01/04/2017

Basquiat (and me) in London in September

England, I miss you like one misses one's favourite love, but I am not to be with you for now, apparently. Life is taking us on our journey, not the other way around.

Opportunities to visit London are so numerous though. Here is one of the next exhibitions I'll never miss.

Until then, it is my dear friends I miss. But you're always in my heart, English friends, every day.
See you in September.
Love to you.

-

Basquiat: Boom for Real

21 September 2017 - 28 January 2018
Art Gallery
Barbican Centre

Basquiat: Boom for Real is the first large-scale exhibition in the UK of the work of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960—1988).

A pioneering prodigy of the downtown New York art scene, Basquiat came to the media’s attention in 1978 when he teamed up with his classmate Al Diaz to graffiti enigmatic statements across the city under the collective pseudonym SAMO©, before swiftly becoming one of the most celebrated artists of his generation.

Drawing from international museums and private collections, Basquiat: Boom for Real brings together an outstanding selection of more than 100 works, many never before seen in the UK, including a partial reconstruction of the first body of work that Basquiat exhibited, made for Diego Cortez’s watershed group show New York / New Wave at PS1 in 1981.

Basquiat, a famously self-taught artist, sampled from an extraordinary breadth of source material, from anatomical drawings to bebop jazz. This is the first exhibition to focus on the artist’s relationship to music, text, film and television, offering new research that will enable some of his most acclaimed paintings and drawings to be understood as never before.

Basquiat: Boom for Real is curated by Dr Dieter Buchhart and Eleanor Nairne, Curator, Barbican Art Gallery and organised in collaboration with the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.