Fondation Beyeler - Basquiat. The Modena Paintings + The Mind's Eye. Images of Nature from Claude Monet to Otobong Nkanga
1. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Angel), 1982, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 244 x 429 cm, Private Collection, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: Robert Bayer
Basquiat - The genius of writing, gestural painting and phrenetic creation
At the moment, the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel presents three different kind of exhibitions. First, the retrospective of the South American artist Doris Salcedo, the presentation of its collection and the focus exhibition of eight paintings of the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The story of this collaboration between the artist and numerous gallerists
The chronology of this collaboration and production during the Italian city of Modena is deeply important to understand the different facet of those eight works, which are only own by private collectors all around the globe.
As an artist born in Brooklyn in the early 1960s, Jean-Michel came from a poor background. His two parents: Gerard Basquiat, a native of Haiti, and Matilde Andrades, whose parents had immigrated to New York from Puerto Rico, gave to the world three childrens, two of them are now in charge of the estate of the artist.
When he was a young teenager, he began to paint and draw prolifically due to the influence comics and cartoons had on him, and more precisely how the words and sentences came as a kind of dialogue in his works, and not as a title for his work. In 1977, at the age of seventeen, his friend Freund Al Diaz and him started to work under the name "SAMO" (an abbreviation for “same old shit”) in the subways or in the streets, making graffitis.
At the age of 21, he had the opportunity to be invited by the curator of the exhibition "New York/New Wave”, which was presented at the MoMA PS1 from the 15th of February 1981 to the 5th of April 1981.
During this group exhibition, which include 119 artists, including Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kenny Scharf, and Andy Warhol, Basquiat filled a wall with twenty-three paintings and drawings of varying sizes on canvas, paper, wood, metal, and even rubber. At the same moment, and during the exhibition, the artist was contacted by three renowned gallerists: Bruno Bischofberger (Zurich), Emilio Mazzoli (Modena), and Annina Nosei (New York).
But it's Emilio Mazzoli, who gave Basquiat his first "carte blanche" to produce works in his Italian town. In May of the same year, the artist travelled to Europe for the first time, and he presented to the public his works made with his friend Freund Al Diaz. The exhibition will be titled "SAMO" and it will be presented between the 23rd of May and the 20th of June 1981. But the exhibition is a disappointment and only a few works were purchased. Thus, Mazzoli was not a good gallerist for the young artist.
In November, when Basquiat was in New-York, he decided to appoint Annina Nosei as her first dealer. The gallery is quite big and the gallerist gives her the basement to create a studio. The first exhibition of his works will open the following year, and it's a success, in terms of sells and in term of recognition.
At the same time, the curator Achille Bonito Oliva from the Galleria Civica del Comune in Modena present the work of the artist in an exhibition titled "Transavanguardia: Italia/America". Thus, the artist had his first solo show in Europe and it's followed by another gallery show at Gagosian in Los Angeles. But, as Basquiat was willing to quit the gallery of Annina Nosei because "she sold paintings that weren’t finished. She said someone was interested in the painting and sold it, despite my protests.", he thought about having a new gallerist.
The two competitors will be the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, who want to be the exclusive international representative of the artist and, yet again, Emilio Mazzoli.
To make the deal, Mazzoli decided to have a second exhibition of the artist in Modena, and he give the artist a large warehouse and painting materials to create eight new works, some of them as large as 220 by 400 centimeters, made with oil and acrylic paint, spray paint and oil stick. But, the artist, which flew from New-York in June have to "make eight paintings in a week, for the show the next week. That was one of the things I didn’t like. I made them in this big warehouse there. [...] It was like a factory, a sick factory. I hated it. I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.”.
And shortly before the opening of the exhibition, the week after, the plans were abandoned and the two gallerists, Annina Nosei and Emilio Mazzoli seeks to claim all the credit for organizing and financing the show and for the creation of the works. At the end of the day, four of the eight paintings (Profit I, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, Untitled [Woman with Roman Torso (Venus)], and The Guilt of Gold Teeth) is bought by Bruno Bischofberger. The remaining works find their way into various international collections.
2. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Profit 1, 1982, Acrylic, oil stick, marker, and spray paint on canvas, 220 x 400 cm, Private Collection, Switzerland, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York, Photo: Robert Bayer
The exhibition of the Fondation Beyeler in Basel is now paying an hommage to this exhibition and to those works, which are one of the first works produced by the artist on a traditional canvas.
Thus, the Fondation Beyeler is back for another round of exhibition related to the artist, which already had a large retrospective of his work in 2010. But Basquiat is also part of the collection with the donation of the 1982 drawing "Black Man" from the Renard Collection. Beside that, and even before the Fondation, Ernst Beyeler presented four paintings in a ground show titled "Expressive Painting after Picasso".
But now, the exhibition is way more focus on those eight works produced as part of the "Modena Paitings". In those works, a few motifs and stylistic features repeat themselves, the black monumental figure, the background and the gestural and expressive brushstrokes.
