BE THERE
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Works on PaperPresented by Van De Weghe May 5, 2007- June 9, 2007Jean-Michel BasquiatVan de Weghe Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of works on paper by Jean- Michel Basquiat. Assembled over the course of the last fifteen years, the works form the basis of a remarkable single private collection, and illustrate the wide range of subject matter and modes of expression employed by the artist over his short but intensely-lived career.Works exhibited span Basquiat’s oeuvre from 1980 through 1988 and illustrate the remarkable range of media in which he worked: oilstick, marker, crayon, blood, acrylic, pen, pencil, gouache, watercolor, Xerox and various other collage media. Indeed, drawing existed for Basquiat as an important means of expression in its own right, as an unmediated and immediate way to record the world around him and his negotiation of it. Fragmentary words and phrases intermingle with intriguing and equally disparate images. One does not explicate the other, but they form a discordant whole that is at once intriguing and disarming. The drawings form a visual diary of sorts, revealing an impression of the artist behind them but nevertheless, remaining elusive. As Robert Storr has noted, “drawing was an activity rather than a medium,” for Basquiat, no less significant an art form than painting and a constant creative activity for an artist who was continually concerned with blurring the hierarchy among media. As much as the drawings exhibited here illustrate the breadth and extraordinary range of Basquiat’s technique, these many works on paper provide a lexicon of the artist’s seemingly endless obsessions and preoccupations.
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