The Soundscape Artist: The Beating Heart of Basquiat’s Brooklyn Bricolage
The artwork of Basquiat has always resonated with the sounds that influenced it – from Batman to blaring car horns to Bebop. But Montreal’s Seeing Loud is “the first time that an exhibition underlines the importance of his experience as a musician.”
by Noah Snieckus
On a square pair of sickly cream canvases, bloodied and bruised with jagged brushstrokes and a hellish ladder that spills across the two, penned words scream with grit and clashing dissonance in defeatist shades of red, blue and grey. Inscribed are “vacuum,” “bark,” and the – oddly particular – model of a stick of dynamite, muddied with visceral noise as 70 men are pronounced dead, with but three-legged stick figures resembled in their place. This diptych set, Eroica (part 1 & 2), was among the final works produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat in the months before his untimely death in 1988. Together, they are successful in encompassing all major elements of the romantic take on the conniving pinches in seemingly smooth upwards progression, as well as the aspects that lead to an apparently predestined fall. Part 1 positions us in view of the beaming sun against the spiralling thought of ageing; as though the sun that was in sight would be the same one to which he’d fly too near. In the throng of love, life, death, identity, narcotics, sex and blues, this is but a tender auto-biographical summary – perhaps the most revealing of Basquiat’s life-aligning works. The piece, it must be pointed out, is cased in the context of music, with inspiration from the title of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, because Basquiat was music equally as he was art.
Since his death at the age of 27, the story of the Brooklyn native has been pictured in the light of many rhetorics. Framed, recounted, and reimagined with slight variation. And its telling is often said to have been rendered in a mythical manner – a now-expected fate for the beautiful and damned, as was the case with the Jackson Pollocks, Thomas Chattertons and Amy Whinehouses, with a set number of Romantics prescribed by era, doomed at the hands of their emotional depths, talent and of societal strain.
This central theme, profiling Basquiat, was what provided the structure for Montreal’s first full exhibition of his work at the Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) as the doors were opened for ‘Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music’. Exactly so, in fact. “We wanted to tell a story,” Jazz expert and one of three curators of the showcase, Vincent Bessière, explained to Down to the Wire as we stood in the glass-walled corridor between the room he deemed “concept and personal relationship-[lead],” and the later portions of the exhibit dedicated to more “developed” aspects of Basquiat’s life. Reminiscent of his artistic and personal development, the display only plays out chronologically in part, to align with this storytelling, in the lead up to the all-epitomising, two-part Eroica at the exhibit's end, accorded its own room.
Stretching across the entire third floor of Canada’s oldest and largest Art Gallery, it is recommended that visitors give an hour and a half of their time to the experience. After all, the context of this sort – and of this scale – isn’t easy to absorb.
To separate New York City from a Basquiat discussion would be nonsensical as it would be to detach him from his art. The two are interwoven at the basest level of all his creative works. His Brooklyn homestead and New York stomping grounds inspired many of his canvases in their display of skyscrapers, their sheer mass crowding empty space; taxi cabs braying sonic interpolation as they smoke past; and music - that of the city’s mechanics and of formal noise. The subject matters, often separately depicted, can also be found to glomerate within the metastructure of his metropolitan chaos. In further effect, working back to his primary output as a visual artist alongside Al Diaz, the two worked in graffiti under the SAMO tag, encrypting socially and politically charged messaging. Thereby, literally, the city became his canvas.
Through double-doors, visitors to the exhibit are immediately confronted by United (Sheriff) [1981]. The first of the ‘New York/ New Waves’ room, feeding into the context which Bessière says “underline[s] the many experiences [Basquiat] had,” is easily found with assistance of the Augmented Reality App, designed by Montreal-based Dpt, purpose-built for this part of the exhibit. When paintings indicated with augmented elements are scanned, animations visually build on the piece in a VR format. In the case of Sheriff, a 2000s Pixar-esque animation recreates the internal view of Club 57, where the work once hung and where Basquiat and celebs of the scene mixed and met. It introduces viewers to leitmotifs that would prove eminent to his work, such as police brutality, the famed crown motif, and some early stylistic leanings: dirtied primary colour schemes and barbed brushstrokes. Similarly, music was significant in its contextual framing. But also, as with Old Cars – the piece next to Sheriff in the exhibit – in the jarring fragments that word the conflict. In both cases, the sprawling vowels act as silent utterances informed by altercation: human disturbance in the first, mechanical clash in the second.
