Chances are you’ve seen some kid somewhere wearing a Jean-Michel Basquiat t-shirt whether you knew it at the time or not. It likely featured a crown with his name scrawled in all caps underneath.
Chances are you’ve also never actually seen one of his paintings in person.
And chances are you will not have another opportunity again like the one being presented now through May 15 at The Brant Foundation in New York City’s East Village to see so many of his best works in one place at one time.
Basquiat began his career as a graffiti artist before rocketing to international contemporary art superstardom in the 1980s, dying of an accidental drug overdose in 1988 at 27-years-old.
An early death naturally limited his artistic output. His background with graffiti and being a black man resulted in museums turning up their noses at his work when it was still affordable. Private collectors, like Peter Brant, namesake of The Brant Foundation, however, flocked to him, driving up his prices.
By the time museums had caught on, it was too late.
As a result of these unique circumstances, Basquiat’s art proves exceedingly difficult to find in public collections making this exhibit, Jean-Michael Basquiat, all the more rare.
If you’ve never seen a work by Basquiat in person, you are in for a treat.
“I think the experience of seeing a Basquiat work in person is immeasurable,” The Art Newspaper reporter Gabriella Angeleti, who has seen the exhibit, said. “It has an immense energy that almost dwarfs the viewer. It’s an emotional experience and that’s something hard to translate when you view the work through a screen or a book.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat features close to 70 works, one of which made history.
In 2017, Basquiat dethroned Andy Warhol, a mentor and admirer, as the most expensive American artist at auction when a Japanese billionaire purchased his Untitled (1982) at a Sotheby’s auction for $110.4 million including buyer’s premium.
“It’s interesting to stand in front of Untitled, (1982), for example, and reflect on what Basquiat would have made of the whole circus around his work if he were still creating today,” Angeleti said.
Advance tickets for Jean-Michel Basquiat have long been sold out. A limited number of same-day tickets are available. Contact The Brant Foundation at ticketsnyc@brantfoundation.org to have your name added to a waitlist. Each day the foundation accommodates people on the waitlists for entry on a first-come, first-serve basis. Walk-ins will not be permitted.
Basquiat fever, hot as ever three decades after his passing, has had an unusual effect on the art world and art-admiring public, with a potential silver lining for fans according to Angeleti.
I think there’s a momentum—whether it’s trendy or not—around Basquiat, not just because his work is historically and visually rich, but also because it’s wildly expensive and high-profile, so that maybe makes it seem more accessible for people who aren’t primed in art. Liking Basquiat is a status symbol, whether of money or intellect. The work is mystical and poignant, but it also translates well as a tote bag. I think as long as people are flocking to these shows and collectors are paying attention, institutions will continue trying to organize the next major Basquiat exhibition.
Peter Brant is the chairman and chief executive officer of White Birch Paper, one of the North America’s largest newsprint companies. He has long been a prominent collector of contemporary art. He has produced films on Basquiat, Warhol and Jackson Pollock, in addition to founding the Greenwich (Connecticut) Polo Club and The Brandt Foundation Art Study Center, also in Greenwich, where he lives.
The Brant Foundation’s New York location (421 East 6th Street) occupies a century-old building originally designed as a substation for Consolidated Edison. The building subsequently served as the home and studio of famed artist Walter De Maria from the mid-1980s until his death in 2013.
It has since been renovated into a lavish showplace.
Reviews of Jean-Michel Basquiat have often focused as much on the opulent surroundings for the show as the work on display. Does The Brant Foundation’s upscale digs take away from the gritty, challenging nature of Basquiat’s work, his exploration of the “existential line between powerlessness and self-empowerment, between human existence and the urgently pressing forces of everyday and institutionalized racism, repression, violence, and death,” or so says Dieter Buchhart in the show’s exhibition catalogue?
“That grandiosity isn’t what Basquiat championed in his life and work, but I think it’s impossible to ignore that his legacy has been hyper-commercialized for decades—long before it landed under the Brant Foundation’s rooftop pool,” Angeleti said. “Given the astronomical auction records, and arbitrary things like Billabong’s recent line of Basquiat clothes and surfboards, to show the works now in any grittier or more ‘underground’ context could feel staged or detached from reality.”
The venue can be debated, the work cannot. Featured are the best examples from the most prominent American artist of the last quarter of the 20th century. The force, the intensity, the genius, the scale, it’s all there for you to see.
