SAMO Choe MUNKO Basquiat: Relative Suffering & Learning to Learn
- Josh Jones
- Jun 23, 2022
- 28 min read
Updated: Jun 28, 2022
SAMO Szohn Meeshell Bah-skee-ah David Choe MUNKO
I read this article on the late NY neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and here I am addictively looking at his life and works, drawing parallels to a few other addicts and savants in the art and literary world. What is amazing – the number of connections you can see in them, and similarities to all of us. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1988/11/jean-michel-basquiat
Vanity Fair does a tremendous job of pulling back the curtain on the life of Basquiat, which is very complex (and much beyond the complexity of trying to figure out some of his works of art).
Basquiat, like other supernovas, was not capable of learning. He could not find balance or restraint, which is seen in the vibrancy of his work and persona, but also in how he lived and then left us. That ability to turn on and off the juice that creates genius, is something he was unable to modulate, and it ended in his self-destruction. Other greats were able to do so, or at least appear to be capable when we talk about a similar street-graffiti artist of our current day in David Choe. Channeling suffering and pain, those powerful motivational juices that drive us, how can we solely use them for good.
Learning to Learn – a skill I need to hone, and I just realized that. A foundational craft preceding all other crafts, a keystone curriculum for the rest of my life. Educations come at different costs, and at different times. We will never be out of school in this life. The curriculums, far from pre-determined or ordered as we would like. In many periods of time, we can’t even figure out our major. My early education included far too many memorization exercises, trials in cleverness, debate, deceit, physical education and physical health, physical sciences, wood shop, art and home economics classes. And therefore, far too few classes teaching me how to process feelings, psychology, mental health and emotional intelligence - which I truly needed. And continue to need. I am mindful of that now. We can all say the same when we look back on our own primary education, as well as that of our children’s today.
Maybe this is just another penny thrown into the wishing well or dropped into the piggy bank to pay for understanding. And to provide understanding to drive change.
Maybe this is just another grain of sand that slips through the hourglass unnoticed, or miraculously it tips the scales. The realization that the person you thought had it all, was so in control and successful in every way is truly crazy and needs help. How could you have been looking at Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all at the same time? How could you have been fooled? And he is no different than you or any of us. And maybe seeing this person change, will spark your own form of change.
Maybe we can learn to learn, learn to change, learn to be better. I know that I am. Or perhaps relatively speaking we can do so, make progress, get better and show a path forward we believe is fruitful.
Just like MC Escher’s works, the House of Stairs, Waterfall and Relativity, or the Penrose triangle example, impossible objects or illusions of what something appears to be, but we know it cannot be true or real can easily trick the eye and the mind all at the same time. Looking at an Escher work, the initial reactions of ‘Not in our physical world can this be so’ then twist and turn just a bit and we find ourselves contemplating more ‘Or wait maybe, just maybe it is possible, maybe I believe what I am seeing, why can’t it be.’ Thoughts and events that leave a mark in our minds can do the same. Our minds can be tricked with what we see, and how we store those events eventually tell us to do impossible, wonderful and horrible things based on illusions. Maybe the mind creates impossible thoughts based on the inputs and interpretations we cannot control, or we need to learn how to properly translate and process those inputs to avoid such danger. So, there are many types of physical and mental illusion, another example of the extraordinary invented places (escapes) or thoughts our minds are capable of generating - to protect us, but in other cases they can destruct us. And as those thoughts are published in our minds, read through, recited and relived over and over, they plant deep roots and take over, causing repeated strife and grief, tessellation or periodicity in our actions, again and again the same illogical directions or results. The roots and their pull become larger and propagate further repetition and spiral – making new poor choices, repeating, reliving prior poor choices. Only to look for darker escapes and poorer choices leading us back to the point we started, with less and less, time, energy and resolve. Until we break out of the pattern, create or are given an inflection point. And from there we can find a new pattern and influences, create new realities and revamp those illusions of thought and perception.
I have always loved art, drawing, painting, craftwork and countless creative campaigns as a way to escape. I lived in escape mode, my finger always near the eject button, operated in illusion mode, the clown or jester stealing your attention from what was really going on, and dove deep into alternate reality mode growing up and as I have grown old. And of all the artists, poets, musicians, and authors I think back on, three really jump around my head – Robert Louis Stevenson and Maurits Cornelius Escher from my adolescent years and the Avett Brothers of the last decade. And I can’t help but bring in Jean-Michel Basquiat, based on what I am reading and learning now - a present-day fixation, focal point for reasons I cannot understand, but know is not by chance. And Basquiat takes me to another artist David Choe. I cannot escape their influence or how they resonate with my past, present and future – maybe I can learn to learn from them all.
