When the shooting star Jean-Michel Basquiat, who came from street art, the first black painter recognized by critics, who died at the age of 27 following an overdose, meets the New York pop art superstar Andy Warhol, a unique collaboration is set up: 160 canvases painted together in two years. At the Fondation Louis-Vuitton in Paris, the exhibition “Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains” recounts this incredible and fruitful adventure of two artists who died shortly afterwards. Interview with associate curator Olivier Michelon.
RFI : How did this four-handed collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol start ?
Olivier Michelon : This collaboration started first with a friendship, with Jean-Michel Basquiat who met Andy Warhol in 1982. He presented him with a painting representing both of them. Afterwards, there is a series of cross portraits between the two artists. Then, Warhol will hand paintings to Basquiat so that he paints on them. Quickly, the two artists will end up working together, in the same studio, on the same canvases.
At first, Basquiat had boundless admiration for Warhol. On the other hand, Warhol was initially rather skeptical of this very young painter who was called Jean-Michel Basquiat, born in 1960 in Brooklyn. What have both learned or gained from working together? ?
Jean-Michel Basquiat has admired Warhol since he was a teenager. He sought to meet him several times. Warhol sees in the new New York art scene proof of energy, a novelty that interests him. This is also why he is interested in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. When both will meet, the friendship will be quite fast. Technically, this is the moment when Warhol will really get back to painting, drawing by hand, and no longer with a screen printing screen. It will allow Jean-Michel Basquiat to work on huge formats. And both will confront their universes, their styles and also their repertoires of forms.
Warhol often drew his power from outside, in logos, brands, in the glory provided by television. With Basquiat, on the contrary, it is rather the interior that comes out, emotions, anger, youth… In their joint work, in their works created with four hands, what does the third eye of their collaboration consist of? ?
We could oppose the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat to that of Andy Warhol, with a distant side and a faster side, between a universe stolen from the media, and another that would be more subjective… In my opinion, things are a little more complicated. Jean-Michel Basquiat said he copied, but with his own hand. He has always worked with photocopying, he has also done screen printing. So things get blurry. This is what created what Keith Haring called a ” third spirit “. That is to say, when these two artists work together, obviously, we see their respective signs, we see their style, their way, their “hand”. But each will appropriate the other’s signs, and the other’s way of doing things too. And that’s going to create this other artist who would be “ Basquiatwarhol and more Basquiat or Warhol.
The poster uses another poster from the time to symbolize this four-handed collaboration, showing the two artists with boxing gloves. Was this chosen iconography inspired by the fight of the century between Mohamed Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974? ?
In my opinion, we are closer to the boxing posters of the 1930s, 1950s than that of the fight of the century. When Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol decided to do the exhibition together, at Tony Shafrazi’s, in 1985, they staged this exhibition with a poster where they appeared as boxers. With this idea of combat, of promotion. It’s obviously an amused gesture. Boxing is also an iconography dear to Basquiat, because the boxer is the prototype of the hero, but also of martyrdom. For Warhol, there is perhaps a more pop side. In the exhibition, with another work around boxing, Ten Punching Bagswe see that things are a little more complicated, a little sadder too, than this playful aspect of the fight.
Because the installation Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), produced between 1985 and 1986, but never exhibited during the lifetime of Basquiat and Warhol, refers to a gallows and its suite of black hanged men evoked by the song Strange Fruits by Billie Holiday. The African-American, or even African, universe appears several times in the works produced by four hands. African Masksthe most monumental work in the exhibition, is it really ” a masterpiece of African art as Warhol called it ?
It’s not an African masterpiece, it’s a painting done in New York, in 1984, by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, with African iconography. An iconography taken from books or from the Metropolitan Museum where there was a major exhibition in the same year, Primitivism in Modern Art, where there were a lot of these works on display. Warhol said of this work that ” it is more than 30 meters long “, in fact, it is ten or eleven meters, which is already a lot. Apart from its size, it’s a disturbing work, because we don’t know what Warhol is doing in this case. But we see that some of these masks were designed by Andy Warhol.
The two artists, what relationship did they have with Africa ?
Andy Warhol’s relationship with Africa is difficult for me to answer. I don’t know her, I don’t even know if Andy Warhol was on the African continent. Jean-Michel Basquiat once went to Africa, after his collaborations with Andy Warhol. As an African-American, originally from Haiti, the Caribbean area is obviously something that interests him. He has also worked quite a bit on the mythologies or ritual practices from West Africa, in particular the myths of the Yorubas.
Taxi, 45th/Broadway is also a four-handed collaboration. Warhol painted a yellow hood there, and Basquiat his experiences as a black man in a very racist American society. How did they work on this artwork ?
Among the works on display are Taxi, 45th Street/Broadway, which depicts a scene where we imagine that Warhol first painted this amusing calanque of a yellow taxi, a bit of a child’s toy. Basquiat finished it off by putting a rude taxi driver inside who swears at a person trying to get a taxi. According to the testimonies we have, this person is Jean-Michel Basquiat who is trying to get into a taxi and the taxi refuses to see him. [parce qu’il est Noir, NDLR]. Where the painting is even more complex is when you realize that this person doesn’t just have black skin, they’re just drawn, they’re actually invisible.
The exhibition celebrates these works made with four hands by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat as masterpieces, but during the exhibition in 1985, the two artists suffered very harsh criticism. Why the collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat ended ?
In 1985, when they made the exhibition together, the reviews were quite negative. In a way, the critics already know what they are going to say: an old artist looking for youth. A young man seeking fame. Part on this basis, the reception could not be “incredible”. And Basquiat will be hurt by this criticism. Perhaps by his youth, because it is a fairly strong media exposure for him. For Warhol, things are a little simpler. He has more distance with things. And that’s when the collaboration will loosen up, even if the artists will continue to see each other, even to work a little together, as we can see in the exhibition, with Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper).