The 24-year-old Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky (“Purple Swag,” “Peso,” and new mixtape LIVE.LOVE.A$AP) and crew have got a $3 million deal with RCA/Polo Grounds, teamed up with designer Jeremy Scott (Karl Lagerfeld, Adidas, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Rihanna), and published this add in the current Complex Magazine ("music, style, sneakers").

As readers will notice, it flagrantly pays homage to / rips off the famous poster and announcement for the first exhibition of Jean Michel Basquiat / Andy Warhol collaborative works, at Tony Shafrazi gallery in October 1985.

Why? You got me.

It is a strange image to purposely summon up, as this show was met with near-universal negative reviews. The New York Times talked about “Warhol’s manipulations,” the forces that would make the young Basquiat an “art world mascot,” and the theory about “nobody going broke underestimating the public's intelligence.” Even more to the point may be the question in the Flash Art review of the show: “who is using whom here?”

Of course, they are not the first to adapt this image for their own use. 

Today is the birthday of John Clifford Brian Gysin (1916-1986). Known as a (re)discoverer of what he called the "Cut-Up Method" in literature, he was a prolific, unconventional and non-conformist experimenter in art, literature, music, performance, film, technology, and in the ideas behind these experiments --  ideas too simple and too complex to be called philosophy or theory they way they are usually understood. Gysin introduced William Burroughs to the “cut-up” technique during their Paris “Beat Hotel” days, and the process became most influential through Burroughs’ experimental fiction of that period, such as Nova Express. 

It was through the influence of Burroughs that Gysin's ideas came to the attention of the young Jean-Michel Basquiat, many years later.

Invented in 1959 (the year I was born) the "Cut-Up" was a technique of utilizing chance and disjunction adapted and transformed from similar experiments by the Dadaists, such as Jean Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), created the year Gysin was born.  

Gysin began by deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged into a new text. Cutting into small pieces of one or few words creates an almost abstract poetry, while using longer snippets reads more like disjointed prose. William Burroughs adapted the technique into what he called Fold-In, starting with two whole pages of linear text, folding each sheet in half vertically, and reading across the resulting page. Burroughs later claimed "When you cut into the present the future leaks out." The collaborative book Minutes to Go was created with extensive use of various cut-up processes. 

Gysin explained that "poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases," and later claimed that "the semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance."

Gysin was fond of other low tech and direct applications, such as using rollers to make paintings, a manual typewriter to make abstract patterns of individual letters, or using a tape recorder as a primary artistic instrument and medium in creating both sound poetry (again re-invented after related experiments by Kurt Schwitters) and music.

From a recording of the phrase “I Am that I Am” came “I Am That Am I? Am I That? I Am!” Another work read “Junk is no good baby. No junk is good baby. Is baby good” No junk! No junk baby is good. Junk is goooood, baby … No!” Some of his music is available on CD, but future musicians, like David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, and Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth), seem to be more influenced by his literature and ideas (used sparingly) than his music. However, Gysin did later produce two albums with the jazz experimentalist Steve Lacy.

Gysin and Burroughs famously collaborated on the epic 200 page The Third Mind, both a collection of collages, visual poetry, and a manuscript for a manifesto of the cut-up form.

In many ways, Gysin rediscovered and refined his “cut-up” technique from the Dadaist generations use of “the laws of chance” and the technique of “cadavre exquis” (or “exquisite corpse”).  Similarly, Gysin’s ideas again came to prominence in downtown New York milieu of the late 1970s and early 1980s, where it greatly influenced Keith Haring’s early collages and came to the attention of the young Jean-Michel Basquiat. Gysin’s idea of the cut up, as filtered through Burroughs and Haring, served as both an influence on Basquiat’s work and theoretical justification for Basquiat’s natural proclivities.

Glen O’Brien, when discussing Basquiat’s snatching bits from conversation or TV and putting it in his drawings, said “I know he liked Burroughs a lot. He was really interested in him. But I think he liked Burroughs kind of on a theoretical level. The cut-up. He liked the technical side of Burroughs.” Basquiat did once claim “Burroughs is my favorite living author.”

In an excellent essay on Basquiat’s use of words in his visual art, Richard D. Marshall quotes William Burroughs saying that “Writers don’t write, they read and transcribe.”

