Basquiat couldn't paint and his post mortem success is just marketing porn.

All blue chip art is essentially money laundering, OP. Don't shit on Basquiat just because his painting isn't really worth 80 million. Do you think Warhol's Marilyn was worth 195 million? FUCK no.

Basquiat was pretty good but the whole art market is a scam. A scam propped up by the public (Museums). Art should be like books: the moment you buy them they lose 90% of their value. I wonder how many Basquats, Warhols, etc. would be sold for that obscene amount of money if their buyers did not assume that they are ever increasing in value.

Here you go, OP.

Reading the Warhol diaries really help illustrate how Basquiat was popular and well-regarded before his death. There have always been people who disliked his work and who said he was either just some Warhol hanger-on or flash-in-the-pan fad, but he's more than that, always has been.

That's a completely separate issue from the current art market which really is often about money laundering and having a place to park obscene amounts of money for a while, very similar to real estate.

I don't know if I agree that Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is in the same league as other artwork that goes for far more than it's worth. I don't think the Marilyn was worth nearly $200M, but it was bought by Larry Gagosian, not a billionaire looking to launder money, so that's different.

Also, what other artwork can give you the mythos behind the Marilyn? It's iconic, the most recognizable of the original Marilyns, it was shot by Dorothy Podber at the Factory, and it was owned by Thomas Ammann who was closely associated with Warhol.

Again, not worth $200M, but also not a great example of the scammy nature of the art world.

He had a NICE cock and is promptly forgiven.

Just more NYC circle jerk bullshit. Haring was at least fun.

Basquiat's work is "fun" if you have the sense to look into it. It is very rich, just in terms of his wit and verbal play. He was prolifically inventive, visually. I really don't get the incredible animosity that his painting still brings out in people so openly. It's kind of hilarious. He is a major, major American artist of the Twentieth Century. His work relates back directly to the German Expressionists of the early part of the Century. His work is in major collections all over the world. He was very prolific. A friend of mine who worked for Robert Miller in New York told me that in the early '90s there was a warehouse full of his unsold art. People rail against him because his pictures are lively and colorful. You never hear this kind of shit spouted about Helen Frankenthaler or Joan Mitchell, and their work is MUCH "messier" and more "childish" than Basquiat's. There are many other prominent artists from that period who are *actually* not all that good (e.g. David Salle, Mark Tansey, Barbara Kruger, anyone?), yet the people who rail about Basquiat seem not to have ever even heard of these artists, or don't pay them any attention. Why? What's the big diffo? The people so loudly opposed to Basquiat ("My six-year-old CHILD can paint better than THAT!!") - they just come across as morons, trashy rubes who know nothing about painting, people who are really just jealous of his success or celebrity, which is kind of childish, really. What makes people feel qualified to spout this crap? If you don't like it, don't look at it, NOBODY takes you seriously. The people spending million$ on these pictures certainly don't give a shit what you think about them.

And one more point: Basquiat was VERY successful in his own lifetime; it wasn't his death that made him prominent. His last show at Mary Boone, before he died, was sold out, before it opened.

Basquiat's better works are terrific. His work holds up well against important Picasso works, for instannce, or Franz Kline, an artist who was of more artistic influence than, say Warhol, whose influence was more spiritual or philosophical. I don't mean to say that he was the equal to Picasso. He wasn't, but then who was? or who had even a quarter of his scope? But Basquait was indeed genuinely and deeply talented, and produced some quite extraordinary work that will hold its own for decades and centuries.

Neither, as others have pointed out, was Basquiat's success a post-mortem fluke. He was seen an important artist and figure for some time; certainly he enjoyed critical attention for the last 7 years of his 27 years.