I will start with MC Escher, a hammer in my mental toolbox and a great motivator for me moving forward as I examine his works and their personal meaning in a new light. In his early works, Escher was captivated by the natural world, and his subjects and output were far different than what most of us know as his greatest works. So the question has to be, what causes such a shift from natural subjects – landscapes and such to powerful, geometric and architectural impossibilities that catch not only our eye as remarkable, but cause our minds to re-evaluate what is true from illusion. A trip through Europe at age 24 led Escher to the Alhambra in Granada, Andalusia Spain. The Alhambra, A UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most famous and best-preserved examples of Islamic architecture, built in 1238 with a serpentine history. At Alhambra, Escher like so many before and after him, was captivated by the Moorish architecture (for Escher flunked out of architecture school as a boy) and colorful, mathematically-inspired tile mosaic patterns and ceilings, doors, halls and columns in the muqarnas style. The simple, yet elegant repeating patterns of tile on the walls and floors, known as tessellation, became addictive visuals for Escher, the symmetry and geometric patterns creating mania in his mind and a new focus for all of his future works until his last in 1969, Snakes (like the snakes in my head, visible from every angle and always present). When Escher returned to Alhambra in 1936, heeding a ringing in his head that could only be stopped with weeks of study there, he said this in complete fascination, obsession with the tessellations:
It remains an extremely absorbing activity, a real mania to which I have become addicted, and from which I sometimes find it hard to tear myself away
And he never got those pictures from Alhambra out of his mind for the next 50 years, yet they gave him immeasurable inspiration to go on and become an iconic geometrical art wizard known throughout the world. Escher described this journey back to Alhambra as “the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped.”
While Escher’s most recognized true gifts were as a visual artist, for me some of his quotes are just as valuable:
“I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.”
“What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.”
“We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”
“Order is repetition of units. Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.”
“Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think ...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check.”
“He (or she) who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonderful.”
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible”
“Wonder is the salt of the earth”
“Hands, are the most honest part of the human body, they cannot lie as laughing eyes and the mouth can.”
“We do not know space. We do not see it, we do not hear it, we do not feel it. We are standing in the middle of it, we ourselves are part of it, but we know nothing about it.”
“Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life”
“Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?”
“I want to find happiness in the tiniest of things”
“Nobody knows what you feel inside unless you tell them.”
Escher grew up in much physical struggle, a very sickly adolescent (he was so ill growing up that he spent time in a children’s convalescent home in Zandvoort and throughout his life, poor health interrupted his work), just as Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde among countless other works. For much of his life, Stevenson suffered from chronic lung ailments, likely tuberculosis or another pulmonary condition, which impacted him to the degree that throughout his life he sought a climate that would suit him. Escher also suffered from social anxiety and often isolated himself from people, noise and movement, so physical and emotional challenges plagued him doubly. Why were they always sick, is that really important, or should we focus on what did these sicknesses do to their character? Did they hinder, or did they forge them? I feel the latter is much more significant than the former here. Was the sickness a necessary input to their all-worldly outputs? Perhaps all those resulting travels were a gift in exchange for Stevenson’s physical shortcomings, providing the knowledge of the world, different perspectives and places, yielding great inspiration. Well, many say that only after great suffering and despair, horrific pain and trauma, is great art created. And only through struggle and obstacles do we birth progress and change. I see this in the case of MC Escher, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jean-Michel Basquiat – a commonality among all three. Basquiat suffered physical and emotional trauma, nearly dying after being hit by a car as a boy (which took his spleen and required months of recovery in hospital), his mother of Puerto Rican and Brooklyn descent, suffered from depression to the point of being institutionalized when he was a boy. Basquiat’s father was an alleged abuser, or just tough on his son if you ask him, and with all of this, Jean-Michel Basquiat felt alone and unwanted, not enough, scared, and looking for an escape (and escape he found as a runaway from the age of 15 on).