In Chapter 7 of my book on Basquiat I give a couple of examples of his spontaneous adaptation of the cut-up technique. Here let me just mention that Basquiat's assistant at the time, Stephen Torton, told me that Basquiat related his interest in the cut up to his use of multiple panel paintings, such as the 20 foot long 7 canvas Toussaint l’Overture vs Savonarola (1983). This related to both the mix of images and subjects in the work, the mix of painting and collage, and to the placement of the panels, which were painted in one order and moved around many times before being fixed and hinged together in the final work.

In Chapter 4 I also relate Keith Harring's description of how, soon after he arrived in New York to attend the School of Visual Arts in 1978,  he developed an interest in the “cut-up” technique of Burroughs and Gysin -- taking scissors to their  typewritten pages and re-writing the mixed up text. For Haring the philosophy behind this “somehow tied together all sorts of things that I was seeing ––the way SAMO was using language on the streets, the way Jenny Holzer was using language –and the whole performance aspect of language.” At the time this applied more to the poems he read at Club 57 than to his art, but soon he was covering the streets (or at least the bottom of lamp posts) of downtown New York in Xeroxed collages of New York Post headlines, such as  “Reagan’s Death Cops Hunt Pope,” “Pope Killed For Freed Hostage,” and “Reagan Killed by Hero Cop.” Although these clearly were extensions of Gysin's technique, they also reflected Harring's unique political stance on the world, and influences by the phrases his friends Jenny Holzer (in her printed and posted "truisms") and Jean-Michel Basquiat (using the graffiti tag SAMO) had already started putting up on the streets in their own way.

Haring also used the concept of the Third Mind (a new entity created from the combination of two originals) in describing the collaborations of Basquiat and Warhol in the mid-1980s -- one of the few positive contemporary commentaries on these works.

Later artists mixed Gysin’s ideas with their own, using play, disjunction and overlap through the selective use of fragmentation and recombination with elements of chance along with more conventional means. But Gysin spent his life experimenting with the implications of his ideas, creating a body of work in many mediums that was a byproduct of this process. 

Grian Gysin was the subject of an interesting retrospective at the New Museum which featured his films, collage poetry, music, and a reconstruction of his strobing Dreammachine.  It was a great opportunity to see some of the unpublished visually intricate pages of The Third Mind displayed in the original. Here's another, and another.

As William Burroughs said of Gysin, “He streaked across Present Time like a runaway rocket, and then he was Gone.”

Although Gysin preferred a low-tech hand-made process (where he could tweak the result), there is an amusing digital cut-up machine at http://www.publicassemblage.com/

There was much more to Gysin than the cut up. For a flavor check out his many books (His more narrative novel The Process is available to look through), or start with The Brian Gysin Reader and the catalog to the New Museum show. I also recommend the appreciative small introduction at the always stimulating HiLowBrow (http://hilobrow.com/2012/01/19/brion-gysin/) -- and while you are there, check out their current artist in residence, the New Yorker Vijay Balakrishnan.

Yesterday, the Authentication Committee of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat announced that it would disband in September.  A statement posted on its website read:  

“The Authentication Committee has been in existence for eighteen years and has reviewed over 2,000 works of art. It believes that it has fulfilled its goal of providing the public with an opportunity to obtain an opinion as to the authenticity of works purportedly created by Jean-Michel Basquiat.”

They made no comment on what would happen if new Basquiats (or cleaver fakes) appear on the market after they close up shop in September.

The committee was headed by the artist’s father, Gerard Basquiat, and included experts on his work, working with his first gallerist Annina Nosei, early associate Jeffrey Deitch (now curator of MOCA in LA), Larry Warsh and gallery owner John Cheim.

We previously reported on a claim that there was a Basquiat graffiti work on the door of a bodega in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The authentification committee found that the work was not by Basquiat.

It is very hard to see how a new Basquiat painting not included in the excellent catalogue raisonné  compiled by the dealer Enrico Navarra could emerge after all these years. While there are a few paintings discovered since the publication of the catalogue, none has surfaced in a long while. However, the Navarra volume of drawings is not as complete. Basquiat was very prolific and free with his drawings, especially in his early years, and new works on paper, like those in the sketchbook left for Arto Lindsey displayed last year, may still be found. But with several decades of astronomically rising prices, it is much more likely that new drawings will be fake.

While not perfect (and sometimes skewed by politics and self interest, as we see in the Andy Warhol case) such expert committees are the closest we have to impartial and reliable way to see whether a work is fake or authentic.