Some of those works are part of diptych, such as "Untitled" (Angel) and "Untitled" (Devil), some of them have repetitive motifs such as the cows, and some of them have a skeleton like figure which jump out of the canvas. Those figures have from time to time a halo or a crown of thorns, especially in the work presented in the foyer, "Untitled" (Woman with Roman Torso [Venus]) and "Profit I". Some of the works also included words and numbers, which is a homage to the start of his career when he created under the name SAMO.
3. Exhibition view "Basquiat. The Modena Paintings" in the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2023, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Photo: Mark Niedermann
The collection presentation, between nature and beyond Europeans art perspective
4. Otobong Nkanga, Unearthed - Abyss, 2021, 1 of 4 tapestries, yarns, trevira, sidero, polyester, multifilament, outdoor polypropylene, techno, elirex, mohair, merino wool, superwash, linnen, monofilament, econyl, fulgaren, viscose. 350 x 600 cm, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel © Otobong Nkanga, Photo: Markus Tretter
At the meantime, the Fondation Beyeler presents its collection in eight rooms under the titled "The Mind's Eye. Images of Nature from Claude Monet to Otobong Nkanga", which is an hommage to numerous historic works of the collection, contemporary art and new acquisition.
The presentation, which included around 50 works, ranging from well-known masterpieces of the museums such as "Le bassin aux nymphéas" from Claude Monet, to private long-term loan such as "Passage du Commerce-Saint-André" by Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) to new and exciting new acquisition of non-European art such as Lucas Arruda "Untitled" (from the Series Deserto- Modelo) or "Unearthed – Abyss 2021" by Otobong Nkanga.
While the first room of the show, which included photographs and a sculpture is presenting the animal in a set landscape, the next three rooms is looking back at the composition of nature, between water, reflection, the natural elements and the landscape viewed during different condition and weather.
On the other hand, the fifth room present an intriguing but interesting dialogue between the representations of the sea and what's in it. There is two works by Henri Matisse, two important screen print on unbleached linen titled "Océanie, le ciel" and "Océanie, la mer", both of them produced between 1946 and 1947 to the contemporary overlooked of this subject by the "Unearthed – Abyss 2021" tapestry of Otobong Nkanga.
In her work, Otobong Nkanga conveys the message that earth’s survival is reliant on water, thus, to convey this message she created four vibrant, large-scale tapestries depicting the entanglement between land and ocean, first for the Kunsthaus Bregenz which presented her works in 2021, before being purchased by the Fondation Beyeler in 2022.
The tapestries we're made with numerous support including numerous specialists such as Martin Rauch, the Vorarlberg-based pioneer in earth structures, and experts at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, where a large-scale rapier weaving machine newly developed by the Lindau-based company DORNIER GmbH, has recently come into operation and had been able to create this work.
The work to Matisse reflects the same emotions and motifs of the sea, as a recurring motif of forms, on Matisse hand's on a canvas, made with cut-out, and on the other hand, inclosed in a seascape in the tapestry.
The next room is quite an assemblage of the depiction of inside and outside perspective from nature, streets and insides views.
5. Exhibition view "THE MIND'S EYE. Images of Nature from Claude Monet to Otobong Nkanga" in the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2023. Photo: Mark Niedermann
The newly acquired sculpture of Pierre Huyghe "Mind’s Eye" make up the title of the collection presentation. While the works of Max Ernst present every important periods between the collage, the surrealist landscape and the almost abstract depiction of "Humboldt Current", the work of Pierre Huyghe present a work in the line of the assemblage of the surrealist, using a vast range of materials such as materialised deep image reconstruction, synthetic and biological material aggregate (sugar, resin, stainless steel) and microorganisms to present a transparent pale blue bubble, which sit on a rock like structure.
Focus room: works by Robert
Ryman from the Daros Collection
Each year, the collection presentation of the Fondation Beyeler included works from the Daros Collection, a private collection of contemporary art with a focus on North American and European art from the second half of the 20th century.
Since 2010, the Daros Collection has been working with the Fondation Beyeler to present their works, which collection is over 1000 works, ranging from "Number 11" (1951) by Jackson Pollock to "Chartres" (1963) by Barnett Newman and new and contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman and Louise Bourgeois.
This year, the focus is on the artist Robert Ryman, an artist deeply link to minimalism and how, as a minimalist he created work of canvas, wood or paper (quite large or small), which is focus on the flow of paint, the gestural and the emptiness of the canvas which is not covered in paint, where you see the coloured ground.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Fondation Beyeler
Date: 11.06.2023 - 27.08.2023 (Basquiat) - 10.06.2023 - 27.08.2023 (Collection Presentation)
Curators: Iris Hasler and Sam Keller (Basquiat) - Theodora Vischer (Collection Presentation)
Ticket: Available online OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101
CH-4125 Riehen/Basel
Phone: +41 61 645 97 00
Fax: +41 61 645 97 19
Mail: info@fondationbeyeler.ch