When evaluating the obstacles, causes of pain or challenge in each case, for Basquiat, Stevenson and Escher we cover a lot of ground and identify three categorical factors: emotional, physical and the environment to acting on their bodies and minds. Those three twisted factors appear like an impossible Penrose triangle, hard to connect and tie together but we know they are just so, and then the bigger question of what do they do to you? How do some overcome great struggle, while others become swallowed up? Basquiat had trials and tribulations like all adolescents, unquestionably. However, the Basquiats also grew up in a four-story Brownstone in Brooklyn for a good portion of his adolescent years and his father drove a Mercedes, so he had a relatively normal upbringing. Yet he formulated a very disturbed psyche and could never overcome the demons that put him in an early grave. Much of Escher’s greatest works came amidst the cloudy, dark, wet, foggy crap weather of the Netherlands – which to someone suffering from anxiety and withdrawn from others, you might think he would crumble or backslide. Yet, alone, in the darkness and dreary surroundings came his brightest and best works. For Escher, his glory days in Baarn, Netherlands were also at a time of overhanging escape and danger, for he and his family sought refuge there during World War II. In all of that, Escher thrived in terms of the work he created in that period and beyond, Escher is another example of what that triangle of struggle can produce, in a good light, overcoming significant forms of emotional imprisonment, physical limitations and fear.
For all three formerly mentioned, Escher, Stevenson, Basquiat, are long gone and over time the details and truths behind their fame and ill-perfection or conditions came out. And hopefully we will learn from them among countless others before us. In present day, David Choe is another artist who parallels Basquiat on many levels, another minority, street graffiti artist of exceptional talent, another addict, rebel and clever genius in his media. David Choe is a present-day persona of complexity and talent, yet he has survived and continues thriving beyond where Basquiat failed. From deep feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness came great accomplishment but also tragedy. How could their outcomes be so different when their origins of pain and struggle are so similar? For some grains of sand that are initially intruders, become pearls and through time and pressure rocks become diamonds. In other cases the sand kills the host oyster and on a mountainside, loose rocks in the wrong place or time cause suffocating landslides.
Basquiat’s cocaine and heroin, Choe’s sex and gambling, multiple addictions, or more accurately, addictive personalities, along with physical and emotional trauma plagued their upbringings alike. Both were driven by fear and self-created enemies, but denounced fear or created the illusion that they possessed none.
Choe and Basquiat in the art world is akin to watching a wood duck court a mallard, oddly seeking company in one another surrounded by a group of larger graceful swans. For a Korean and a Caribbean-African-American stick out like a sore thumb in the white of the fine art world, that was likely a pressure they both could never get comfortable with regardless of the personas they displayed.
“Jean-Michel Basquiat would not have appreciated the fact that the art world is divided up into those who think he was a genius and those who think he was a fraud. “White supremacist” critics and curators—and there are many—refuse to give any living black painter his or her due. Nevertheless, Basquiat was born with an artist gene (in Brooklyn); he made it all the way to Documenta, the prestigious German art fair, by the time he was 21 because he was already painting exceptional works of art…As the Reagan-Bush years wore on and racism became more rampant, opinion turned against Basquiat and all the graffiti masters…He was dangerously good. Basquiat was dismissed as a kind of opportunist party boy with a big ego. (name one famous male artist with a small one.)…
Elizabeth Hess, Village Voice, 11/3/92
David Choe said this also about his addiction and sickness that drove him to success and failure:
When you have a sickness of More, that it will never be enough – many do not understand the power and logic-failure in this. I have gained and lost small fortunes and it will never be enough and it will never stop. And when you ask the question of how long were you happy for and the answer is a mere few seconds, it hits hard. Over 25% of gambling addicts commit suicide, there’s a reason no hotels in vegas have balconies. I can’t outsmart addiction, I can’t outrun misery and pain. I can’t use light and joy and happiness to create great art like I can use anger and darkness.
Great art comes when you fully disregard fear. I also can’t live in the middle, its at the edges, the polar opposites that I thrive. You have to be fucked up to be an artist, for legacy for transcendence – you have to be the most messed up. No great art comes without selling your soul to the devil. Pain is the vehicle for greatness.
I humble myself and kill every part of me that I despise when the ego returns – love, vulnerability and true connection is my way out.
Compulsion to be seen, recognized comes from early age abandonment.
Further about Anthony Bourdain, a close friend of his, David Choe said: The addiction didn’t go away, he just moved it to another area in his life (Anthony Bourdain – cooking, his show, heroine, jui jitsu). He had imposter syndrome that’s not real – a man feeling his life closing in despite a career that is going better than ever. A master of wearing masks to show everyone you were ok, a people pleaser.