In 2008 the authentification committee itself was sued by businessman and collector art collector Gerard De Geer, who claimed the committee breached its contract by refusing to offer an opinion on the authenticity of the painting Fuego Flores (1983).   Court papers claimed the painting could have brought $3 million at auction if it were authenticated by the committee, but after the refusal was worth less than $5,000. However, the work was subsequently sold for £ 959,650 ($ 1,562,118) at Sotheby's (the nasty union-busting scab house), London in October of 2009. 

In 2007 the auction house Christie’s was taken to court on a claim that it had knowingly sold art dealer Tony Shafrazi a fake Basquiat, later acquired by the collector Guido Orsi. The case was dismissed in November 2011.

The notice by the Basquiat committee follows in the footsteps of the equivalent body for Warhol’s works.

In October 2011, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts also announced that it would dissolve its extremely controversial Andy Warhol Art

Authentication Board early this year.

The attributions of works of Andy Warhol has seen notorious controversies, partly because the artist produced an immense amount of work, much of it produced in multiples by others, and much of the later work undocumented. But the connection of the Warhol authentication board to the Warhol Foundation, which had a great financial interest in no new Warhols being put on the market, also played a part.  

Last year also saw a major scandal about forget paintings said to be by the Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, and involving major New York and London galleries.  

The Gallerist website quotes Alberto Mugrabi (who’s famous collectionincludes many Basquiat's andWarhols), as saying “All these foundations, they just don’t want to be responsible for when someone brings in a painting and it’s not authentic.”  

While the cost of running the committee will have increased slightly since Mr. Deitch moved to the West Coast from New York, one would suspect this could easily be covered by fees.  It is the potential cost of more lawsuits against the board that convinced the Andy Warhol Foundation to close its authentification board,  and similar considerations may have played a role here.

Anyone who does own a scrap of paper with a scrawl by Basquiat’s hand should be bringing it to the committee now while they have the chance – unless they are more scared of getting an “unapproved” stamp.

Write to:

Authentication Committee
Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat
25 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5F New York, NY 10003
(212) 925-4585
(212) 925-2135 FAX

Happy Birthday

I jot this down on Basquiat’s birthday, he was born on December 21^st in 1960.

(Here is the Huffington Post’s Birthday message, with images of his work from the recent retrospective. )

Below are some other ramblings and recent Basquiat links.

Art Basel Miami Beach this December was an occasion to see several of his works on display. See three at jmp_photos flickr site.  

Galerie Gmurzynska gallery showed a key early Basquiat painting discussed in my book, the 1980 Untitled (Car Crash, December 1980), see here. Some later work of his was also seen at the Miami Beach Convention center, alongside famous artists who influence him in different ways (Picasso, Pollock, Warhol), his friend Keith Haring, and more recent contemporary art, such as Nick Cave’s Sound Suits.  See some pictures at the IHLET blog.

Crass Commercialism at Christmas: 

Adding to the absurd list of pointless commercialization of his work, an image of his work “King Alphonso” has been stolen (perfectly legally, it was licensed by the estate) and transferred to a coffe cup and plate in Limoges porcelain. €70 with tax. http://www.highsnobette.com/news/tag/jean-michel-basquiat/

These will be competing with the $150.00 “Keep Frozen” Limoges plate at Gagosian’s (http://www.gagosian.com/shop/jean-michel-basquiat-4) At least the coffee mug is marketed as overpriced kitchen wear. Gagosian markets these alongside his art as “limited editions.”

I don’t see the difference between these and the countless sneakers and T-shirts also licensed by the Estate. The latest being the “somewhat limited” so-called “Basquiat X” Reebok Ventilator (http://www.kicksonfire.com/2011/12/13/jean-michel-basquiat-x-reebok-ventilator/).

My view is, if it is fashionable to rip off his art, at least do it yourself, and under the radar, like this recent “nail art” (http://fuckyeahnailart.tumblr.com/post/14256177577).

Of course, all these years after the artist’s death, the destruction of the downtown New York artist’s milieu in which he artistically grew up, and the gross expansion of wealth inequality world wide (and especially in Manhattan) it is becoming harder and harder to see the difference between these objects and the million dollar sales of his actual work.