You can argue that the art market is always partly "just marketing porn," and has been for centuries, but does that make it unimportant? Mere fluff? Was Giotto's popularity and influence in the 14thC a fluke of marketing? No. Some of his work still inspires awe and imitation and dialogue in the form of works that reference his. Was Sir Thomas Lawrence an 18thC talentless hack society portraitist? Not at all; his popularity in his day and his multitude of works don't diminish the arresting qualities of his better work that still influence artists today and whose works are sought sought after today. Artists rise and fall in reputation according to the tastes of a time (the late 16th/early 17thC artist Guido Reni was intensely popular in the late 18thC and early 19thc, but then very much from the mid-19thC.) Gerald Reitlinger traces the ups and downs of taste and the marketplace for art in "The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prifces, 1760-1960" just one volume in a huge study of the art marketplace as it plays out acrtoss the 18th through 20th Centuries.

Prices go up and down, pictures get moved around from front of house to storerooms in a museum, but there are few opportunitiues for buying works for pennies on the dollar by artists whose pictures were once widely but whose names have fallen (whether hard or softly.) A good Basquait will alwaysw have significant worth as long as there is an art market. The foibles and extremes of that market notwithstanding.

I was really upset in watching the documentary that he (Basquiat) let this pretentious art "critics" get to him. Silly individuals who used their underlying racism to put this young, black star of the art world in his "place".

Even Andy Warhol, who was quite racist himself, was taken aback at the racism in an NYT piece (by Vivien Ranor I believe) that said Basquiat was simply working at the whim of Warhol's "manipulations" and was nothing more than Warhol's "mascot."

I can't find the original article but I see a year later that the NYT tried to walk it back and say they were simply afraid Basquiat might end up as an "art world mascot."

The most important thing is that Basquiat's large hairy uncircumcised penis has been photographically preserved for all eternity.

Basquiat's work is good to great and occasionally he produced work that exceeded the vitality of the School of Paris while referencing a distinctively African/African-American experience.

Larry Gagosian is an evil cunt and I am planning on staging a one-man interpretive piece titled "Me Crimping One Off oh His Fucking Grave" when he finally trades in buying art for the farm.

Art and the art market are two different things.

I mentioned over on a Warhol thread (can't remember which one) that Warhol always wanted to be the artist whose paintings sold for the most, but he loathed the scumbag Gagosian, so he was probably spinning like a lathe in his coffin after the Marilyn sale.

Someone recently wrote an article about him calling him "The Art World's Bad Boy" or something like that and I remember snorting so hard I choked a little.

I'd argue that if you buy that artists like Mondrian and Kandinsky produced art, then Basquiat is a natural extension of that form where the so-called "emotional response of the viewer derives from the juxtaposition of color and shape" or other similar notions of "art" and the viewer.

The political statement behind the images and themes may or may not be valid in terms of the artistic expression of the piece itself.

Basquiat and Madonna were heavily involved during their hungry years in NYC circa 1980...

^Vadge has only EVER been "heavily involved" with HERSELF, we all know that.

Phillips’s $225 Million Evening Sale Marks Its Biggest-Ever Night, Led by an Astounding Basquiat

The marquee lot of the night was an untitled work by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the golden year of 1982: a sprawling canvas stretching over 16 feet long and 8 feet tall. The striking work comes from the collection of the art world’s favorite astronaut, Yusaku Maezawa, and sold for a staggering $85 million. That’s the third highest price the artist has ever achieved at auction, and a 50 percent increase from the painting’s last sale in 2016.

Basquiat stans, give me a break.

You're deranged, OP.

Basquiat is one of the most remarkable, emotional and purely expressionist artists of our lifetime. I am always blown away by his work. Try to see his show in NYC if at all possible, it is incredibly moving.

I never got him, either OP. He had the right people behind him to push his art.

I don't know how anyone could see Untitled at r19 and think it was just junk that a child could paint.

R21:

[quote]Basquiat is one of the most remarkable, emotional and purely expressionist artists of our lifetime. I am always blown away by his work. Try to see his show in NYC if at all possible, it is incredibly moving.

So your idea of aesthetic judgment is crapping yourself because someone, you declare, is "remarkable, emotional and "purely" expressionistic? And you're blown away by such stuff?

Prove it. Blow away.

Because he had no skill with paint, and his "vision" was slop from a disordered mind. That's not art. It's self-therapy, and it AIN'T worth the bother.

The money-laundering comment, of course, is at the heart of the matter. Contempo "she's a legless woman artist and paints with her Malamute's tail" and "he's black and dead so he MUST be great" are just the latest in the scams the art world always have lived by.