Choe’s words will resonate as we look more at Basquiat. And David Choe’s most known work today centers around a whale, MUNKO, another parallel to Basquait that I see, with his early SAMO graffiti work. MUNKO is David Choe’s logo, just as SAMO was for Basquiat and school friend, partner in trivial crimes against society Al Diaz.
“Samo meant same old shit,” Basquiat told me. “It was kind of sophomoric. It was supposed to be a logo, like Pepsi.”
There is a similarity in Basquiat and Choe’s studios as well – disorderly and ADD physical spaces along with the artists themselves, both are covered head-to-toe in paint and look more like a paint-bomb from a bank robbery went off in their faces and studios than anything else. To their clothes, and the difficulty in identifying where the brush and paint end and the clothing threads begin. There is no restraining this level of creativity and energy which they possess. Both Choe and Basquiat attribute comic books and cartoon drawings as early inspirations. BAM POW SAMO MUNKO SMASH ZING
“In 1980 I heard that Samo was making this really great art,” says Jeffrey Deitch, an art consultant for Citibank. He went to see. “I couldn’t believe it. Every surface was covered, the refrigerator, the tables. He had dozens of these little drawings on typewriter paper. The paintings were on doors and window frames taken off the street.”
Basquiat knew that only through darkness and pain, and eventually death, would he ever live on forever as noted in this quote from Martin Aubert, remembering an encounter with Jean-Michel in 1980:
“He was covered with paint and shivering. He said, I’m on heroin. I guess you don’t approve of that, but I have decided the true path to creativity is to burn out. He mentioned Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker. I said, All those people are dead, Jean. He said, If that’s what it takes . . . ”
Basquiat and Choe, both had (or have) that disease of more, for Basquiat this disease was fatal. For Choe, as far as we can tell, he has learned how to learn. From what I learned, money was another interesting aspect of Basquiat, for he did as much as he could to get rid of money as fast as he could, yet was always seeking more. For Choe it is the same, the Asian trait of taking care of everyone else before yourself, also seeking joy in the art of losing a fortune and basking in the pain associated with that. Choe feels that he always gave too much away, leaving nothing for himself, whether in the tangible sense or emotionally, spiritually. Yet he also felt that he was worthless and hadn’t given enough or anything of significance due to his brokenness. Perhaps Basquiat’s common use of the crown was his way of telling us all just what he sought.
For Basquiat, whether it was fine wine (of course only after he began selling his works for 6 figures), music, drugs, art, even claiming to try his hands at boxing, Basquiat was always searching for more of everything. Both Basquiat and Choe suffer from paranoia of lacking acceptance, and then losing their top-level talent and recognition, or their star waning – relevance remorse. And often questioning are they trying to prove something to others or themselves, finding worth and value or continuing on as a mere fraud.
As I sit here overlooking Miramar, I find another interesting linkage and connection between these two. Basquiat’s work is more greatly inspired by Puerto Rico than anyone realizes. He lived right over there in Miramar, Puerto Rico (a part of the capital San Juan just down the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico and across the lagoon from the richest part of San Juan, Condado) after his parents split up. Basquiat moved there with his father in 1974 for a few years before returning to New York in 1976. And in 1977 he became a well-known graffiti artist in the streets of NY with SAMO. From there Basquiat’s launch into the art world lifted off in the early ‘80s like a rocket ship, and mirrored that same trajectory of fame, music, drugs and disco in NYC at the time. At 20, Basquiat and his unique visual style, the ability to seamlessly combine primitive and modern, rages-to-riches, generational talent story put him at the highest level of worldwide art acclaim, unusual as most artists take long after they die to see this level of fame. Choe began in similar fashion, with a rebellious graffiti foundation that took him also to unbelievable heights. Many in the business would claim they were both just street art hoodlums who caught a bit of the light and a market boom. This attitude, part of their real fight to establish proper recognition for their work and talent.
