Basquiat's Defacement
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COVER LAYOUT Back Flap Back Front Front Flap BASQUIAT'S DEFACEMENT BASQUIAT'S | J. FAITH ALMIRON is Assistant Professor of Afro- Jean-Michel Basquiat painted Defacement (The Death of Michael STORY THE UNTOLD American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Stewart) in to commemorate the death of a young, Black artist Her research focuses on the role of art, visual culture, and who died from injuries sustained while in police custody after being performance in relation to social transformation. arrested for allegedly tagging a New York City subway station. Published to accompany a focused exhibition of Basquiat’s response to anti-black racism and police brutality, this catalogue explores a CHAÉDRIA LABOUVIER is a writer and Basquiat chapter in the artist’s career through both the lens of his identity and scholar. In fall , she organized a one-work exhibition the Lower East Side as a nexus of activism in the early s. of the artist’s painting Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart) () for the Reading Room at Williams College An introduction by Nancy Spector and essays by J. Faith Almiron Museum of Art. and Chaédria LaBouvier are supplemented by commentary from artists, activists, and other cultural fi gures who were part of this episode in the city’s history, which invokes today’s urgent NANCY SPECTOR is Artistic Director and Jennifer conversations about state-sanctioned racism. and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. Aajfajk afdjkdaopa fjdios sdoijaf psfsofi adsf adio a sdfadiopa fi dos apso padfoi adfndkop wmdo wieos ds aoif. BASQUIAT'S DEFACEMENT THE UNTOLD STORY 2 PAGE 1 Estate approval TBD 4 PAGE 2/3 BASQUIAT’S DEFACEMENT THE UNTOLD STORY 5 PAGE 2/3 CONTENTS 007 ESSAY TITLE TK Chaédria LaBouvier 050 ESSAY TITLE TK Nancy Spector 075 THE ART OF BASQUIAT BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE J. Faith Almiron 095 INTERVIEWS Michelle Shocked Leonard Abrams Eric Drooker Luc Sante Patrick Fox Peter Noel Rev. Herbert Daughtry More TK 6 PAGE 6/7 LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION American Museum of Natural History Thomas Borgmann, Berlin Boros Collection, Berlin Daniel Buchholz and Christopher Müller, Cologne Centre national des arts plastiques, France Charpenel Collection, Guadalajara Eileen and Michael Cohen Chantal Crousel Dallas Museum of Art Josef Dalle Nogare Collection EFG Art Collection, Switzerland Charlotte Feng Ford Collection Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Heinz Peter Hager and Andrea Thuile, Bolzano, Italy Sheldon Inwentash and Lynn Factor, Toronto Ishikawa Foundation, Okayama, Japan ITYS Collection, Athens König Galerie and those who wish to remain anonymous. 8 ESSAY OPENING J. FAITH ALMIRON THE ART OF BASQUIAT BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE GUNS, GOONS, AND GHOSTS Guns. So Primitive. OKOYE, BLACK PANTHER The bullets were premonitions, ghosts from dreams of a hard, fast future. The bullets moved on after moving through us, became the promise of what was to come, the speed and the killing, the hard fast lines of borders and buildings. They took everything and ground it down to dust as fine as gun- powder, they fired their guns into the air in victory, and the strays flew out into the nothingness of histories written wrong and meant to be forgotten. Stray bullets and conse- quences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now. TOMMY ORANGE, THERE, THERE Even as a third grader, Jean-Michel Basquiat recognized the omnip- otence paradox of the police state. In response to a potential buyer’s request, Basquiat composed a Curriculum Vitae (CV) document 021 | THE UNTOLD STORY 14 FIG 1 outlining his educational journey. [FIG 1] Towards the bottom of the Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (CV), . page, the text reads: Paper and pencil. “(A) SENT A DRAWING OF A GUN TO J. EDGAR HOOVER IN RD THIRD GRADE (NO REPLY).” By sending a gun in the mail—even if it was merely an illustration, Basquiat turned the gun's aim towards Hoover. Stick ‘em up, Johnny! [FIG 2] Basquiat intuitively knew how to undermine power structures, because he did not believe in them. [FIG 3] At the BBC documen- tary fi lm premiere at Brooklyn Museum in September , Lisane Basquiat described how her brother, “Pulled the art from (within) himself.” 