Curated by Dieter Buchhart and Antonia Hoerschelmann, “Jean-Michel Basquiat. Of Symbols and Indicators” opened on September 9, 2022, and will probably be on view till January 8, 2023, on the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria (situated at Basteihalle Albertina, Albertinaplatz 1). The exhibition catalog Jean-Michel Basquiat. Of Symbols and Indicators is offered on-site and on-line (see hyperlinks beneath).
Description (from the Albertina Museum): Nearly no different artist comes anyplace near being as consultant of the Nineteen Eighties and that decade’s pulsating New York artwork scene as does the brilliantly distinctive creative phenomenon that was Jean-Michel Basquiat. Born in New York because the son of a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mom in 1960, he ran away from residence at age 17—initially making his manner as a graffiti artist and at occasions even residing on the road. It was not lengthy, nevertheless, earlier than he started his speedy ascent. Basquiat’s meteoric profession can appear one thing like fast-forwarding by way of a film crammed with sequences the place the principal character interacts together with his period’s most important artists, together with David Bowie and Madonna. Furthermore, Basquiat additionally maintained an inspiring friendship with Andy Warhol. His work have been quickly in extraordinarily excessive demand, appreciating quickly in worth—and by 1982, he had change into each the youngest-ever participant in documenta 7 and the primary world-famous artist with Afro-American-Caribbean roots. Basquiat was unable to face up to the problem posed by this fast success for lengthy, nevertheless, and he died of a drug overdose in 1988.
Basquiat’s oeuvre is extra present than ever and stays each bit as pioneering and visionary because it was again then. His works flip a highlight each on African heritage and on problematic hierarchies in society, with omnipresent racism being the theme that he discovered most essential and personally related. As an eccentric outsider and an exploited famous person of his occasions, Basquiat now stands amongst modern artwork’s most important key figures.
This exhibition on the ALBERTINA Museum is Austria’s first complete museum-based retrospective that includes Jean-Michel Basquiat’s extraordinary oeuvre.
It reveals round 50 main works from famend private and non-private collections, offering new insights into Basquiat’s one-of-a-kind visible language and decoding the substance behind his creative concepts. [. . .]
For extra info, see https://www.albertina.at/en/exhibitions/basquiat
For info on the catalog, see https://store.albertina.at/de/kat-jean-michel-basquiat-d-2022-p3524/
[Imahe above, Basquiat’s 1981 “La Hara.” Note that this title is a play on the Puerto Rican slang term for “police,” la jara (pronounced “la hara”).]