Even back in New York Basquiat was surrounded by Puerto Rican and Dominican, Haitian influence. You can see the direct and indirect Puerto Rican influence in much of Basquiat’s work, the vibrant, bright Caribbean colors, the similarity to 1970s (and much current day) graffiti so common on the island, and the Taino Indians art especially. Many of his works resemble greatly the technique of turning cow’s bladders, coconuts or paper mache’ into skulls or faces with very colorful designs, the Vejigante masks. Those Taino Indian and Vejigante characters from the festivals in Puerto Rico likely passed right by him in Old San Juan and Miramar. At Basquiat’s age of 12 or 13 that scene must have captivated him and left an impression, more than he or anyone else ever realized. The Vejigante is a demon figure, part of Puerto Rico’s adaptation or version of Carnival where in Ponce and Loiza, differing techniques were used to develop the mysterious characters that now represent the island’s cultural identify, resilience and resistance (in Ponce the festival is aligned with the February Carnival and in Loiza the Vejigantes emerge during the Festival of Sain James, in July). https://tallerpr.org/vejigantes-of-puerto/ The color patterns of the Vejigantes is typically greens, yellow, red, black. The Taino Indians just like Jean-Michel, were Cuban, Dominican, Haitian and Puerto Rican, with African and Spanish influence. The Tainos likely populated the Caribbean via the Amazon or Colombian Andes, and much of their culture and DNA links back to the Central and Southern American natives. The Tainos (or Arawaks) were the indigenous people of the Caribbean up through the late 15th century when their world changed in every way via Columbus and colonial exploration.
And even today, you can see Basquiat’s influence on the streets of Puerto Rico – I went out for a walk and was able to easily prove that. SAMO and his vibrant style adown the streets of Miramar and other areas of San Juan near the Museum of Contemporary Art. In Miramar, I searched high and low for any sign of Basquiat’s own work from his time living there with his father Gerard, but to no avail. Perhaps painted over just like his work at 57 Great Jones Street in NY. Some time in 1974 to Thanksgiving 1976 is a long long time ago. And the Episcopal Cathedral School in San Juan that Basquiat attended, has no memory of his time there. Basquiat and Boriquart, Boricuart - all connected.
The fascination with Basquiat appears only to be gaining momentum, and his latest exhibit put on by his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, King Pleasure displays over 200 of his works in New York.
“Jean-Michel lived like a flame. He burned really bright. Then the fire went out. But the embers are still hot” – Fred Braithwaite
King Pleasure is the title of a painting created by Jean-Michel in 1987 and the name of a bebop-loving bartender turned jazz vocalist whose first hit, in 1952, “Moody’s Mood For Love,” was a favorite of Gerard Basquiat. Basquiat is a King Legend.
But Basquiat’s meteoric rise ended in a tragic flash, a supernova, less than a year after his collaborator and friend Andy Warhol passed away. Basquiat fell out of orbit, dying from a drug overdose at the age of 27. [Warhol died Feb 22, 1987 – cardiac arrest after gall bladder surgery. A simple surgery that Warhol delayed for years because of his fear of hospitals, another intrusive thought that drove his actions for decades and eventually killed him like cancer. That infectious thought stemmed from Warhol’s two-month hospital stay and near-death recovery from a horrific shooting in 1968, 19 years earlier that ripped holes through his internal organs and required him to wear a corset to keep his midsection in place for the rest of his life.]
Basquiat nearly died in May 1987, another supernova, it was just a matter of time until he realized his superstar fantasy to be remembered tragically like Joplin and Hendrix. A shell of himself, consumed by drugs, unable to escape his mind and all the external world inflicted on it. He couldn’t escape it all, his plans for a new life, an inflection point with rehab and new purpose, were finally squashed on August 12, 1988 – his arc spanned 122260 to 081288. He died in a pool of vomit and heroin overdose in his apartment on Great Jones Street, owned by Warhol. As the old master Lao Tzu said, a flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. The ruler is the awareness, or self, in meditation and the myriad creatures or empire is the experience of the body, senses and desires.
In the late 1980s, Basquiat was losing control fully. Always a bipolar, spurt of the moment, firecracker, he became a handful of M-80s lit all at once.
And in the end, he claimed the heroin addiction was under control, but was reticent otherwise about this darkness overtaking him. And like football players who want to be rappers, rappers want to be NBA players, singers want to be guitarists, actors wanting to be musicians, artists want to be writers and writers want to be artists – Basquiat later in life, in such a drug-ridden existence, claimed he would stop painting and become a writer.
