You. Are. Perishable.

Weekly Mourner 6Part 3 of “How to Look at Art; Basquiat”By screm

YOU. ARE. PERISHABLE.

“Gravestone”, 1987, Acrylic, crayon, on headboard, door and cabinet door.  140 x 172.4cm. Private Collection.

”What sunsets hold,

Who can know?

What cold plans under fate’s wings grow? 

For even when good fortune shines,

Death still turns the hands of time.

So think your thoughts of self-control,

Tell yourself where you will go,

Say that you’ll do this or that,

While basking in this evening’s glow,

Enjoy the radiant streaks of gold,

Look around as if you’ll always be,

But behind you is the shadow deep;

And it comes for all,

It comes for you,

And it comes for me.”

-T.D.

“A Sunset Is A Harbinger” by Thomas Damascus

“Gravestone” was completed shortly after the death of Basquiat’s close friend, collaborator, and confidant, of several years, Andy Warhol. You know Andy; The famous pop art icon who coined the phrase: “Fifteen Minutes of Fame.” Warhol is probably best known for his repetitious presentations of screen prints of Campbell’s Soup cans. Coincidentally, a can of Campbell’s soup has a longer shelf life than Warhol did. Kept in the right conditions our canned goods will outlast us all. We are perishable in the most poignant sense of the word. As the poem says: “Behind us is the shadow deep…”. When, I ask you, is the last time you really thought about that?

This final part in the series on “How To Look At Basquiat” is intended to give you pause. Stop for a second... Take a few moments to be quiet and to listen to the sound of your heart. That soft beating you will gradually begin to hear as you listen will eventually fall silent.

Reflect…

This artwork is intended for just that kind of reflection. Morbid? Perhaps (though this kind of reflection doesn’t need to be “morbid”). Honest? Real? Inevitable? Most definitely. This piece is Basquiat’s memorial to the great artist Andy Warhol, indeed, but it is so much more.

It stands like a late medieval altarpiece. Have you ever seen those? I’ll guess that at some point you have. They often look like this:

Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1506-1515, Oil on limewood, 269 × 650 in, 683.3 × 1651 cm, 1506-1515

This Basquiat piece is arresting for its use of a tall, central panel that is flanked by two smaller, though still significant panels. The invocation of the spiritual realm is immediately noticeable. Yet, the reference to late medieval altarpieces essentially stops at the form. There are a few iconographic references here; a skull, a cross, a flower; but these are by no means limited to medieval art. These are cultural symbols that are very relevant in modern times too. This is a rugged piece of construction, seemingly haphazard, and reminiscent of Basquiat’s early found object art. The viewer familiar with Basquiat’s body of work will call to mind works like “Refrigerator”:

Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Refrigerator”, 1981, Acrylic and marker on refrigerator, 140 x 64 x 57cm, Bischofberger Collection, Switzerland.

A critical difference between these works is the obvious. One is constructed and one is simply found and used as a surface or object of art. Still, the vintage Basquiat is here and it lends force to the presence of the work. In much of his early work it’s like he was grabbing anything he could to express himself: “oh, here’s a refrigerator, I’ll paint on this because there’s nothing else to paint on!” Basquiat was poor and essentially homeless (by choice but poor and homeless nonetheless) in his early years. His early work had a sense of desperation to it. So does this piece. This is how many people act in grief. We grasp, often desperately, at anything we can, to find some way to express the feeling of loss we are suffering from. 

This is Basquiat’s corpus condensed into what is one of his most briefly stated and emotionally powerful works. There is real, deep, grief, here, and there is also a short lifetime of artistic reference. The three panels enclose the viewer in what could be seen as a casket-like embrace or the warmth of the hug of a dear friend at graveside during a burial. I have often thought that the way hinged altar pieces enfold their viewers was a kind of pleasant irony. There is an enveloping force to “Gravestone” and in it we observe, not coldly either, both the mortality of the artist, and his sorrow. 

   

Acrylic, crayon, and the surfaces themselves. That’s it. “Gravestone” is as sparse as it is powerful. This is essential to the overall eloquence of the work. Drawing was always the anchor of Basquiat’s art. Whatever else he happened to be doing he was drawing. In fact, his drawings are rumored to have littered the floors of his various studios. And when he was painting he was also drawing. He sketched and scratched with the brush. It makes the moments in his work when he utilized the brush more like a brush so much more forceful. One can isolate those moments because brush strokes stand out in his work like a beacon. So in this vintage piece there are the two essentials of any Basquiat work: paint and a drawing tool. Nor should it be overlooked that the substrates themselves are used as medium here.  These are symbolic components. At least, we may safely suppose that they are. The left panel is a piece of a bed. This takes the viewer to immediate thoughts of the deathbed. A resting place. The far right panel is an obscure door. Have you ever seen a door like this in a house that you were unfamiliar with. It’s possibly a crawl space door and this applies the pressure of the unknown to the viewer’s conception of death. What lies behind a crawl space door in an old row home in an old city? Who can say. These are unknown spaces, sometimes creepy spaces, often dark spaces. And this is death: an unknown space, a symbolically dark place. 

