There are many exciting exhibitions worth travelling for this year, from dazzling fashion retrospectives to city-wide biennales. But European fans of the vibrant, neo-expressionist work of Jean-Michel Basquiat are in for a treat this January, as Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is set to exhibit some long-undiscovered sketches from the American artist.
Basquiat is known for his abstract, colourful paintings of heads and skulls. This showcase is anchored by ‘Untitled’, a figurative, graffiti-like painting of a skull which, when sold at Sotheby’s New York to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa in 2017 at the staggering price of $110.5 million, became the most expensive piece of art ever sold by an American artist.
The exhibition is called Basquiat: Headstrong, and it’s taking place at the serenely beautiful Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, just outside of Copenhagen, from Friday January 30 until May 17.
What can visitors expect? Well, lots of heads, by the sounds of it. The Art Newspaper outlines that this exhibition is the first one dedicated to displaying Basquiat’s drawn depictions of the human head which he sketched between 1981-83 (as well as the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in Scandinavia).
The works, with smudges, dirt and the occasional footprint pasted over them seem to have been laid out on his studio floor, and were predominantly made using oil sticks. Though they were eventually found and shown to a wider audience in 1990 (two years after Basquiat’s passing) at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, this exhibition aims to shine a brighter light on what has been described as the artist’s ‘private vocabulary’.
Ranging ‘from having something close to the fullness of living flesh to the appearance of skulls, masks or mechanical, automaton-like figures,’ the heads are ‘characterised by shuddering dissonances between their anatomical parts,’ according to Louisiana curator Anders Kold in his essay accompanying the exhibition.
More about Jean-Michel Basquiat
Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat grew from a prominent graffiti artist to a pioneer of the neo-expressionist movement and 1980s cultural icon. A signature motif in his artworks is a crown, and Sotheby’s explains that ‘by adorning black male figures, including athletes, musicians and writers, with the crown [throughout his work], Basquiat raised these historically disenfranchised artists to royal, even saintly stature.’
It’s thought that the artist’s fascination with anatomy came about when he was hospitalised at the age of seven after a car accident and gifted a copy of Gray’s Anatomy by his mother.
Work by contemporary artists Arthur Jafa, Julie Mehretu, Dana Schutz and Alvaro Barrington – all of whom have been influenced and inspired by Basquiat – will also be on display. You can book your tickets via the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s website.
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