“I said, Why don’t you draw? He said, No, I’m going to become a writer. I want to become a writer. But I can’t write. . . . ”
As with any true addict, he couldn’t manage the force behind addiction, only able to change the target at which he shot his addiction arrows at (similar to David Choe, Anthony Bourdain, and countless other addicts – where the addiction jumped – it really looks like the same old same old - SAMO). Another quote from the outstanding Vanity Fair article written of Basquiat in 2014:
“He started drinking in the morning. He was drinking all day,” she says. “He had stopped one thing, but hidden it with another. There were art supplies out there, but he wasn’t working. He was playing music twenty-four hours a day. He had all his jazz tapes. Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday.” As Kelly speaks, her ambivalence is painful. “He lived the right way—he lived every day. Most people have a lot of fear. Not Jean. He said he was either going to die young or he would be very old—and broke, the way he started.”
Listening to Elton John just before his death: “Candle in the Wind.” “He said, That’s me,” Tamra Davis says. “I’m not a real person. I’m a legend.”
Sometimes we distract ourselves, sometimes we create lies that become truths to mask reality or to ease our pain. In an interview about his upcoming new season of a podcast/TV show, David Choe came clean, able to defeat lies created by his insecurity. I wish more of us could succeed at this, if only Basquait had learned that, he may still be gracing this world with his presence and talent. We have to search more for being content, not additional distractions or new content to distract our minds. This is the quote from Choe in a NY Times article from a month ago:
“I told you I turned those down,” Choe said, his face lighting up on Zoom as he confessed. “They actually turned those down. And then in my head, I go, ‘You won’t reject me — I reject you.’ So I started telling people, ‘Oh, yeah, I walked away from it.’ And that makes me feel better. I’ve told that story so many times that I believed it.”
Another interesting tidbit from the Vanity Fair article on Basquiat, which ties to a present-day mystery around the works he produced when living in Venice CA at Larry Gagosian’s studio. The art world would be nothing without controversy over authenticity and provenance:
At the end of the year (1985), Basquiat went to stay with the dealer Larry Gagosian in Los Angeles. “I had a big house on the beach in Venice,” Gagosian says, “and I gave him an enormous room for a studio.” Basquiat stayed for six months, working ferociously. He developed a pattern in which work and life, completely entwined, were both forced to the limit. There was something childlike about his appetites. He had used so much cocaine he’d perforated his septum. Nile Rodgers, the musician, who ran into Basquiat in the Maxfield Blue store and gave him a ride, later found he had left half a dozen brand-new Armani suits in the car. “He was flying out friends to stay with him,” Gagosian says. “It was really a zoo.”
A current FBI investigation centered around Basquiat’s shown at the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) is ongoing and caught significant media attention over the last month due to the scope of potential forgery – 25 paintings worth approximately $100 million. This is just another in a large string of fake Basquiat’s coming to market in the last 10 years. In this case for OMA, its not the same old story where someone magically comes to light with a priceless painting. Here, the paintings have a story that dates back to the time Basquiat spent in the studio of LA art dealer Larry Gagosian in 1982. We know that Basquiat spent time in Gagosian’s studio, and throughout the Venice area on the town, but what happened with the works Basquiat produced there? That is the question here, can we deliver truth and provenance for those paintings. The main argument that has come to light against the authenticity of the paintings is a FEDEX logo on the backside of one of the works, as Basquiat commonly painted on cardboard, the medium itself is not in question, but in this case the font and type on the reverse side is claimed to have only been put in use many years after Basquiat’s death. That is pretty compelling information and would indicate an open and shut case.
according to Lindon Leader, an independent brand expert who helped redesign FedEx’s logo and typeface, the backside of at least one of the cardboard paintings features a font not used by the shipping company until 1994—six years after Basquiat’s death.
As the story for the authenticity of the paintings goes, Basquiat sold the works to a TV writer who subsequently placed them in a storage locker, forgotten over the years. This to me is beyond questionable – why would you not display at least a few of these grand works, and if you displayed even one in your home, you would never forget about the 24 other ones in storage. The story then goes like an episode of the show Storage Wars, where the storage unit was repossessed and sold at auction in 2012. Gagosian himself finds the sale and storage locker story also very unlikely. The present owner of the works claims he has a typed poem written by the TV writer owner that serves as the receipt or authenticity – yet those who knew the TV writer well claim he never typed anything and didn’t own a computer or typewriter. Strike two easily there.
“Thad wrote on a legal pad…I never saw [him] type a single letter,” Bull told the The New York Times. “Thad was as technophobic as anybody I’ve ever met. He did not own a computer.”
