Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s The Time…

Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1986

In conjunction with a retrospective exhibition opening this week at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada…

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was a “shooting-star” phenomenon of the New York City art scene during the 1980s. In less than a decade he zoomed from teenage magic-marker-on-walls graffiti punk – from 1977 to 1980 – under the name SAMO © (Same Old Shit Copyright) with fellow high-schoolers Al Diaz, Shannon Dawson, and Matt Kelly – to major Manhattan trendy. The enigmatic poetic thoughts and slogans of SAMO found their way onto Basquiat’s canvases, and his SAMO “tagging” years in SoHo and Lower Manhattan can be viewed as a kind of early advertisement for himself as an Artist.
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One of three children born to Gérard Basquiat, from Haiti, and Matilde Andrades, Brooklyn-born but of Puerto-Rican descent, Jean-Michel’s home life was unstable, his mother being institutionalized from the time he was 11 years old, and his father banishing him from about the age of 15 after he dropped out of school following Grade 10. However, his mother’s gift to him of a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, the 1858 illustrated encylopaedia of the human body, before he was ten years old, planted in him the seed of ambition for future artistic expression.

SAMO graffiti photographed by Henry Flynt in 1979

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The late 1970s-early 1980s New York City confluence of street culture with art, via the emerging rap (later “hip-hop”) and graffiti scenes, plus his interest in a “serious” art career, helped to position Basquiat for stardom; he was, in fact, in the right place at the right time.
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Keith Haring, two and a half years older, would take the NYC graffiti phenomenon in a whole other Street Meets the PopArt World direction during the 1980s, whereas Basquiat aimed for a more painterly self-expression, fashioning a synthesis of Primitivism and Neo-Expressionism on canvas initiated through his graffiti and “tagging” origins.
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In February of 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a feature titled “New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist”.

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http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/09/specials/basquiat-mag.html

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He was both successful and very “Now” by then, yet his growing appetite for heroin use was beginning to interfere with his friendships and professional obligations. Though he did attempt to kick his heroin habit, he ultimately died of an overdose in his Great Jones Street studio in August of 1988. He was 27 years old.

At the artist’s funeral, rap/hiphop pioneer Fab Five Freddy read the following poem:
“Genius Child” by Langston Hughes
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This is a song for the genius child,
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can,
Lest the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child,

Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Kill him – and let his soul run wild.

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Of Basquiat’s worldview, artist Lydia Lee has said:
“Like a DJ, he adeptly reworked the clichéd language of gesture, freedom, and angst in Neo-Expressionism, and redirected Pop Art’s strategy of appropriation, in order to produce a body of work that at times celebrated Black culture and history, yet also revealed its complexity and contradictions.”

All Colored Cast Part 3 by Jean-Michel Basquiat_1982_acrylic paint and crayon on canvas

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In 2005, Marc Mayer, a curator and art historian, wrote of Basquiat the artist:
“Basquiat speaks articulately while dodging the full impact of clarity like a matador. We can read his pictures without strenuous effort—the words, the images, the colours and the construction—but we cannot quite fathom the point they belabour. Keeping us in this state of half-knowing, of mystery-within-familiarity, had been the core technique of his brand of communication since his adolescent days as a graffiti poet with SAMO©. To enjoy them, we are not meant to analyze the pictures too carefully. Quantifying the encyclopedic breadth of his research certainly results in an interesting inventory, but the sum cannot adequately explain his pictures, which require an effort outside the purview of iconography… He painted a calculated incoherence, calibrating the mystery of what such apparently meaning-laden pictures might ultimately mean.”

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ZP Editor’s Note:
Basquiat’s painting Defacement: The Death of Michael Stewart, references the 1983 beating-into-unconsciousness-then-cardiac-arrest-after-two-weeks-in-a-coma death of a 25-year-old Black graffiti artist (born in Brooklyn in 1958). Though Stewart had resisted arrest for illegal spray-painting, it was significant that he was unarmed, yet eleven White police officers had participated in his “take-down”. An all-White jury later acquitted them.
Recent “racial” happenings indicate – unfortunately – that Basquiat’s painting Defacement still resonates powerfully; occurrences in Ferguson, Ohio, and Staten Island, New York City, both in 2014, are prime examples.
Between 1970 and 2000, the racial demographics of Ferguson, Ohio, shifted dramatically: from 99 percent White to approximately 45 percent White; from 1 percent Black to approximately 52 percent Black. Yet the Ferguson Police Department’s force has remained overwhelmingly White.
In August of 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was Black, was fatally shot by a White Ferguson police officer, and the use of lethal force was roundly felt to be unwarranted. Looting and riots – yet also peaceful demonstrations – followed, but in November 2014 the police officer responsible was not indicted in the shooting death of the teen. Brown’s death, and the chain of events that followed, have brought to international attention the simmering resentments and inequalities that persist in some American towns and cities.
In July 2014, on Staten Island in New York City, Eric Garner, a Black man, had also died – as a result of a choke-hold around his neck – from a White police officer. Illegally selling cigarettes, yet Garner too was unarmed, and he did not resist arrest; in fact he raised his hands in the air to show that he carried no weapon. Still, he was tackled to the ground, face down, and choke-held. Garner, obese and asthmatic, died. This death was ruled a homicide – yet the impulse by a White police officer to use excessive force on a Black person remains a heated topic, and has sparked a range of national discussions in the U.S.A.

