago on August 12, 1988. 2020 will be a double anniversary for J-MB- 60 years since he was born, 40 years since The Times Square Show launched his career. 2019? No special significance, as far as I know, four months into my research. The Brant show shares the same curator (and many of the 120 works) with the Jean-Michel Basquiat show at the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, which ended on January 14, 2019. The Brant’s opened on March 6th. So, beyond commemorating a “Basquiat anniversary,” the timing of that show may just have been fortuitous and practical, as in “we’ve got all these works together, why don’t we also show them in the new space in NYC?” As for the timing of the others? I have no idea.

Nola Darling lying on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s grave in She’s Gotta Have It.*

Between these six shows, the total number of works by Basquiat (counting those in collaboration with Andy Warhol) should total slightly more than the 120 shown in that Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, show, in addition to Photographs of J-MB by early roommate, Alexis Adler, and Musician and friend, Lee Jaffe. As such, these shows present the opportunity to see the most works by the Artist since the 160 pages from his Notebooks along with other works and some Paintings were shown in the Jean-Michel Basquiat: Unknown Notebooks show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2015, and the most Paintings by the Artist in NYC since that 2005 Basquiat Brooklyn Museum Retrospective. Unlike the “Summer of Rauschenberg,” which I covered extensively in 2017, where the satellite shows “revolved” around MoMA’s Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends Retrospective, this time, the only museum show in the bunch, Basquiat’s Defacement at the Guggenheim, is a satellite show to the blockbuster Brant Foundation’s (a private organization) first public exhibition- Jean-Michel Basquiat, which included a whopping 70 Paintings and 1 Sculpture, the main act. Given that the vast majority of J-MB‘s best work resides in private collections, this brings home the fact that going forward, unlike with most Artists, the public is going to depend on the generosity of collectors displaying their work to see them, and researchers are going to depend on them to study it.

As a result, I quickly realized after that it might be now or never if I wanted to see a large body of Basquiat’s work and reassess it, and see WHO is “right”- the haters or the believers. With 39 years elapsing since J-MB‘s debut at the Times Square Show, enough time has elapsed to get a bit of perspective. So?

Detail of Now’s The Time, a Painting that looks like the classic 1945 Charlie Parker record of the same name, with “PRKR,” J-MB’s “shorthand” for Bird’s last name.

Now…is INDEED the time. It’s the time for the real assessment of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Art to take over from the sensational biography. For me? Who knows when I’ll have the opportunity to see this much of his work in NYC again. It might be now, or never. NOW is my time, too.

My thoughts immediately turned to the Brant Foundation’s inaugural show in their new East Village location, Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was up and running and the clock was ticking on its run. NHNYC researcher Kitty, a Basquiat fan since she saw him in person back in the day at the Mudd Clubb, had seen it and gave a glowing report. I began scrambling to get a ticket. No luck online. The show had been completely sold out (though tickets were free) since it opened. Hmmm…HOW to see the most publicized and talked about show in NYC in early 2019? Or, would my glimpse at Xerox of what I had missed remain a lingering tease?

To be continued…

This piece is dedicated to my former friend, grae, who knew J-MB, and to Kitty, who was in the same room with him in the clubs back in the day, and who has patiently accepted his work not speaking to me all these years. My thanks to Nick. 

This is Part 1 of my series on the five Jean-Michel Basquiat shows going on in NYC this year. Part 2 may be found under this one, or here. Part 3 is here. 

*-Soundtrack for this Post is what else? “Xerox” by Julian Casablancas + The Voidz. If  you’re a Strokes fan, check this out, if you haven’t. Also, it doesn’t sound all that distant from J-MB‘s own band, Grey. Maybe they were an influence.?

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  1. Here. He repeated this elsewhere as well. ↩
  2. By “work,” I believe they mean a Painting. According to its site, MoMA owns 12 prints and Drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat. No Paintings. ↩
  3. //www.nytimes.com/1985/02/10/magazine/new-art-new-money.html?searchResultPosition=1 ↩
  4. They were the only company in the world to acknowledge the 100th Anniversary of the 1st Jazz record in 2017, though the record in question is not what I call “Jazz,” and featured an astounding array of classic under-known Blue Note Record covers on T shirts. ↩
  5. Both, Pheobe Hoban’s Basquiat: A Quick Killing In Art, eBook P.19 ↩