And finally, when an authenticator was asked to evaluate the paintings in 2017, somehow the conclusion that 9 of the 25 could not be attributed to Basquiat, was twisted and the report evolved into all 25 being attributed to Basquiat. Then pressure against her conclusions, and the owners showing their hand of false motives, not to mention one of the owners history of being convicted of fraud by the SEC due to forging documents and issuing fake stock certificates Ouch strikes three, four and five. Yet the owners of the 25 works continue to claim ‘extensive due diligence’ has been completed to ensure the authenticity of the Basquiats.
And not far away from OMA, in Palm Beach, a second investigation is ongoing regarding forged Basquiat’s being sold for millions of dollars. This is just one of so many fine art counterfeit disputes, for example the biggest one being the Lost Leonardo (documentary film on the Salvator Mundi, the world’s most expensive painting at $450million, now owned by a Saudi prince). I found that story particularly interesting in terms of understanding what lurks in the shadows and in underground bunkers of the art business: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/appreciating-a-masterpiece-original-attributed-to-or-restored-matters-not
On May 26, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, who owns Palm Beach’s Galerie Danieli and Danieli Fine Art, was named in a federal criminal complaint filed in South Florida — charged with selling fake paintings by the likes of Andy Warhol, Banksy, Roy Lichtenstein and Basquiat, among others.
He sold the counterfeit Basquiat above for $12 million, after having bought it for $495 on LiveAuctioneers. The buyer, however, was an undercover FBI agent. Not a bad return - $495.00 to $12 million.
Among the giveaways: “Basquiat never signed his paintings on the front. If he signed them at all, it was on the back of the painting,” art consultant Emily Santangelo told The Post.
What cannot be disputed is Basquiat’s impact on the art world and his legacy from which we can learn from, a legacy that has nothing to do with painting or street art, more about mentality and street smarts, finding balance and overcoming early intrusive thoughts that inflict pain and damage for years to come if not properly identified and dealt with.
When Jean-Michel was 7 his parents split up, his mother went into a mental institution after years of fighting depression. And another boy felt alone, just recovering his physical strength from being hit by a car, and now his father moved him from New York to Puerto Rico without explanation. He said: “I had very few friends,” he told me. “There was nobody I could trust.” I understand what he felt, as I felt something very similar at the age of 7 or 8 when my mother and I moved out of my grandmother’s home (not sure if we ran away or we were kicked out) and had to find a new place to live. The feeling of isolation and fear is very challenging when unexplained and you are so young. I have so many questions about that time but in the end I created enduring feelings of being thrown out like trash, unmistakably feeling that I had done something or was the cause of everything. And then the feelings of being without a protector or alone overtake you. Physical and/or emotional abuse, an unstable family life, unexplained changes in direction or where you live, a family splitting up, was more than a 7-year-old should or could manage. And these things impacted Basquiat for the next 20 years of his short life, some of the impact positive (as his upbringing and attitude show clearly in his artistic brilliance) but mostly destructive and in the end unquestionably dire. His struggles growing up were predominantly emotional, as at the same time his family was middle class or better, he had everything materialistically he could ever need. Yet he couldn’t see that. Instead, the emotional instability and feeling of being alone led to rebellion, and a chip on his shoulder as if he grew up in the ghetto – it was me against the world and I will show you. David Choe knows how that feels as well. Misguided and fueled by a never-ending supply of false or misguided emotions. Their power can be immense creating coals and diamonds at the same time. I have felt that same darkness and power for much of my life as well, delivering great achievements and equally horrible thoughts and decisions. Sometimes you seek the bottom, just to know how deep and dark it can get for no logical reason. The same can be said of David Choe, he never could get over unworthiness and to this day he constantly says otherwise ‘you are enough’ as a way to steer clear of the dark path he traveled for so many years earlier in his life. He also took the rebel mindset as many of us do, to show you differently of himself.
In David Choe’s case, his pain originated at the age of 4 when his parents, unable to afford raising him and his siblings, sent David to South Korea to live with relatives for about a year. At this time, he was alone and devastated, afraid, and questioned why he was the one sent away to a foreign place with nothing, barely speaking the language. He was also sexually abused during this time, so the emotional and physical aspects of pain and suffering both left an indelible mark on him.
