The productive period that Jean-Michel Basquiat spent in Los Angeles from 1982 to 1984 is an important part of his evolution as an artist. 25 paintings he supposedly made during the period were seized by the FBI as suspected forgeries, only to be shown at the museum. The exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made on Market Street will be held at the Gagosian Beverly from March 1 to June 1. The director of the museum claimed that the artist had created a series of works at his house and sold them directly to the screenwriter of the film. This idea that he was selling paintings out the back door while living with me is complete bullshit.
A scavenger hunt.
The second show with Basquiat, which featured seven paintings including Hollywood Africans and Museum Security, was not feasible. Some people were unwilling to lend and in some cases I couldn't even figure out where the works are," he said. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat has a license from New York.
There are a few works for sale in the show. There are works that will never be sold, either because they are owned by the Whitney or MoMA, or because the collector will never sell them.
Barbara Kruger invited Gagosian to see a group show featuring her work at Annina Nosei Gallery when he was in New York in 1981. I had never heard of Basquiat before, but I knew that he was in the show.
He bought three paintings for a total of $9,000 after he saw this talent. The invitation to stay at his three-storey home on Market Street near the beach was a result of that and led to the 1982 and 1983 shows at Gagosian in Los Angeles. In 1983, he came back to Los Angeles and worked out in a studio a few doors down from the L'Ermitage hotel. The artist decided to take the wooden fencing off the courtyard behind the studio in order to return it to the city. The first two works were shown in the Brooklyn Museum's 2005 Basquiat survey, but this is the first time all three will be shown together. He believes that the myth of Basquiat as a savant or co-opted street artist is overstated. The New York art intelligentsia overlooked the fact that he was a painter who was a part of an important group of modern artists. When Robert Rauschenberg was working in Los Angeles, he was introduced to the two by Hoffman. It was over eight feet tall and topped by a three-pointed crown, which required photographing 15 original drawings and one collage and reversing the images so black becomes white and vice versa before printing. He says it took four printers and two on each side to pull the squeegees.
Tuxedo is complex, like the experiences of a Black man in a white world. He spent a lot of time with some of the key figures in the hip-hop scene and that is an important part of his LA experience.