Hello, again, After attending the magnificent Basquiat retrospective in Paris this December (on the fiftieth anniversary of Basquiat’s birth), I’ve been involved in other projects, and have not been contributing as regularly to this blog. There are several
Basquiat works that will be available for before the Spring auctions in New York.
I will be writing more about them soon, but details are now on the auction
page. I will also be posting on the “Art
In The Streets” show at MOCA in Los Angeles--where Basquiat appears almost
as a footnote. 2010 (50 years after Basquiat’s birth in 1960) was a surprisingly big year for those interested in the artist, with the large retrospective in Basel and then Paris, the associated catalogs published, Tamra Davis' The Radiant Child released in movie theaters, and then on DVD, my YA biography published, and many smaller events built around the movie and museum retrospectives. (The Radiant Child was recently shown on TV, by Independent Lens for PBS). In the future I plan to be maintaining this site, with all its background information on Basquiat, but occasionally updating the blog with a broader range of events, not just on Basquiat himself. For now, a few loosely related items. I’ve just belatedly finished Washington Post columnist Wil Haygood’s Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (about one of the many boxers referred to in Basquiat's painting). I enjoyed reading it and recommend it, not just to the small pool of boxing enthusiasts, but to anyone interested in Harlem culture from the 30s to the 60s. Although Haygood’s knowledge of jazz is not up to his knowledge of boxing, the way he weaves Sugar Ray’s life into his times, and uses figures like heavyweight Joe Lewis, poet Langson Hughes, jazz musician Miles Davis, and singer Lena Horne, among others, is masterful, and would be entertaining and revealing even to those who loath the sport. [To my mind, Haygood’s discussions of Langson Hughes and Paul Robeson seem to either misunderstand or purposefully ignore aspects of their politics--and the influence of the Communist Party in Harlem--which could have been a good addition to his deep and detailed understanding of the Harlem politics of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. But this is a picky observation that does not undermine his feeling for the quick and graceful champion, and his writing which well matches his subject. Along with books like Neil Lanctot's Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, and Mike Marquesee’s Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties, it shows how far we have gone from the Famous Negro Athletes style so aptly parodied by the young Jean-Michel Basquiat.] Followers of Harlem
culture (as well as Basquiat fans and anyone interested in modern art) will
also appreciate the excellent Romare Bearden (1911-1988): Collage, A Centennial Celebration at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (24 West 57th Street , 7th floor), March 26 - May 21, 2011. I
also hope to be writing more about this important artist in the near future. For now, read the New York Times review, and the gallery handout, and see the show before it closes. Relating to Basquiat in an entirely different way, there will be a Keith Haring exhibition at Barbara Gladstone Gallery (530 West 21st Street, in New York’s Chelsea) from Wednesday May 4th to July 1st, 2011. The show will feature three large Keith Haring works on paper created in 1982 in conjunction with a series of performances at The Kitchen by Bill T. Jones. (The larger exhibition “Keith Haring: 1978-1982” organized by the Kunsthalle in Vienna is currently on view at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati through September 5, 2011).
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