“I spent my whole life’s work rebelling against the model minority that I was thrown into against my will, that I had to live, like, loud and pronounced. I had to show you that, you know — like, ‘You’re Asian, you’re supposed to be like this!’ So I need to show you I’m the complete opposite.” – David Choe 2021
So, whether run over by a car or treaded on by a relative, kicked to the curb without explanation, the sense of being broken along with a feeling of isolation and aloneness, seeing family struggle and strife, it stirred up quite a pot of inspiration in both Choe and Basquiat.
I meant to cover Robert Louis Stevenson here but that will have to come later, the commonality with power struggles and combating colonialism, their talent levels in art and literature are but just a few linkages. I meant also to cover much more on MC Escher, again that is for another day. I am finding out there is so much to process, so many dots to connect so much out there which in obvious and unthinkable ways are all connected. We are part of a single system with many parallels and resemblance, feeding off of and evolving from one another. For many consider Pebble Beach one of the treasures of American golf, and Spyglass Hill golf course in that area is named after a place in Treasure Island, with each hole named a character from the novel. There are also the last years of Stevenson’s life spent in Samoa in the South Pacific, definitely not a SAMO retirement location one would expect. The parallels from colonial and imperialist societies and conquests, the unforeseen outcomes and how those align with those intrusive thoughts that become colonizing, attackers of our minds. And there in Samoa he learned many things we would never expect, until the evening he died with a bottle of wine in his hands to share with his wife. Samoa was a prolific time for Stevenson as we wrote an estimated 700,000 words over the 4.5 years spent there.
Oh and The Avett Brothers, that is another story altogether.
Going back to trauma and suffering, my main takeaway today is the triangle – understanding the connections in the physical and emotional trauma, along with the environment that acts on all of us and can be a powerful force. For the car wreck that took Basquiat’s spleen and nearly killed him at the age of 7, to the Andy Warhol shooting that left him nearly lifeless and chopped up internally, to the many lingering illnesses that plagued Robert Louis Stevenson and MC Escher throughout their lives, the tolls of addiction and loneliness, unwantedness for David Choe and Basquiat. They all experienced great suffering of physical and emotional kinds, and all delivered great inspiration and learning in some senses as a result, but they managed these challenges in ways that also had horribly negative consequences or tough lessons as they say from a learning perspective. The car that nearly ran over Basquiat and resulted in a couple months stay in the hospital, it changed his trajectory unquestionably – during that time his mother gave him a copy of Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, and that changed his life, serving as the fascination and inspiration, foundation and style that was apparent in much of his work over the next 20 years. Perhaps the event and difficulty of the recovery had a hand in his mother’s loss of sanity that sent his life on a different trajectory as well.
I don’t see evidence of the same struggle as leading to greatness in the Avett Brothers, growing up in a loving and stable family, sons of a preacher man, but perhaps that is yet to be revealed. For I see through the power of their lyrics and talent, many dark moments and lessons that must also come from great suffering, trials and tribulations. Perhaps that side of the coin has not been revealed to us fans just yet (to be continued). But you can see it also in Scott’s art, as he is an acclaimed painter as well as his musical fame as half of the Avett Brothers. And all the songs I identify with, for some reason are his songs.
In 1983, Basquiat dated the yet undiscovered Madonna. Stars communicate with stars in a way us star-gazers cannot understand it seems. He knew she would be another bright star with unparalleled talent and impact. Perhaps it takes one to know one.
I have this in my notes on art and expression, from a few months back and can’t recall if it was Scott Avett or David Choe that said it, for I know it wasn’t something I could articulate:
In my mind the greatest artists in the world are those who can harness great emotion, whether pain or joy, capture those moments where life reaches a deafening crescendo, allowing so many of us to visualize or even directly identify with the moment or experience in our own lives. That is art, creating from a feeling, an experience or emotion, sharing a powerful thought or moving image that resonates with others.
From Scott Avett: The struggles have always made the best art. Its about going so far that you lose all control and then people see your ‘unguarded’ soul, your real humanness.-https://qcexclusive.com/culture/scott-avett-art/
Sounds very similar to David Choe’s thoughts on great art, that you have to discard all fear and be willing to go to a place no one could ever expect to go and return safely (and be willing to not return at all).
There is so much to fear in the battle against mental health, it may be a munko move happening before our eyes, but we must go further: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/munko-paint-bubbling-up-staggering-costs-of-mental-health-spectacular-rate-of-return-opportunity
We have to protect not only our thoughts but our time as well, fearlessly.
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