On August 12, 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat was found dead in his apartment in New York. Overdose. In his business, tell his friends, a plane ticket for Abidjan. The most famous of black painters had the trajectory of a comet which, in less than ten years, ignited the world of modern art from New York to Paris via… Abidjan.
It was in Ivory Coast that the very young man born in Brooklyn of a Haitian father made his only trip to Africa. This continent fascinated him. Many of his paintings refer to it. The famous initiatory journey – on the occasion of an exhibition at the French cultural center in Abidjan – will take place in 1986. For Jean-Michel Basquiat, it will have counted enormously, to the point that the young man dreamed of returning there. Especially since he has met Ivorians in Paris who invite him to come back and go there to prepare for his arrival. From where the plane ticket which one would have found in its business, and which it will never have been able to use.
It is from this death, brutal and yet expected, that our quest starts. With an enigmatic plane ticket, like the promise of a new chapter that will never be written. But what is certain is that this note (is it real? mythical?) is emblematic of Basquiat’s appetite for Africa. A story that is written from its beginnings, from its Haitian origins to its admiration for the figures of black pride, its fascination for griots, fetishes and ancient African kings… Basquiat: a ticket to Africa is a retrospective investigation that reconnects the threads that linked the genius of Brooklyn to the continent that he always said he carried with him ” cultural memory “.
From Paris to Abidjan via New York, the original podcast Basquiat : a ticket to Africa leads its listeners through the intricacies of the African side of the artist, giving voice to those who knew him, accompanied in Africa, or to African artists who have been marked by his work. Our series thus ends at the School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, with young artists discovering the work of Basquiat.