In November 2022, I finally escaped the office for a few exhibitions, above all the long-awaited Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective at Vienna’s Albertina. The exhibition ran from 9 September 2022 to 8 January 2023; these are my impressions from that visit.[1]
When I first saw a reproduction of one of his works some twenty years earlier, it struck me like lightning. Shortly afterwards, I was in Venice with my son, then still very young, while a Basquiat exhibition was on. I worried that it would not suit a toddler, so we did not go. In Vienna, I finally had my chance.
Some exhibitions give me an impulse to paint. Basquiat has the opposite effect: afterwards I find myself wondering whether there is any point in continuing. That is how overwhelming his work can be for me.
His auction prices are extraordinary too. In May 2017, Untitled (1982) sold at Sotheby’s in New York for about US$110.5 million, including fees. At the time, that was an auction record for a work by an American artist—not for modern painting as a whole.[2]
The exhibition gave me a strong sense of the range of his work. I found it well curated, clearly documented and thoughtfully hung. It is still astonishing to me how much he made in such a short life: he died in 1988, aged twenty-seven. The paintings deserve to be looked at beyond the familiar story of his rapid fame and early death.
I was particularly struck by the self-portraits. For me, they concentrate the force of his drawing and painting into a remarkably direct encounter.
Extra: The Batliner Collection and Its Frames
During the same visit, I also looked at the Albertina’s display of the Rita and Herbert Batliner Collection. It brings together works ranging from French Impressionism to later modern painting, including Monet, Cézanne and Picasso. Some of the works are outstanding.
But a question that has bothered me for years returned: why put paintings like these—not only Impressionist works, but even Picasso—into such pompous frames? To my eye, the frame can compete with the painting instead of helping us see it.
One can argue about taste, certainly. In this case, I struggle to see what the taste is meant to serve.
Footnotes
[1] See the Albertina’s exhibition text for the dates and background of Basquiat: Of Symbols and Signs. ↩
[2] Sotheby’s report of the sale on 18 May 2017. This is a historical auction result, not a claim about the current record. ↩
Related articles: A Homage to Gerhard Richter and Hideaki Yamanobe · State of the Art: A Self-Portrait Series · Can We Hear a Painting?
Explore Art & Writing
Art Portfolio → Featured Artworks → Arts & Philosophy Journal → All Articles
Explore Asian Art Essays for writing on Chinese painting, calligraphy, aesthetics and art history.
Available Artworks
Original works are available on FriedrichZettl.com and Saatchi Art
Leave a Reply