Ira Abramowitz behind the bar at Club 57, 1981. Photo Lina Bertucci. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. © Lina Bertucci.
Bessière thinks the underlying importance of this particular installation to be the angle from which it unfolds: “Basquiat wasn’t a painter from the start. He went in many directions before being a full-time painter - tried [many] different things.” This is in line with another informed opinion, that of Seeing Loud’s co-curator and dedicated Basquiat aficionado, Dieter Buchhart. In a Christie's feature, Buchhart credited “constant experimentation” in the triad of factors that garnished his mass-following of the time and attenuated his cultural resonance in today’s grand standing.
Experimental brilliance isn’t normally a quality overlooked in Basquiat’s visual art. As Buchhart argues, it was central to his artistic climb societally. But before any sort of vice or structure was solidified in the mind of Basquiat – for him to master and, by nature, bend – his curiosity lay in a greater range of mediums, output less applauded. The young artist’s early visual art on scraps of board scavenged and repurposed from the streets is often regaled in a warm light by critics: everything from suitcase covers, to tires, to the floors of his then-girlfriend Alexis Adler’s Manhattan apartment. But, with a gaze on ‘canvases’ from the curb, one could nearly overlook the sounds he curated from the concrete.
His initial vocational pursuit, music, was first brought to the eyes – and ears – of the public a year earlier. Basquiat, on meeting American filmmaker Michael Holman at the Canal Zone Party, would find a shared, intrinsic value in the sonics of their New York cityscape, as well as the music of John Cage in his push against instruction and conformity in the arts. The two – Basquiat on clarinet and synthesiser and Holman on drums – alongside Shawn Dawson on trumpet and Wayne Clifford on keys would cross-pollinate an ecstatic creative energy with sampled audio from the streets of New York. And given that no player was formally trained, or informally practised for that matter, they were able to produce the ambient, cut & sew compositions that they set out to achieve as a collective is remarkable. So birthed was Gray – the band first publicly introduced as ‘Test Pattern’ in 1979.
On a sensory level, one might but hear the garish noise of the collision when presented with the image of a car crash. That was likely the underlying link Gray hoped one would draw when stopping on any one of the NY avenues their live event posters were plastered to: a pastel drawing of a crash squeezed between venues, dates and times. Though, of course, the theme often resonates most deeply as a nod to his perspective-altering car accident at seven years old. The title, Gray, was inspired by the seminal anatomical book his mother gifted him in the hospital of the same name (‘Gray’s Anatomy’). Frequently categorised as a “noise band”, to judge their New Wave-leaning licks solely by even parameters would be a feat. All pieces attributed to cover art and reference work at the exhibit didn’t even have borders but for protective frames! Tracks like ‘Drum Mode’ carry dystopic whines, as they alter into waterlogged basslines – of samples, I assume, as no instruments are readily identifiable – and the intercuts are accented with bellowing knocks.
To make sense of the collective’s craft surely would be a task in and of itself. So, how did Basquiat explain it? “I never know how to describe it… It’s like asking Miles [Davis] ‘How does your horn sound?’ I don’t think he’d be able to tell you.”
The band Gray performing at Hurrah, 1979. Photo Nicholas Taylor. © Nicholas Taylor
The most peculiar associative art of Basquiat in affiliation with Gray – of the entire exhibit, perhaps – is a kind of instrument of industrial machinery. On a warmly-lit platform, a misshapen shopping cart – accessorised with curling truck springs, bolted scrap metal from running boards and an electric motor at its centre – rests. Designed by ‘experimental instrument builder’ Peter Artin, this rusting contraption is a replica of the instrument Basquiat part rode, part jumped aside on stage, as he and Gray performed at a friend's birthday. The twist is that a switch to the side of the cord, when off, allowed him to play it as an instrument, as he did during the second track of that particular set. One wonders at the direction an already wayward sound would travel in with the introduction of this ‘instrument’.
