KAREN WILKIN
At the Galleries
If
you could tear yourself away from the Matisse cxhibition, there was
much more
to
be secn - some of it cxhilarating, somc exasperating - in
New York's galleries last season. Shows of past and prcscnt artists, both
celebrated and little-known, offered a widc range of alternatives to
MoMA's triumphant retrospective. The most notorious was probably the
Jean-Michel Basquiat cxhibit. It raiscd a lot of hackles not mcrely because
Basquiat's career spanned only eight years (he died bcfore he was twenty–
eight), nor because the show's scope and duration seemed disproportion–
ate for so slight a subject - it occupicd an entire floor of thc Whitney for
almost a month longer than Matisse was at the Modern. Much of the
hostility was provokcd by the way the Whitney used the Basquiat exhibi–
tion for its own political ends, to demonstrate its adherence to the pieties
of academically-sanctioned multiculturalism and its freedom from institu–
tional elitism.
Basquiat himself, a middle-class kid gone wrong, by Illost standards, was
hailed as a counterculture hero, a shining role model for non-whites and
non-Europeans. A booklet distributed gratis at the show,
jellll-Michel
Basquiat: All Illfroducfioll for Sfudellfs,
identified him as "one of the most
successful black visual artists in history , even though his career was brief
and it ended abruptly and tragically. He is one of only a small number of
Hispanic-African-American artists to be recognized internationally." (If
only he had becn female or " physically challenged," but reports are that
he was, at least, sexually broad-minded.) Part Haitian, part Pucrto Rican,
raised in Park Slope - not thc ghetto, but you can't have cverything -
Basquiat was largely self-taught, his interest in art stimulated by his
mothcr. Thc student guide tells us that hc "began his carcer illegally
pa inting imagcs and words on buildings throughout the city ." (Among
reactionary typcs who care about public amenity, this used to be consid–
ered vandalism, rathcr than thc beginning of a career as an artist, but
never mind .) In 1970, at thc age of twenty, Basquiat switched from defac–
ing public monuments to more traditionally and potentially salable can–
vases and sheets of paper, so becoming a "fine artist."
The guide assures us that he became "quite knowledgeable about the
history of art" and that "living artists were also important
to
him," espe–
cially his friend Andy Warhol. But it's 13asquiat's success that really mat–
ters: "The critical reception of his paintings was strong and positive, the
