press release
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july 10, 2015 - Guggenheim Bilbao
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time, at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The exhibition features approximately one hundred key works organized around the themes that inspired Jean-Michel Basquiat in the course of his intense career, cut short by his untimely death at age 27.
Described by the artist himself as a “springboard to deeper truths about the individual”, Basquiat’s powerful and emotionally charged works explore issues such as racial identity and history.
Though Basquiat soon left the conceptual graffiti of his early days behind to exhibit in art galleries, his paintings use the language and symbols of the street, creating images that honor black men as kings and saints.
As an artist, he immersed himself in high art and graffiti, jazz and rap, punk and pop culture, anatomy textbooks and comics, and then channeled this complexity into sophisticated, layered works that presaged today’s internet culture.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is pleased to present Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time, an unprecedented exhibition in Europe that includes roughly one hundred large-scale paintings and drawings from public and private collections across the United States and Europe. This show, organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, is the first thematic examination of Basquiat’s output and has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of Iberdrola.
Already famous at the age of 20 for his groundbreaking drawings and paintings, Jean-Michel Basquiat (b. 1960– d. 1988) took the New York art world by storm in the early 1980s. He gained international recognition by creating powerful and expressive works that confronted issues of racism, politics, and social hypocrisy. Although his career was cut short by his untimely death at age 27, his works remain hugely influential.
Described by the artist himself as a “springboard to deeper truths about the individual”, Basquiat’s vivid and poignant work regularly referenced street art, given his beginnings in conceptual graffiti and his use of salvaged materials such as abandoned doors and packing crates as canvases. In 1976, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz began spray-painting the walls of lower Manhattan under the pseudonym SAMO©, a reference to the saying “same old shit”. Their work cleverly used and manipulated text with the intention of provoking passers-by. Basquiat’s renown quickly grew as he started a rock band, appeared in Edo Bertoglio’s indie film Downtown 81, and struck up a friendship with Andy Warhol. His first solo show, held in 1982 when he was just 21, sold out.
As a result of this sudden popularity, he found himself socializing and sharing ideas with celebrities like David Bowie and Madonna, whom he dated for a short time. He also appeared in music videos and was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Now, 27 years after his death, his influence endures.
Basquiat’s innovative and provocative artistic approach translated the 1980s New York scene into a radical visual language that tackled issues of racism, class struggle, social hypocrisy, and black history. Inspired as much by high art—such as Abstract Expressionism and Conceptualism—as by hip hop, jazz, sports, comics, and graffiti, he used recurring motifs to explore issues that he constantly grappled with in his own art and life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time
Curators: Dieter Buchhart and Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya (Bilbao)
Dates: July 3–November 1, 2015
Sponsored by: Iberdrola
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AGO_JMB_IRONY OF A NEGRO POLICEMAN
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Basquiat_J.M_El hombre de Nápoles_1982B
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Basquiat_J.M_Moisés y los egipcios_1982 _1982
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Vol. II, P. 268, N° 4, JMB 1988 Exu
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