Jean-Michel Basquiat came in at number 8 on the list of best-selling artists for 2011, selling 56 lots out of 69 offered (81% sell rate) for a total of $85,395,581 raised. Basquiat is often sited as a victim of his own success, a profligate spender, etc. but he never saw anything like these prices in his lifetime. Despite the continued economic problems resulting in unemployment foreclosures, and declining real wages for the 99%, in November 2011 contemporary art sales rallied in New York, raising $635 million in just three days. The union-busting Sotheby’s (read more on the boycott and labor actions) was at the front of this pack of wolves. And in December Basquiat’s painting MP sold in Paris for €1,296,75, helping lift Sotheby’s Contemporary Art sales there to 20.6 million.

Many of the 42 art handlers Sotheby’s kicked out in the streets after refusing to negotiate demanded cuts to their contract will have five months without a paycheck this December, making it a very difficult Christmas for their families. To make matters worse, their health insurance will expire at the start of the New Year.

Occupy 2012

While not relating to Basquiat at all, but much more in keeping with Basquiat’s spirit, was Poster-Boy’s “Occupy Diego,” a recent mash-up of an adhesive subway advertisement for the Museum of Modern Art’s Diego Rivera show, using nothing but a sharp knife to relate the Mexican artist’s social concerns from the 1930s depression to the Occupy Wall Street movement today. 

More on the MOMA Rivera show later. 

And have a happy New Year.

A cute little story from L Mag. on an event earlier this month at the nearby Greenwood Cemetery (I can see it from my window now), where Jean-Michel Basquiat is buried. The excellent documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child was shown at the Greenwood's Chapel, and Michael Holman (friend and co-founder with with Jean-Michel of the band Gray ) and the always lovely Suzanne Mallouk were there to answer questions. Afterward the crowd rode through the beautiful wooded cemetery, the highest point in Brooklyn, to visit Basquiat’s small, undiscerning grave, as usual decorated with mementos by visitors.

See the full story, and pictures, here:

http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2011/11/07/visiting-jean-michel-basquiats-green-wood-grave-with-his-closest-friends

The exhibition “Club 57 and Friends” at the Dorian Grey Gallery, is closing this Sunday, October 9^th.

For fans of the period in New York, it is worth checking out before it closes. The small show is a rare opportunity to see some of the ephemeral work of that scene, but it is far from a major representation of work associated with Club 57. Club 57 was a short lived space (circa 1979 to 1983?) on St. Marks Place presided over by Ann Magneson, along with John Sex, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scarf when the latter three were SVA students. At Haring’s invitation, Basquiat showed some work at the club, but found the scene “silly” and to white.

Basquiat’s relation to the Mudd Club and Club 57 are covered in chapter 3 of my book.

At the Dorian Grey gallery, it actually looks like two small shows. Along the left wall of this narrow space, Richard Hamilton is made the star. His shadow figures used to haunt dark corners throughout downtown in the day. There are several of these black splashy silhouettes here on canvas. The real Club 57 denizens are along the right wall, highlighting Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat is represented by one excellent small drawing titled “warrior,” some very early (High School  period) drawings, his 1984 record cover for The Offs, and three crayon on paper advertisements for a Club 57 art show which are unauthenticated but claimed to be drawn and posted by Basquiat around the club, before an acquaintance of the gallery owner took them down and kept them. They are very unusual, completely unlike anything previously shown of Basquiat’s, but the handwriting on one definitely looks like his. Basquiat is also present in several photos of figures on the scene, and some nice early 1980s photos of his post-SAMO graffiti by Martha Cooper. Also on view are works by Kenny Scharf, Futura 2000, Rene Ricard; photos by Robert Hawkins, Clayton Patterson, and Mark Sink; and others.

Thanks are due the small Dorian Grey Gallery (which previously showcased work by LA II) for putting together this small sample. There are certainly more important things going on in town, such as the Romare Bearden show uptown, the William de Kooning retrospective at MoMA, and the Occupy Wall Street protests downtown. But the rarely exhibited drawings and photos make this interesting for hardcore Basquiat fans. And anyone with fond memories of the Club 57 scene (if they can stand going back to the neighborhood and seeing how it has changed) will get a kick out the show, from the graffiti-covered subway station signs to the little tin-foil sculptures and the smiling portrait photo of the late John Sex.

The Dorian Grey Gallery is at 437 East 9^th St., just off Avenue A. More information here http://www.doriangreygallery.com/

Update: the exhibit is now closed. One day a powerful museum should put together a more definitive look at the early 1980s art in the clubs scene, including performance, videos, and an informative catalog. It better be soon, we have already lost the most important players tragically early, and soon we will be getting to the point where the rest of us start to drop of old age.