As one follows the natural, clockwise flow of foot-traffic through the room dedicated to rap and bebop, they’ll pass the red-raw hands of a collaged Toxic and a glass case of Basquiat-designed event posters on the way to the famed Beat Bop (1983). At the head of the promotional flyer for this comparative exhibit, as well as for the Independent’s analytical article on the same topic, this array of shapes and words is representative of the period in which Basquiat refined his musical abilities. If tracks under Gray were the grounding bassline of his compositional understanding, Beat Bop is the high-flying melody.
Produced by Basquiat, the fully fledged, 12 minute take on an early hip-hop sound is regarded highly among critics and rap aficionados as the featured emcees’ bout. It has often been described as a lyrical “sparring match” between young gun K-Rob and OG Ramelzee. As a sizzling bassline from Sekou Bunch and intermittent Al Diaz percussion meets with the yearning bow and string of violinist Esther Ballet, one can’t help but cross-analyse the artwork in its support of the single. Sharp arrows pointed skyward suggest a sliding scale - perhaps the violin with its linear sawing; the complexities of the bassline in their plucking range are represented by the curling strays in the corner; and the clean, but jagged lightning bolts and succinct use of onomatopoeia as percussion. An investment funded entirely by Basquiat, this work, if nothing else, shines light on the passion with which Basquiat was pursuing this endeavour head-long. As Bessière commented, “This was very serious to him. At that time, I would say it was his main concern. He was really focussed into music.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Beat Bop, 1983. Collection of Emmanuelle and Jérôme de Noirmont. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
The word “Pree” likely means very little to those outside of the know in Jazz. Some may be familiar with its definition: ‘Pree,’ as a verb, means to test, taste, or sample. Which ties in with a major element of Basquiat’s incorporation of pop culture and world history references in his work. Head on, in the room dedicated to hip-hop in the context of the surrounding sounds of Basquiat’s come-up, is a canvas comprised of fifteen boards of plywood. One is immediately drawn to the fashionable prowler – Anthony Clarke – at the work’s centrepiece, that the boxy packaging above his shoulder and its referential importance could be overlooked. That’s not to say that A-One, fellow NY graffiti artist and the character portraited in this work, doesn’t hold weight or significance to the playing out of Basquiat in the overarching structure of storyline and musical presence. But the word “Pree,”maybe the size of regular handwriting on this sizeable work, is in fact a respect paid to Charlie Parker after the name of his late daughter. This suggests that Basquiat’s genius isn’t in the obtuse or readily understood, but in the inscribed, the confined, the crossed out.
Jazz great Bill Evans, once, when asked why young people might listen to jazz after a show of his in 1980 saw a greater influx of youth attendees, said “I think some young people might want a deeper experience… [Others] just want to be hit over the head; and then if they hit hard enough they may feel something.” This certainly rings true to the cryptic messaging found – though sometimes not with ease – in the work of Basquiat. For instance, Bessière was keen to point out a particular detail few might uncover in the following Jazz section of the exhibit: “[T]here are a series of 78 [rpm] records. And those 78s, if you look carefully at the labels, you’ll see that Basquiat drew those labels, reproduced them by hand and then would xerox them in different works.” Subtle details are inverted in Now’s the Time (1985) – a dented wooden remake and tribute to Charlie Parker’s record of the same name, large enough to comfortably seat a family of four if sat upright on legs. While it’s clear to see Basquiat as a man – like companion, collaborator and arts-revolutionary Andy Warhol – was deeply fascinated by the world, it seemed that Jazz, like no other bystander in the mix of a main-character’s mania, was the most influential to the Brooklynite’s art.
