Basquiat on urban culture

Will he still make a same impact ?

Would Jean-Michel Basquiat make a same impact of urban art, music, and culture in 21 century?

There is more than just being the artist with the most expensive painting, worth of millions. East Village and Jean-Michel Basquiat revolutionized and shaped modern culture of 21st century back in 80’s. He will do the same if he lived today, paving his way from underground to the upstate and make impact for how we view the society.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT PAINTING IN ST. MORITZ, SWITZERLAND, 1983. PHOTOGRAPH BY LEE JAFFE/GETTY IMAGES

Back in 2017, one painting was sold for astonishing 110.5 million USD during the auction at Sotheby’s, setting the new record for highest auction price for American artist. That painting was from Jean-Michel Basquiat. The most recent exhibition at Brant Foundation Museum attracted tremendous number of visitors. His creativity and uniqueness still lives in 21st century.

His life has been changing dramatically from graffiti sensation as street artist in urban scene to the one of the most heralded iconic figure in the world of contemporary art through life-changing events such as collaboration with Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. His unique style of art did not just stay within the boundary of painting but rather expanded throughout his own single record and the cover art of it turning himself into the impactful pioneer of hip hop culture in urban area of East New York and still mesmerizing and inspiring modern day artists through art and culture in rhythmical ways with drawings on the wall, building, canvas, and woods. His distinguished style does not necessarily just be seen in his techniques, but through his raw, honest, explicit views and description of societal issues including poverty, race, inequality, politics, and power struggle between different social class and system. His aggressive but acute perspectives on life, human, and society coalesced with his drawings, paintings, poetry, and music into the realm of Neo-Expressionism and primitivism. As a result, his painted collections have reached beyond the point of urban culture to the stardom of contemporary art scene in very distinctive way. Such impact has put out significant differences through various forms of background of his arts from abandoned walls under the bridge in suburb areas to gigantic canvas of which became his one of the most famous works, The Untitled, 1982, depiction of a black skull with bold red and black colors. His unorthodox life path made his painting even more attractive and honest. His life was full of mixed pop culture by experiencing them as they are on the streets, buildings, places, and among people.

His hometown, East Village was dynamic enough to form its own distinctive and creative cultural foundation for urban art. East Village was kind of melting pot for 80’s and a lot of immigrants were coming in to settle. There was a lot of youth culture such as graffiti and skating boarding.

Working environment was far freer than other towns since people from age of 18 to 25 were mostly working for 4 hours a day and have a free time for rest of the day. This was very common among other youth in East Village, so they could easily gather around and spend well amount of time for anything that can be artistic without obligation or distraction. Since town was full of immigrants, youth culture was eventually coalesced with diversity which turned into new form of culture through engagement and mixture of arts, drawings, dancing, music, and other activities. These elements of mixture led to the new born trend of counterculture, street and urban art, punk rock and early hip hop representing the dawn of new era for American Renaissance throughout 70’s and 80’s and rise of new Western identity leading pop culture syndrome in the awake of 90’s.

According to census, about 40% of its population is aged between 20 and 34. The town still maintains its youth in terms of its tradition and people.

However, current East Village is fast and trendy but much under vulnerable and inconsistent environment and circumstances. Club CBGB, known as “the birthplace of punk” and De Robertis Pasticceria and Caffe, Italian bakery of more than 100 years old, have both closed out of business recently. With expensive apartment rent and ever-rising living expenses have driven tenants and business out of town rapidly. Due to rapid gentrification, it is not same place any more at least in terms of living and working. Buildings are there, but people and places with tradition and history have becomes things of the past and scars from the glorious days turning into harsh reality.

“Untitled,” 2017 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris, via ARS, via Sotheby’s

Basquiat is more than good enough to be successful even in modern era of art industry. He will still deliver creative and iconic pieces of work with his own way of utilizing high-tech devices and social network in much broader sense. However, surrounding is another thing for him.

Depicted elaborately, he articulated the societal messages with such clarity through dichotomy, we can see and observe his painting with much less of ambiguity though his complexity of poetics behind the pieces. Regardless, we can only fathom the exact point with intention of images, colors, writings, and scenes of them.

His high market value has proved about transition of black history in modern era, encompassing a wide range of human culture in art, literature, music, sports, and politics. Basquiat’s artistic approach and resistance to aggravating social status of minority due to its diversity through all of his works is a link connecting his era and current days in terms of concurrent issues of gentrification and rezoning diminishing its unique culture. Many artists including musicians, artists, writers, poets, and performers came to East Village for its main attractions — inexpensive rent and cheap food. This movement was the pivotal point for his breakthrough.

Basquiat will be successful in 21st century, because societal issues have gotten worse in many ways and still ongoing. His unique views with raw, honest, and aggressive style of painting will be even more vivid figures for better understanding of modern world to modern people. His impact will be enormous with power of network and connectivity through internet and social media beyond our imagination since he could do it 40 years ago. The convergence of technology must have boosted creativity and enhanced his craftsmanship evolving into much more diverse format of artistic output.

Through his paintings, Basquiat always asked the same question; are we really going to the right direction? It is something to think about and look back on as inner voice speaks louder than actual sound of vocal with honesty, spirit, soul, philosophy, poetry, lyrics, and creativity to enable art and culture defining shape of the society we all live, hopefully for better. Collectors purchase Basquiat’s works during auction. Crowds rush to visit the museum for Basquiat exhibition to see the paintings in person even until recently after 30 years of his death. So there is a perfect correlation between his perspectives on social issues declared through dichotomy between white and black, rich and poor, upper and lower class, himself and everyone else, and spectators from 21st century. Modern spectators find themselves feeling empathy and even fellowship through recurring theme in Basquiat’s works. Therefore, maybe world has not changed in such a spectacular way as we all assume, considering the ongoing sensation of most-sought after Basquiat’s. We are probably still living in the parallel world of his time and his artistic figures. Like his most frequent title, Untitled, whole world is not ready to come up with conclusion and clarify the names of all that matters yet.