Six Basquiat works will briefly go on view to the public in London before the mid-October auctions. For those of you near London, this is a time to see the paintings Spike, and Pedestrian 2 (both 1984); several minor Basquiat drawings; and one Warhol / Basquiat collaboration.

The collaboration, Thin Lips (1984-5), is basically a Warhol painting commenting on then Republican president Ronald Regan’s deficit, caused by increasing spending on the military and decreasing taxes on the rich – a very surprisingly contemporary theme – with minor oilstick additions by Basquit.

To my mind, Spike is the major Basquiat piece to be seen in this batch, one of his spare, see-thru griot figures with a mysterious presence.

The works are spread between Christies, Sothebys, and Phillip de Pury, and on view from October 6th to the 15h. Details on what works are showing at which London auction house, exact places and dates of preview, and links to on-line images of all the works can be seen on the auction pages of this site. 

As part of a series of musical films shown free outdoors in Washington Square Park, NYC, tonight you can see (Thursday 11/22/11) Wild Style, Charlie Ahearn's clasic 1983 film about graffiti artists and the beginning of hip-hop culture in New York. Lee Quinones plays the main character, and you also see Fab Five Freddy (pic below), Grandmaster Flash, and others from back in the day. The films will begin 1/2 an hour after sunset, or between 7 and 7:30.

That will give you time to go from the protest against the state murder of Troy Davis, at Union Square that will begin after 5:00 and end before 7:00.



More information on Wild Style, and today's showing:http://altscreen.com/09/16/2011/thursday-editors-pick-wild-style-1983/

  

"Could a painting on a dope dealer’s storefront be the last work of Jean-Michel Basquiat?" Fascinating ethical story about a supposed unknown Basquiat in this week's New York magazine. But I doubt it.

A package of previously unreleased live recordings of the great Miles Davis “second quintet” is becoming available to buy on September 20th. This was the great quintet of Miles Davis with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. The first CD of the release is now available free to listen to online through National Public Radio. It records a complete concert at Queen Elizabeth's Hall in Antwerp, Belgium on Oct. 28, 1967.

Basquiat was, of course, a great jazz fan. Charlie Parker is the Jazz character most often referred to as Basquiat's "hero." But in a 1983 interview in Milan, Lisa Licitra asked Basquiat his favorite music, and he replied “Miles Davis.”

And in the famous mid-1980s interview with Becky Johnson, filmed by Tara Davis, Becky asked him: “Would you ever describe your work?” Basquiat replied: “I never know how to really describe it…. I don’t know how to describe my work. Because it’s not always the same thing. It’s like … asking Miles how does your horn sound?, I don’t think he could really tell you, you know, why he played this at this point in the music, you know, it’s just sort of on automatic most of the time.”

Basquiat grew up listening to Jazz in his father’s house. He told Becky Johnson that “Be-bop is my favorite music, I listen to it all the time, I listen to everything, but I have to say bebop is my favorite.” As described in Jean-Michel Basquiat; A Biography, around 1983 he switched from boxers to Jazz musicians as his Afro-American avatars in his paintings.  Among references from Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to Charlie Parker and Max Roach he has also referenced Miles Davis in his paintings (as in his painting Discography Two of 1983, based on an earlier "Miles Davis All Stars" recording). But Jazz was not just a theme in his work, or an analogy of his position as a Black painter in the New York art world.  He took the jazz process of borrowing existing themes and creating new work by improvising on top of them to heart in his own art. Elizabeth Hess, reviewing Basquiat’s 1992 Whitney Museum retrospective in the Village Voice, wrote: “As many critics have suggested, the influence of Dubuffet and Twombly are obvious, along with the bravado of Picasso. But the mood is jazz.”

Or as Greg Tate wrote in the Whitney catalog, in words that could also apply to Miles Davis, wrote: “Basquiat was ... a populist postmodernist. He belongs to a black tradition, well established by our musicians, of making work that is heady enough to confound academics and hip enough to capture the attention span of the hip-hop nation.”

In this record, Miles has gone way beyond his be-bop beginnings, in great form with a familiar bunch of innovating younger musicians who would become the future of Jazz. This Miles Davis Quintet CD is the most important release of older Jazz in a long while. Give it a listen, and see why, as Kay Larson said, "Jazz was more than pleasant, syncopated patterns to Basquiat ... it was an analogue of life."