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John Douglas Thompson as Joe Mott in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh”

Paul Robeson (1898-1976), photographed about 1924, at the time he was starring in Eugene ONeill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings

Q & A with John Douglas Thompson, who plays Joe Mott in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh…
An interview by J. Kelly Nestruck, in Toronto’s The Globe & Mail newspaper, February 3rd, 2015:
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The Goodman Theatre’s 2012 production of The Iceman Cometh had one of the most exceptional ensembles in recent stage history. Stratford Festival regulars Brian Dennehy and Stephen Ouimette performed alongside Tony-winner Nathan Lane in director Robert Falls’ painterly production of Eugene O’Neill’s classic 1939 drama about alcoholics chasing pipe dreams in a New York saloon.
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Less well known to Canadians is their co-star John Douglas Thompson – even though the 51-year-old stage actor grew up on this side of the border. Thompson was stunning as Joe Mott, a former gambling-house operator “whose gentle good humour masks a volcanic rage at a life warped by racism,” according to New York Times critic Charles Isherwood.
In advance of the Iceman remount at the prestigious Brooklyn Academy of Music this month, The Globe and Mail’s theatre critic spoke over the phone with Thompson – who, according to The New Yorker, is “regarded by some as the best classical actor in America.”

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J. Kelly Nestruck:
I went to Chicago three years ago because I wanted to see Ouimette, Lane and Dennehy. I didn’t know you – and I just loved your Joe Mott. Then I looked you up on Wikipedia and it said you were “Canadian-American”.

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John Douglas Thompson:
Well, I was born in Bath, England, to Jamaican parents, and we moved, when I was a little boy, to Canada. I lived in Montreal from the age of two to 12, then moved to the U.S.  So a lot of people say I’m Canadian-American. I’m more Jamaican-American, though I’ve settled on African-American.

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Did that time in Montreal have an impact on you at all?

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I have a lot of fond memories of living in Montreal – and the Montreal Canadiens. I was a big, big hockey fan – and my brother and I played a lot of hockey. My mom would always take us to the Stanley Cup parades: Yvan Cournoyer, Ken Dryden.…

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The Times’s Ben Brantley has called you “one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation” – and scholar James Shapiro called you “the best American actor in Shakespeare, hands down.” I was hoping you might say Canada played a role in that.

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I’ve got to come up to Canada and do some Shakespeare… I’ve had some inquiries from the people at Stratford. The only complication has been my schedule. I hear such great things about that company from Brian Dennehy. And I was in a production of Julius Caesar with Colm Feore (and some guy named Denzel Washington!) on Broadway – and he spoke highly of it too.

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I thought this Iceman ensemble was extraordinary; I was gripped for the full 4 1/2 hours. Are you glad to have a second chance to play this character in this company?

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It’s great to get a second opportunity to explore these amazing characters – who all had some kind of relationship with O’Neill. I did a lot of research into Joe Mott – and the real guy was Joe Smith [O’Neill’s roommate and drinking buddy] … I’m always conscious when I’m working on Joe Mott to pay homage to Smith.

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I read somewhere that O’Neill modeled both Brutus Jones in the 1920s’ The Emperor Jones and Joe Mott on Smith. You’ve played both roles now.

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The Emperor Jones had the first African-American lead role on the American stage – and I’d venture to say perhaps on the world stage. O’Neill wrote this black character – the protagonist of a play – that was not going to be played by a white man in “blackface”. It was a huge statement. Many of the white actors of the Provincetown Players [MacDougal Street in NYC] wanted to do it because it’s such a great role. And O’Neill said no: It has to be a black actor.

Charles Sidney Gilpin (1878 – 1930), seen in this photograph as Brutus Jones in the 1920 premiere of Eugene ONeill’s The Emperor Jones

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O’Neill had black characters in his early one-act plays that were maybe one-dimensional or superficial or stereotypical. Then he wrote these major characters – Brutus Jones and Joe Mott. Do you see a progression?

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Each of these characters from Brutus Jones to Jim Harris [in 1924’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings] to Joe Mott are all advancements on one another. I think someone from the outside looking in, without having done the research, might say these aren’t really strong black characters. If you look further, you find O’Neill had a great deal of respect for these characters that he wrote and was really looking to integrate American theatre. Nobody else was writing black characters at the time, certainly of the size and scope and complexity … Joe Mott to me is like an August Wilson character.

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It’s still hard to find white playwrights today who will incorporate significant black characters – though now there’s that whole conversation about whether it’s their story to tell.

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The time that O’Neill did it, it was such a bold move – now, you’re right, we have this argument: Who’s writing this character, who has the “agency” to write these characters? I know in New York, there’s a lot of new, younger black playwrights writing these characters and saying these characters are the terrain of black writers. But I think that any writer with sensitivity, empathy and understanding of humanity can write these characters, certainly as O’Neill has proved.

John Douglas Thompson

The Iceman Cometh is at BAM in Brooklyn, N.Y., from Feb. 5th to March 15th, 2015.
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