6 To manifest this formidable destiny, Jean-Michel had to reject any entity that would limit him or his conception of the world including the value systems of Western Eurocentrism and anti- black white supremacy. In the same CV, Basquiat indicates that his “early themes” included “Nixon...Wars...Weapons.” In the piece, Basquiat further articulates his cultural identity and transnational origins through migration, generation and education. He describes his mother as “PUERTO RICAN (FIRST GENERATION)” and his father as “PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI.” Between P.S. (Public School) - I.S. (Intermediary School) , Basquiat inserts “(SOME CATHOLIC SCHOOL DURING YEAR + ½ IN PUERTO RICO _______).” noting the fl ux of traveling between New York City public schools and “some Catholic school” in Puerto Rico. He came of age during a drastic transition in neighborhood demographics from majority working-class ethnic whites to black and brown immigrant communi- ties. In response to “white fl ight,” police presence increased FIG 2 although the relationship between the community and the police J. Edgar Hoover and Amos and Andy Firing. (Original Caption) was rarely affable.7 //-Washington, DC-’Amos’ (Mr. Freeman F. Gosden), John Edgar In a lesser-known interview published in July of Andy Warhol’s Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau magazine Interview, Basquiat speaks with fi lmmaker Emile de of Investigation and ‘Andy’ (Mr. Charles. J. Correll), of ‘Amos ‘N’ Andy,’ visted Antonio an “anarchist, ex-professor, author, and the only fi lmmaker the offi ces of the Federal Bureau of on Richard Nixon's enemies list.” 8 [FIG 4] They rap about Nixon’s Investigation on November , . They Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, “ draw a bead on the photographer in the shooting range at the training school. years the No. Policeman.” 022 | BASQUIAT'S DEFACEMENT 15 BASQUIAT: Talk more about J. Edgar Hoover. I think he’s interesting. DE ANTONIO: J. Edgar Hoover was born January 1, 1895. His father was a bureaucrat in Washington. His grandfather was a bureaucrat. He became head of FBI in 1924, and he was still the head of it in 1972 when he died. He was in the saddle 48 years. Nowhere, not in Russia, not in Nazi Germany, not in the history of the world has one guy run the secret police for 48 years… The minute he died everybody in the FBI was ready to pounce on his files because his files were all about John F. Kennedy and who he was sleeping with, it was about what Nixon really did, it was about what LBJ really did… BASQUIAT: That would make the great American novel. DE ANTONIO: That's the truth; he had it on everybody. His files, one at a time, would expose everybody in political life. He wouldn't care about de Kooning or Pollock, and he wouldn't care about baseball players unless they said some- thing. If Babe Ruth got up and said the FBI was full of crooks, then they would have had a file on him, too…I don't know what J. Edgar Hoover knew about painters; I'm sure he knew FI G 3 Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz nothing about painting…Picasso was a Communist that he knew. as SAMO, SAMO as End to Amos n Picasso was a member of the communist party of France. He did Andy , marker, dimensions unknown, the peace dove. The hardline communists hated his paintings. Photo by Henry Flynt, . The popular radio and television show Amos n Andy They thought he did decadent, bourgeois painting. What those was set in the historic black community people have to say is economically not incorrect; it's artis- of Harlem, New York. It ran from tically incorrect. They say art should belong to the people, until and was created written and voiced by two white actors Freeman whatever that means. Gosden and Charles Correll. The SAMO language “END …” could be interpreted BASQUIAT: It does, though. as a critique of the show as contemporary blackface minstrelsy, and “” could reference George Orwell’s book on the Basquiat interjects to distinguish his own belief that indeed art rise of fascism and government control belongs to the people. De Antonio theorizes about how the police at over culture. the federal level monitor artists and the reproduction of culture. Not limited to conspiracy theory around propaganda, De Antonio indi- cates that Hoover would only care about painters if they articulated a forceful statement of social and political signifi cance. According to the extensive research of William J. Maxwell, the FBI recognized the critical role that art and cultural production played in catalyzing FI G 4 social movement and uprising, and implemented in-depth surveil- Gordon Munro, “Jean-Michel Basquiat lance of Black bookstores, arts and literature organizations, artists, and Emile de Antonio,” Interview, July Interview magazine. Republished on and intellectual leaders since the Harlem Renaissance beginning in Interview.com May , . 10 [SUPPLEMENTAL FIG 1] 025 | THE UNTOLD STORY 16 PLATE EXAMPLE Using the Freedom of Information Act, historian Maxwell was able to solicit thousands of FBI fi les on artists and intellectuals such as James Baldwin, The Black Arts Repertory Theater/School, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ebony Magazine, and many more. According to former F.B.I. Agent Tyrone Powers, the aim was, “to weaken and unlink the unifi ed chain” between black consciousness movements from generation to generation. Active at the program’s inception, Hoover's preoccupation with the emergence and expression of black consciousness traced back to targeting pan-Africanist revolutionary leader, Marcus Garvey, and the United Negro Improvement Association.