Riding with Death Jean-Michel Basquiat, 12/22/1960 – 8/12/1988

The art critics were always brutal, saying he repeated himself over and over again, but Jean-Michel Basquiat managed to paint up until the last days of his life.

(He probably wasn’t in the mood to go running around the streets, as shown in the movie, looking for his mother in an asylum), no, he was breaking down, doing a lot of drugs, but he was still working, getting disillusioned by the critics and the art world, the dealers, his life, even the money started to not make much of a difference.

Jean took Andy Warhol’s death hard (Andy died a year & a half before in Feb., 1987), and his dope addiction, heroin, coke, speed, downers, weed, was making a madman out of him. There is no real known cause for Jean-Michel’s early death at twenty-seven, they say, burn out, drug addiction, insanity, but most likely it was an untreated bi-polar disorder, maybe the abuse he grew up with from his dad, or maybe it was the abuse of the art critics who loved to rake him over the coals just because he became successful so fast, trumping all the other artists in the Neo-Expressionism movement of the 80’s. Then he started “to repeat himself.”

In an infamous review that appeared after the Tony Shafrazi’s Gallery show (Fall, 1985) where Jean and Andy exhibited together, Jean was cited for being on his way to being a great American artist if he didn’t settle for being the “art world’s mascot”.

“I’m no body’s mascot,” he tried explain himself, but they weren’t listening, so he took his ire out on Andy, and dropped the relationship, and retreated to a painting and drug stupor. The gallery showing was called Warhol * Basquiat, paintings, and invitation to the opening shows Andy and Jean in boxing gear, Andy punching Jean in the face from the side. “I think I helped Andy more than he helped me,” said Jean in another interview, but the critics harped on and on.

There’s something eerie about Jean dying 6 days (August 12th) after Andy’s birthday (August 6th). Friends reported he was still mourning Andy’s death months & months later, a death he never got over, and he said he had the best times with Andy, all that was behind him, But there looked like a big ugly karma thing going on there, the strange tie between two ambitious artists in New York City. Andy died under mysterious conditions after a routine gall bladder operation, and Jean died of a drug overdose on a hot summer day, when the air conditioner gave up on the upper floor where he lived. His last great painting is Riding with Death, a bare bones drawing like painting, of a death figure on a horse. Both deaths left their friends wondering what kind of jinxes and excess drove those souls to early death?

Comments

[tsdf]

love his work

[dispatx]

this is a very clear and dispassionate description which manages to hint at a number of themes. Are some of these themes or unanswered questions things that interest you, that you would like to explore later?

[Term Paper]

Thanks you for sharing and may you have many thought provoking conversations!

[Ajf 6]

The hope of green fields, we yearn for the dream!

[Leros]

All artist repeat themselves!
ALL of Them!

When you are doing one of a kind work, you have to.