Keep your lack of insight to your private thoughts.

Yawn. Another anti-Modernist cunt at R24. Love how they always end up telling people they disagree with to shut up.

Here's an idea.

Get yourself a nice big bowl of shit. Don't stint - pile it up with your favorite toppings.

Then munch away as you gaze thoughtfully at a nice picture of a cow or a photo of your mom, assuming anyone, you included, can tell the difference.

I'll film this, sell it to MoMA with the title "Cunt Eating Shit" (mixed media) and not share my $100,000,000,000.02 with you.

"He cuddint paint his way out of a wet paper bag!!!"

For R24.

I've always loved his work because it reminds me of the early 80s NYC seeing Keith Haring drawing in the subway, Kenny Scharf's psychedelic cartoon images, and that East Village energy.

He personified the artist persona... impoverished, 'pure' of heart in a corporate world... it didn't matter that the art itself was shit. The art world lives for people like this.

He's got a whole passel of shirt-tail family members who are live off his estate. They're all richer than you and me. Featured recently in NEW YORK MAGZINE.

His sisters are currently exhibiting "unknown" paintings for $$$.

Fun fact: he's the most easily "forge-able" artist now.

Forge-ability has a lot to do with demand. Talented forgers are amazingly adept at imitating just about anyone. Check out Welles's "documentary" called "F For Fake."

I cannot even imagine how many fake Basquiats there are out there.

Just a few months ago one of Angelina Jolie's attorneys was in the news, insisting that a forged Basquiat he owned (or had an interest in, I forget) was actually real. The problem was that it was painted on an old FedEx box that wasn't made until after Basquiat had died.

Hey, R1. Fuck you.

Your need to "be right" about something misses what I actually said. I don't hold anything against any artist when they're not a craftsman and just squat out their "truth." And I don't hold it against them when they're successful in sales, alive or dead.

I hold it against them for being lousy artists. Just like I hold it against pompous-ass know-it-alls like you.

Launder that in your monthly load.

Basquiat was laughing all the way to the bank.

I would imagine that Jackson Pollock's art is easily forge-able, too...though, I like his art better...

People keep starting these "Basquiat completely lacks talent" threads, and his prices keep skyrocketing. It's mysterious, aint it?

White guilt.

Reparations.

Don't be ridiculous. The people shelling out the millions for these pictures are doing it for no other purpose than to line their own coffers. Investments.

Maybe if former slaves had been given reparations instead of their former masters who already had made profits 10 times over on the free labor, then it wouldn't be a knee jerk issue for your racist ass

Who are you Basquiat fans trying to impress? Loan officers? It's just money laundering. It's no coincidence that the most popular art (with rich fucks) is also the easiest to transport and store. I know they require conservation, but really paintings are just poker chips for the 1%.

I was thinking that too, R38. Owning a Basquiat is a status of the uber wealthy...to show off. I'm not saying that people don't appreciate his art and get something out of it. It's subjective. A great marketing campaign can make anyone famous and rich, though.

Banksy sucks, too.

Plus an investment like R38 said...

R41 It’s also a great way to virtue signal.

Basquiat was a suitable 'noble savage' for the Upper East Side elite.

What about the "elite" in Europe? They are, and have been, the principal purchasers of his paintings for decades.

Bunch of fucking racists.

Rich fucks live everywhere, R46. It's called globalization. Of bad taste.

It's all for investment purposes, R46.

Nobody actually likes Basquiat's juvenile doodling.

But he did get the last laugh against whitey, I'll give him that.

Too bad he set the bar so low for African-American artists (which explains that shitty presidential portrait of Obama.)

Funny how this argument is invariably made about Basquiat and not the far less talented white artists working over the same room.

Red herring

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, R51.

You could make a similar argument with much more heft against Keith Haring, whose work rarely exceeded that of a talented graphic designer.;

Yet, somehow, people like the OP never do.

Curious.

Another red herring.

Lets talk about Basquiat, not other artists. I thought this was a Basquiat thread.

