NYC Photo Journal: A Return to The Brooklyn Museum: Wiley, Basquiat
One of my favorite places is The Brooklyn Museum. I caught two current exhibits by black male artists.
Kehinde Wiley (Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, at the Brooklyn Museum)
Born in 1977, Wiley studied the old master painters; he embedded black hip-hop portraiture into the framework of the old to create the new. The backgrounds, redolent of kitschy wallpaper backgrounds from old Catskill Mountain hotels, the culture of the past is imbibed with that of the present in huge works. Colors are bright, vibrant, somewhat garish. The subjects rarely look directly at the viewer, most are presented three-quarter face, sometimes eyes averted. Though they appear triumphant and confident, I sensed a discomfort, even a suspiciousness.
Most interesting was the art created from the mug-shot of a youth Wiley found. In eliminating the details of the written facts and presenting the portrait of the arrested teen in oils, we see a confused child who looks like an innocent .
It’s all in the perspective.
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- Sneaker head
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- Why can’t we all get along? An Israeli and a Palestinian. Done in Israel, one of a series with a special frame in Hebrew.
Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks
April 3–August 23, 2015
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Born: December 22, 1960, Brooklyn, New York City, NY
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Died: August 12, 1988, NoHo, Manhattan, New York City, NY
Jean-Michel Basquait was a scholar of sorts though he quit high school before graduation: he was multilingual, an artist, a writer, a philosopher. He became a world-renown graffiti artist whose work made its way into galleries. The first Basquiat exhibit at the Brooklyn museum that I saw, was in 2005. It was massive. Though widely-acclaimed and sought after, his addiction to drugs could not be managed.
He died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.
Two interesting representatives of metropolitan art. I cannot make out whether or not I like Basquiat’s works, I find Wiley’s much more conventional, i.e. comprehensible.