H-Haiti Black Ghosts: Basquiat’s “Defacement” at the Guggenheim by Tiana REID

Discussion published by Marlene Daut on Saturday, July 20, 2019

Black Ghosts: Basquiat’s “Defacement” at the Guggenheim by Tiana Reid

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Death of Michael Stewart, 1983, acrylic and marker on sheet rock, 34 by 40 inches. Collection Nina Clemente, New York. (c) Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Jean-Michel Basquiat is too often under-curated. Considerthe bland, context-less survey on view earlier this year at the Brant Foundation’s New York space, a private museum project of President Trump’s childhood friend Peter Brant, or the Brooklyn Museum’s 2018“One Basquiat,” an “exhibition” consisting of a single $110.5-million-dollar painting. An easy reliance on the aura of this famous black artist with a high market value and a fatal heroin addiction often takes the place of any insightful narration. His name is enough to draw in hordes.

“Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story,” an exhibition on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York through November 6, centers on the artist’s 1983 paintingDefacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), which depicts an instance of police violence that occurred in September of that year. After allegedly tagging a wall in the East Village’s First Avenue subway station, Michael Stewart, a twenty-five-year-old black artist from Brooklyn, was beaten by the New York City Transit Police, put into a chokehold, and handcuffed to his bed while comatose at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. He died thirteen days later from cardiac arrest. The specifics of the attack are contested—Did Stewart attempt to flee? Did he become violent?—but to me, they don’t matter. Stewart is still dead. Stewart will always be dead. That matters.

Read more here: https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/basquiat-defacement-guggenheim- protests-racist-violence/

Citation: Marlene Daut. Black Ghosts: Basquiat’s “Defacement” at the Guggenheim by Tiana REID. H-Haiti. 07-20-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/116721/discussions/4330990/black-ghosts-basquiat%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cdefacement%E2%80%9 D-guggenheim-tiana-reid Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1