Can one credit it solely to the fact that “Basquiat knows about that music, he loves that music […] he understood that music also, and he understood what was going on when Charlie Parker improvised, about composing in real-time,” as Bessière does? It definitely would be supportive as evidence in arguing this view. Paintings dotted sparingly across the vast walls of the first in a string of Jazz rooms suggest a self-education on the mechanics of music. As if this was the means by which he could descend into depths of the internal ‘instrumental’ systems by which music is made. Take ‘Untitled: Left Hand - Right Hand’ as an example. A panelled wood board the size of a midi keyboard is slathered in pitch black paint, but for the white oil outlining of two hands – a numbered finger per panel – and the shading of a piano’s keys. The symbolism of hands as fundamental utensils in artistic creation show a desire to understand the barren foundation as a place from which one can fascine, play, draw and feel-out the art they make. One could comparatively examine the gauntly golden Anybody Speaking Words (1982) in the flowing structure of anatomy that proved a compelling and pack-separating theme in Basquiat’s work with musical implements. A lesser exhibited piece, white bone-like ladders twine the veins of an unidentified torso. Vertical arrows from a mouth with yellow teeth, detached from their face, suggest a sliding scale, as to depict the vocal range of a singer. This sensibility is rarely realised in the visual depictions of Jazz.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Untitled (Left Hand – Right Hand), 1984-1985. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Paintings such as these are from the perspective of a man who feels Jazz, not just one who is read on the subject. But for the purposes of a discussion of his career, where was the relationship reciprocal? Dare it be said, ‘What did Jazz do for him?’ “It provided him with heroes,” Bessière pointed out. Segregated montages of Thelonius Monk, Fats Waller and Dinah Washington in live recording projected on either side of an arched door in the exhibit. These were artists deserving of adulation, but bitterly, most of them never received A-list admiration or even acceptance. These were some of Basquiat’s heroes.
The story goes that on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, shortly after Basquiat moved out to LA in refuge of an especially usurious New York arts scene, he and Ramelzee – depicted in Dog Bite/ Ax to Grind by the ‘Z’-lettered cap – were reflecting on how not a single plaque was dedicated to a Black American. Because of this, they came to see themselves as ‘Hollywood Africans’, understanding the responsibility that this self-dreamt title pertained to. Basquiat, through his artwork(s), became a notable voice for the underappreciated and under acknowledged Black artists in a predominantly white field.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Dog Bite / Ax to Grind, 1983. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Against the idea that sound is lost to time, one might discuss its dissipation in relation to a transfer of energy. Guglielmo Marconi, the ‘Godfather of Radio Technology’, said “no sound ever dies. It just decays beyond the point that we can detect it with our ears.” Perhaps the words and muse of the underappreciated were, and are, felt by other means than hearing. After all, as an unofficial representative of said people, it was Basquiat who explained “I cross out words so you will see them more: that they are obscured makes you want to read them.” To take this a step further, one might say that we have no choice in the matter. Just as the struck-through is still seen in the work of Basquiat, that which is rendered ‘silent’, as its sound is transferred to a different energetic plane, will be heard. Basquiat merely amplified it visually. As if, after Charlie Parker’s sax rang for the final time, its frequencies were shifted into the hands of an understanding listener, Basquiat, to reverberate and transform this energy into a different medium – forever to be stained in the songs of his paintings.
Basquiat seemed to naturally break free of the structural confines of a life suited for chronological biography. His personal complexity often mirrored the sometimes indiscernibility of his art except through a synesthetic approach, by which sensory appreciations must meld in order to fully get to grips with it. An undertaking of this sort has proven, by numerous accounts, to only be for the resilient, the creative, and the experimental. ‘Seeing Loud’ managed to steer clear of retelling ‘just’ another fondly-tinted obituary – one which has become almost saturated in the ears of readers, such that their learnedness on the subject comes from repetition of such details and descriptions. How so? Through its use of music. “It's the first time that an exhibition underlines the importance of his experience as a musician”, says Bessière. And this entirely new angle is not only refreshing and fitting, but exciting in its expansive execution.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Anybody Speaking Words, 1982. Private collection, Switzerland. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo Fotoearte
