I
watched Basquiat, the movie, last night. A couple weeks ago I posted some of
the artist's work
on this blog. I knew about him, and had seen snatches of his paintings before.
But I didn't know the story behind his life . . . . which the movie clearly portrays.
As an
artist, Basquiat interests me from the point of view
of direct, unmediated expression. Whereas many artists strive for an
ideal in their work, whether it is technical or visionary, Basquiat
seemed intimately related with the underlying surface of the self.
This is
not the projected self, the idealized version of the self, but the scars. This
is not the articulate, polished meanings of the self,
but the cryptic messages and uncoded symbols.
My
immediate emotion after watching the film was sadness.
How is
it that a certain narrative comes to define a person's life? I am very interested in this. The
person becomes defined by their story, and after their death, it seems, the
retelling of the story replaces the person.
For Basquiat, it is the story of his rise to fame in the art
world at a young age; his descent into heavy drug use;
and the looming question of whether he was being exploited.
From a
book review in the New York Times in 1998, "Hyped to Death":
Their (Warhol
and Basquiat's) joint show at Tony Shafrazi's gallery in September 1985 was a glittering media
event, followed by a wild, noisy party at the Palladium, but the show itself
drew universal pans. ''Everything . . . is infused with banality,'' one critic
wrote. ''The real question is, who is using whom here?"
From the
second chapter of the book, Basquiat: A
Quick Killing:
According to a
friend, painter Arden Scott, "Basquiat was
intent upon being a mainstream artist. He didn't want to be a black artist. He
wanted to be a famous artist."
But Basquiat's celebrity owes more than a little to an almost
institutionalized reverse-racism that set him apart from his peers as an
art-world novelty. Says Kinshasha Conwill,
director of the Studio Museum of Harlem, "Race will remain into the
foreseeable future a major and usually unfortunate, issue. The fact is, it was anomalous to be an African-American and get that
kind of attention for his art. Other people did exploit his race and try to
make him an exotic figure."
And so
these unavoidable themes come to
define Basquiat as we know
him now--as we see him portrayed in movies, as we read about him . . .
The
artist by nature is a unique individual. We are all "unique
individuals" but the artist expresses this individuality, gives it a language,
a palette, a series of recurring images.
Baquiat had the
same dreams that many of us have, to be recognized for our talents, to be
visible--
But in
realizing these dreams, in becoming recognized or famous, your life changes,
your environment changes--
I relate
to Baquiat. While I lived in Spain, I took drugs every night for six months
and filled pages in a notebook until my fingers could no longer scrawl
sentences. I never left my room, except to buy drugs and Chinese food. I lived
in a pensione in Madrid all by myself--I know what
this manic drive feels like, this ambitious mania to create . . .
Some
artists are able to move between two worlds. Some artists are able to live in
the rational, adult world, and the realm of childhood. The later realm is where
the artist thrives. The later realm is the oxygen of the artist. But
oftentimes, children are destructive. They are destructive to themselves and to
others. When we abandon ourselves to fancy, to the imagination, to dreams, we
often lose our way back to reality.
In
adolescence, for example, during the time I mentioned living in Spain, I wanted
to be a novelist. If you've ever read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, I
wanted to be Miller in that novel.
This is
how I would've turned out if I followed the manic, drug-strewn path of the
artist. Of course, not every artist takes drugs; I'm drawing parallels here to Basquiat.
A writer
must employ the rational mode of argument. A fiction writer is still to some
degree confined by logic and the credibility of her tale. A
visual artist, less so.
The
writer appeals to emotion, like the artist. But she does not rely entirely on
emotion just as she does not rely entirely on logic. To construct sentences one
must have at least one foot in the rational universe. The
painter, the poet, less so. The artist can fully embrace the realm of childhood, can totally disregard the rational, adult world.
In short, the artist can become a servant of her imagination.
With Basquiat, we see the picture of a young man who was easily
able to live in this imaginary world. He could create paintings that conveyed a
direct engagement with the imagination. His paintings weren't rational. They
were full of emotions, color, expression, and character.
All of
us have been in this realm of the imagination before. We lived there as children, and as
adults, we all visit there on occasion. You follow a line and see where it goes
. . . this is the mindset. You bring two or more things together onto the same
page. You create new relations to things.
I loved
the scene in the movie where Christopher Walken,
playing the character of a journalist, interviews Basquiat
in his studio. Walken asks Jeffrey Wright (Basquiat) what the scrawls on his paintings mean. He says,
"Can you decipher this for us?"
Basquiat:
"Decipher? Just words."
Walken:
"Yes, I understand. But who's words are they?
Where do you take them from?"
Basquiat: "I
don't know. Would you ask a musician, like would you
ask Miles, 'Where did you get that note from?' I mean, where do you take your
words from?"
Walken: Right.
Basquiat:
Everywhere.
The
originality of a work of art does not exist in a vacuum. Art like language is reused,
recycled, and reinvented.
Originality
is not so much a new entity as it is old elements in a new relation.
We see
something new, something original, but really what we are seeing is a new
relation.
The
artist is the inventor of new contexts, not new things.
Not only
was Baquiat's work original at the time, but the artist himself, as an African-American, was unique
to the art establishment.
But is
fame acceptance? Is recognition, the right recognition?
All of
us dream of these things, we seek visibility in our own environments and in the
greater environment. But to be unique is to be alone, and to be recognized
as unique, is to be even more alone.
There is
a yin and a yang to success. Sages have known it for centuries. Success breeds
disappointment; failure is never too far away from success.
Whether
you are an artist, a writer, a poet or a musician, you cannot stay popular
forever. If you achieve fame in your lifetime, there is a good chance nobody
will remember you after you die. Success is never a permanent deal. Even
Shakespeare has been criticized as a literary figure! We are not gods. We are
people.
Society
either ignores the artist's expression, or affirms it. But when an artist is
living, and society recognizes them, the artist becomes even more set apart
from that society than she was to begin with.
Now the
artist is not only unique, but also viewed as unique. This magnification has a
huge psychological impact on a person and their subsequent behaviors.
The death of Dash
Snow is a just a recent variation of this theme as it relates to
drugs, art, and fame.
It
happens to artists who cannot separate themselves from society's view of them. But
who can? Look at how absurd famous people act; they become distorted in the
mirror constantly held up to them.
Detachment
under these circumstances would be a saintly thing if one could ever attain it.
Many novelists, like J.D. Salinger, flee from society altogether.
When
success comes, we naturally want to embrace it, to take it as the last word.
But identifying with our success in one moment only leads to a more precarious
existence. The minute public opinion shifted concerning Basquiat's
prowess as a young painter, he was deeply affected.
My whole
life, which is thirty years, I've been trying to describe to the world who I am. I've been trying to define myself.
If I
were to let anyone else define me, even if that definition were flattering, I
would essentially lose my grasp on a life-long quest. This is what happens to
artists who become cannibalized by their fame. They stop defining themselves;
society begins to define them.
The
respect we achieve from our peers, and from the world around us, is based on
this simple fact. Self-definition is the highest form of integrity.
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