   

The central panel is the skeleton key, no pun intended.  It opens this possible interpretation wide for the viewer. The symbolism of passing over, or, entering in, that goes with our conceptions of dying and death is almost undeniable here. Where has Basquiat’s friend gone? Through what irreversible threshold has Andy Warhol passed? This is the power of media on full display with a career’s worth of thoughtful, energetic, sometimes frantic, sometimes hazy, sometimes prophetically relevant, and vitally clear, experience, all bundled into a few marks on a form that both encapsulates the artist’s history of work and achieves maximum force of symbolism without deviating from his character for a moment. I think this is one of, if not the greatest piece, of Basquiat’s work.

   

This work is indeed so eloquent that it’s difficult to call this “technique”. Still, the manner of drawing is Basquiat at his most honest. The iconography is Basquiat at his most poignant. This is the masterful technique of a veteran artist. This is near complete control. This is, dare it be said... love... the love of a friend for his lost compadré; Love acting on all the skill and experience of one of America’s greatest expressionist painters. 

This painting is not filled with empty scribble either. This is thoughtful, heartfelt, experiential, historically-informed, expression. This is how to look at Basquiat. Let me pause here… this is how to look at life too. We have to look more deeply than the surface of events and people, of places and things, that we encounter in this life. 

   

Paintings like medieval altarpieces needed to be looked over slowly and carefully by their viewers but they were more clear and easy to interpret for those viewers. To read a late medieval altarpiece one interacts with all of the panels. The central panel, as in a triptych, is often the theme of the overall piece. These works of art depict recognizable figures and things. There are no words because these works of art were made for an illiterate populace (at least, largely illiterate in terms of knowing the language of the Church). Basquiat’s work is quintessentially modern. There are some recognizable things and some very abstract and apparently randomly expressive things. Still, it’s not random. And while the figurative imagery in Basquiat’s “Gravestone” is on the flanks, the theme of this work is indeed on the central panel. It’s no mistake that Basquiat employed his text on the central panel. Text was perhaps Basquiat’s defining characteristic. Unlike the medieval artists he was making art for a hyper-literate audience. His notoriety began with text. He began his career doing graffiti under the pseudonym: SAMO. SAMO graffiti was sparse poems spray painted on buildings around SoHo. That use of text carried over into his work from the outset of his studio career and was a hallmark. And so here, in a place of prominence, but also executed with the restraint of an old Master we see one word twice: 

“PERISHABLE”. 

The artist tells us, in the wake of the death of his friend, that life is... PERISHABLE. And, as if he were muttering the words to himself in the stunned state that grief can induce on the strongest of frames, he repeats the word, more quietly, just below the top word and covered with violent slashes of black paint: 

“PERISHABL…” 

 

(Note how the word is cut short, like the life of his friend was and like his would be.   

The brushwork here is agitated, perhaps angry, definitely confused and, not to overstate this conjecture, grief-stricken. Basquiat includes two very recognizable icons on the left panel. A rose (done in black paint with yet-green leaves) and a cross.  Warhol came from a Catholic family and it is likely that Basquiat knew this about his friend. Basquiat also attended two church oriented schools during his childhood. This piece is overflowing with reflection. The viewer is faced with the kinds of spiritual questions, due to this iconography, that many grieving people are faced with when death strikes.

   

On the far right panel is a skull, partly painted over with a bright red heart and the meanings of this symbolism could be interpreted in so many ways that it may not be worth attempting here. Suffice it to say that it is a brutal expression of the reality of our mortality and a heart-warming expression of the loving friendship that these two great painters shared.  

What door will we pass through when we die? Where will it lead? Who is the keeper of that door? Is there a keeper? Is God waiting for us there? Family? Friends? If so, who is this God overseeing this process of death? It’s my personal opinion that the spiritual dimension of these questions can only be answered through faith and that still doesn’t necessarily resolve the unknown. Still, these are the most vital questions we will ever seek to answer. These questions are among the ultimate questions of humanity. I want to urge all of my readers to ask these questions. Strangely and wonderfully, I believe there are answers. I believe there can be comfort and a kind of other-worldly assurance with faith in God. My personal faith is in the historic person named Jesus of Nazareth. I think He is the Keeper at that door to the unknown, so this work, with its Cross and flower, with its skull and heart, holds a special and powerful resonance for me. What about you? What do you think? What do you see here? 

Think of it… we got here by looking at a piece of contemporary neo-expressionist art. 

“What sunsets hold, 

who can know…?”

Indeed. 

-screm