Basquiat Before Basquiat

BASQUIAT BEFORE BASQUIAT

EAST 12TH STREET, 1979–1980

CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST. LOUIS

I N R E V I E W

Basquiat Before Basquiat: East 12th Street, 1979–1980 at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) showed an intimate and prefiguring look at some of the earliest and most formative years in the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Through artifacts, including photographs, sculptures, drawings, writings and more, Alexis Adler, Basquiat's roommate and friend, gave a rare glimpse into the development of a young artist.

Black and white photographs show Basquiat, both through images of himself and of his work, in the apartment they shared on East 12th Street in the East Village of New York. He is shown acting out skits, confident in front of the camera, taking up the entire frame and being the center of attention. A series of 15 photographs show Basquiat playing with putty, sticking it to his nose, peeling it off his face and posing. He was 20 years old and playful, peeling Silly Putty off his face.

The photographs document where he lived and worked. That space, the apartment, was all things - his home, his studio and his art. On one wall is a drawing of a face, in what would become his signature loose and scribbly style, with hair sticking up and going everywhere and a mouth made of zig zags. Also shown is the refrigerator, “grape jelly” written across the door and a handprint stamped above. He was 20 years old and playful, drawing on the walls.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Basquiat with refrigerator installation (image courtesy of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Basquiat performing in the apartment (image courtesy of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis)

To pay rent, Basquiat sold postcards he made and sweatshirts he painted. Adler showed some of these sweatshirts, one with the words “Man Made” emblazoned across the front, another, yellow and covered in paint drips and sprayed with the word “blue” in a circle.

He filled sketchbooks, and notebooks and paper of every kind with sketches, collages, notes and stories - his thoughts any way they came out. Untitled (Coke Adds Life) is an ink on paper with collage that shows a very quickly and emotionally drawn face with a cut-out advertisement photo of a hand holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and the words “Coke adds life.” across the side.

Part of what made this show so interesting, and indeed, what makes Basquiat's art so engaging, is the use of time-relevant materials, including

his use of Xerox copier to make prints. One such print, Untitled (A Nation of Fools), depicts a representation of an American flag, with black and white stripes and tally marks for stars and the title text scrawled across.

These early works, the sketches, notes and paintings on walls and objects, show a glimpse of what would become. Throughout the collection, images full of energy, strokes of ink or paint flow wildly. These stand in contrast to carefully drawn geometric zigzags. A photograph of a briefcase with cassette recorders in the apartment shows a /\/\/\/\/ zigzag pattern painted on the inside of the case. That same pattern is seen in a notebook, digitized and presented on a touch screen, enabling the viewer to browse each page. Another Xerox print, Test Pattern, shows the recognizable mark above the title text and other phrases and formulas. And again it can be seen as a mouth in a drawing of a face on a piece of wood in the apartment.

This pattern showed up later in Basquiat’s famous crowns, a motif he used often. And that is what was on display throughout the exhibit, the beginnings of one of the 20th century’s most important artists, a young man who could not help but express himself everywhere: on buildings, on clothing, on paper, on appliances. For Basquiat, everything was a canvas waiting to be marked up. The exhibition at CAM gave glimpses of what would be his artistic genius, and we also saw the element that goes beyond creativity: confidence. He was 20 years old and playful, changing the world.

-Rich Vagen

www.camstl.org

IN REVIEW WINTER 2018/19 ALLTHEARTSTL.COM