Keith Haring prices aren’t anywhere near Basquiat prices. Not by an order of magnitude at least.

R55, there is a reason for that - Basquiat was more talented.

I think he was brilliant!

If you love art, visit a student exhibition and you will be inspired by the honesty, sensitivity and talent on display from all ages and all walks of life.

[QUOTE] Basquiat was more talented.

R56, You dear deluded clod.

Art Appreciation for Dummies

R59, already polished off that bowl of shit?

This was one of his best pieces.

The people in Basquiat's doodles look they just ate shit...literally.

R63, because they're brown! GIGGLE!

Robert Hughes had an interesting take

Doo-doo doodles.

Now THIS takes talent and imagination!

[quote]Keep your lack of insight to your private thoughts.

Said the Queen of Romania!

Yawn.

r67, I love Rothko as well!

I never used to, but now I do!

You have to see the Rothkos in person.

"Basquiat’s career appealed to a cluster of toxic vulgarities. First, to the racist idea of the black as naif or as rhythmic innocent, and to the idea of the black artist as “instinctual,” outside “mainstream” culture, and therefore not to be judged by it: a wild pet for the recently cultivated white. Second, to a fetish about the infallible freshness of youth, blooming amid the discos of the Downtown Scene. Third, to an obsession with novelty—the husk of what used to be called the avant-garde, now only serving the need for new ephemeral models each year to stoke the market- Fourth, to the slide of art criticism into promotion, and of art into fashion. Fifth, to the jrt-investment mania, which abolished the time for reflection on a “hot” artist’s actual merits; never were critics and collectors more scared of missing tbe bus than in the early ‘80s. And sixtb, to tbe audience’s goggling appetite for self-destructive talent (Pollock, Hendrix, Montgomery Clift). All this gunk rolled into a sticky ball around Basquiat’s tiny talent and produced a reputation." -Robert Hughes

R50 start a thread about awful white artists. I’ll contribute: Haring, Damien Hirst, Bansky.

When Hughes first came to New York, he refused to visit black artists' studios.

I'm not sure his opinion of Basquiat is something I'd much value.

R73 he surely peppered racist dog whistles (primal, instinctive, fetish, animal) in that article of his to put down Basquiat. And brought up his addiction, association with Warhol as a father figure and dealings with shady at dealers as reasons why Basquiat's work is nothing profound. I mean that's like going into Picasso's or Dalí's personal lives and eccentricities as reasons why their non conventional art shouldn't have been taken seriously compared with legitimate artists who came before them. SMH

Hughes is the most literate of the Murdoch Wave - a flood of Australian writers in NYC who brought their White Australia mentality with them.

Hughes relented somewhat as he aged, but his writings are all about white men. Women barely get a look and his Basquiat take-down is the only article he ever wrote about any black American artist.

Fuck his opinion with a wombat cock.

I wanted one of those Basquiat t-shirts that the Gap was selling a few years ago.

R74 you surely have reading comprehension issues if you got that the writer was describing the art and artists that way, and not describing the art world's take on him.

If anything, he was calling out the art world's racism and tokenism. I would suggest to read it instead of scan it, but you are too busy forcing that axe against the grindstone to actually read the subtext of the entire piece, and probably too caught up around the axle that a white guy wrote it.

R77, I worked in the art gallery world for 20 years, read all of Hughes' columns and met the man several times in person.

His scorn for Basquiat is, shall we say, very much a double-edged thing.

Assuming that wombat cock is still around, feel free to put it to good use.

Hughes' reputation is clear, and there's a very good reason people get more than a hint of Hughes suggesting Basquiat was purposely exploiting that "cluster of toxic vulgarities" to give himself a career he did not deserve.

R6, that’s a white cock.

R24 Calm down and look at this, dear.

R67 Have you any idea what year it is?

Hating on Rothko is downright quaint at this point—philistinism as period piece!

"White men make the good Art."

The idea of what art is and should be has left the white male Petri dish that spawned it. The world has gone through so much, and Robert Hughes has become a crabby smelly man in the corner.

The sad irony of r77 is that he is that which he accuses others of being, and he doesn't realize it!