Basquiat Family’s “King Pleasure” exhibit breaks the mould
Offering a glimpse into “Jean-Michel’s life that only we as his family can share” is how his sister Lisane Basquiat described the recent exhibit “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.” Taking place outside of a traditional museum is just one of the many innovative elements of the exhibit, which ran from 2022 to 2023 in New York City and Los Angeles.
The exhibit, which featured over 200 works that had been rarely or never seen before, included paintings, a format for which Basquiat is well known, as well as drawings and mixed media works. More importantly the family assembled dozens of the artist’s personal effects from music to letters and journals to photos, recordings and clothing. Combining his art with elements from throughout his life brought Basquiat to life in a way that no exhibit ever has.
A walk through “King Pleasure” was not simply a walk through the work, it was a walk through the life of the man, the child, the creator, the social being, the thinker, the reader, the actor, the musician, the brother, the son and the boyfriend who would become Jean-Michel Basquiat. A memorable exhibit experience is the recreated 57 Great Jones St. apartment and studio space where Basquiat lived and worked in the early 1980s, rented from Andy Warhol his one-time friend and collaborator. The space was not only staged to look like an artist’s loft but projected continuously on a wall was footage of Basquiat working and loud-speakered out was a loop of his favored soundtracks. For a moment every visitor was in the presence of greatness, in the studio with Jean-Michel.
This is the kind of experience a museum could try to fabricate but only a family could make authentic. They know what tunes he really loved and how he might have organized his things. Similarly, the exhibit recreated the Basquiat’s childhood home helping visitors see the early influence of art, literature and music on the artist. There is this urban mythology surrounding the black male artist who lived hand-to-mouth in New York City. But Jean-Michel was the product of a professional, educated and cultured upbringing. The family, it seems, is eager to make sure this becomes more widely understood, that he, really, becomes more widely understood.
Rather than lean into art world lore or ignore creator humanity through a clinical and academic gaze, Jean-Michel’s family puts the man they knew on display, heralding the exhibit’s true innovation. Here the artist and his personal history and personal relationships claimed authority for his voice, his work and his legacy, rather than the institution.
What can museums take from this? Especially for contemporary materials, museums might consider ceding thematic and interpretive authority to the living artist themselves or to those people who really know and love them. These perspectives necessarily bring outsiders more closely in to the work and the maker. In this way visitors can approach a sort of intimacy with artists that cannot be achieved through a typical arm’s length curatorial scrutiny. One wonders whether a museum can achieve something equally powerful by adjusting its assumed ownership over the story that’s being shared?
Through “King Pleasure” visitors learned more about the man, his youth, his passions, his relationships, his family and his beliefs, allowing them to encounter more of Basquiat’s own reality reflected through his work on view. Without this parasocial relationship-building opportunity, art is just analysis.
Learn more about “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” https://kingpleasure.basquiat.com or check out the comprehensive catalog book of the same name by Lisane Basquiat, Jeanine Heriveaux, and Nora Fitzpatrick.
