basquiat.: a sacrifice to moloch

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BASQUIAT, A SACRIFICE TO MOLOCH(1)

by Paul Henrickson. Ph.D. 2011

1 Jean-Michel Basquiat Photo Wikipedia 2 Head 1 Photo http://www.michaelarnoldart.com

A rabbinical tradition attributed to theYalkoutof Rabbi

Simeon, says that the idol was hollow and was divided into

seven compartments, in one of which they put flour, in the

second turtle-doves, in the third a ewe, in the fourth a ram,

in the fifth a calf, in the sixth an ox, and in the seventh a

child, which were all burned together by heating the statue

inside. Moloch, which was made of brass; and was heated

from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and

made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was

burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a

drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and

his heart might not be moved.

3 An 18th century illustration of Moloc

Photo Wikipedia


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It is in this context I place Jean-Michel Basquiat, which, ofcourse, has more to do with those false priests around Basquiat

and their motivations than it does of Basquiats work which lies,more or less, in the tradition of Asger Jorn(2). While there are

graphic similarities between Basquiat and Asger Jorn, Jornshaving jumped from Kandinsky to Leger to Le Corbusier as

mentors only confuses the issue of influences for if anyprogression is indicated in the sequence of those mentors it

would seem that it might lie in Jorns rejection of the moreintensely intellectual approaches of Leger and Le Corbusier.

That is to say, the influence of Leger and Le Corbusier on Jorn

was a negative one in that Jorn tended to reject the intellectual approach in favour of what

might be termed the organic or expressive.)

5 Kandinsky On White II 6 Fernand Leger The City

http://www.ibiblio.org http://en.wikipedia.org/

7 Le Corbusier

http://www.essential-architecture.com

4 A Warhol J-M Basquiat

http://www.behindthehype.com


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THE ROLE OF CREATIVE BEHAVIOR: The creative thinker may be unconventional anduncommon but his role is to bring conceptual order to chaos.

Ideas and awareness do grow, they mature, they develop, they mutate as more data become

available and, quite often, new ideas emerge out of a sense, a general sense, of discomfortwith whatever the status. The specific cause, if there is one, for this general sense of

discomfort may not, yet, have been identified. Unless it be possible to accept the hypothesisthat there is within the individual a restlessness regarding the unknown within based on the

theory of self-preservation that urges the individual to seek a solution to the chaos in the

environment that offers the most benefits.

Ironically, however, it seems to me that this effort has come to its flowering in the work and

the analysis of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was a valuable victim of those he

benefitted. When the female character in the Schnabel film emphatically states in referring to

the work of Basquiat This is the true voice of the gutter! in what ways are we to believe she

knows what she is talking about? And how are we to understand that value we are led to

believe she finds there? Later, in a trailer for this same film we hear a narrator state no onewants to be part of a generation that ignores another van Gogh. Is there any good reason

why I seem to hear in this the same tone of terror at being found out, discovered as being not

sufficiently conventionally unconventional? And just where are the parallels that suggest van

Gogh and Basquiat had anything in common? I should realise, I suppose, that the rational,

these days, is the antithesis of the fashionable.

I reject that highly cynical view, so characteristic of many journalists, which recognizes value

in the human being mainly on the level of its most confused, degenerate and painful. Thisview would maintain that the genius of the gutter is worthless unless he dies of a heroin

overdose.As I understand the tone of some of Basquiats statements and observe his facial expressions

I see a reasonable mind quietly assessing the mind set of his enthusiastic companions andseriously attempting to connect the dots. I also see the innocent expression of someone who

takes pleasure in pleasing, entertaining, and providing value to others. Jean-Michel Basquiatmay never have known the gutters of Puerto Rico, but I had and I see in him some of the

same compassion for others I had met there in La Perla and El Fanguito.

10 El Fanguito

http://newdeal.feri.org/


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B tit has not been possible for me to j stify maintaining an environment merely because it

was a stimulus for a response thought valuable by managers of some economic market Itwoul be my hope and itis my expectation thatthe field of aesthetic studies offers us.

Ifthe work by which most of us know Basquiat s efforts we might now sadly lamentthat his

experiences with the notable and the managerial others had not allowed him to become whathis innate, struggling self may have felt possible to become withoutthe constant

bombardment of expectations emanating from surrounding personalities who recogni ed both

Basquiat s vulnerability and the value ofthe journalistic material he provided...pre or post

mortem.

In this connection it might be ofinterestto learn the nature ofthe legal framework ofthe

Basquiat Estate.

As both a psychologist and a graphic artist I do recogni e those manifestations of creative

thinking and their results which provide valuable material for other and furthering creative

efforts. Watching Basquiattake from his immediate environment whatever was at hand and

watch him with great enthusiasm and energy restructure it, was, for me, a joy. I see nothing

insincere in either his process or his product but I do see heightened and focused selfishness

in those around him.

11 J-

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While there are, I believe, similarities in the emotional responses which gave birth to the

marked wall below of a Japanese-built fort on the Island of Guam and the palimpsest ofimages Basquiat gives us those ofBasquiat are more clearly expressive from having come

from a single mental source...although the wall also enunciates frustration.


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It may be possible to see such imagery as signature acts of destruction and expressively

meaningful within the context ofthe relationship between the evaluating mind and the

symbols it chooses to convey meaning, butifthe hypothesis is correctthatthe symbols andthe methods chosen by the artist are true on the level of one such as Basquiat who is,

seemingly, trying to establish a meaning between the mark and the thought and others such as

PaulCezanne, Caravaggio and Edvard Munch we must recognize thattheir original points of

creative departure are much more informed.

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http://www.awes

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http://www.artic.e$ %

As a consequence shouldnt we be aware ofthe possibility thatBasquiat might have made

dramatic and important discoveries had he, atleast, not been encouraged to destroy himself?

There is a quotation somewhere from Madonna who expressed envy that she found Basquiat

so fragile. Such a perception certainly speaks well for her unless, of course, it was not she

who uttered it.

Is it right forthe sophisticated to attemptto seduce the innocentinto remaining innocent evento the point of helping to keep them helpless in the making of self-defensive decisions forthe

sake ofthe entertainment value he brings to others.

While art can and has enriched lives it has done so mainly on the individual basis. The

aesthetic experience seems to be a very personal one, shareable, seemingly, only afterthe

individual has been able to verbalise the experience and then shares the description with

another, unless, of course, those group dancing sessions where individuals gyrate and

gesticulate but may be seen as taking partin a community aesthetic.

16 Tribal Dan

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rs Photo P Henri&

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I thinkthe rationale for seeing tribal performances in thatlight cannot be denied. Theanthropological report of an Aleut community having experienced a frightening earth quake

responded initially as having undergone various social misalignments untilthe onesresponsible for marking important social experiences on the totem came up with the icon of a

squirrel cracking a nut. Afterthis symbol had been devised and placed the social distress was

gone

More related to the work ofBasquiatis the works of some petroglyph images from NewMexico.

17 Petro

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ph New Mexi1

o Photo P Henri1

2

son

More contemporaneusly the more visually involved and inversely worked manipulations

of Sam Scott

18 Sam Scott Iris

http://www.artspace 3 sa.c4 5

Now, if one focuses on the nitty gritty, being the very basic stuff out of which image are

made, thatis the material stuff (paint. brushes, canvass, etc) it should be immediately

obvious thatBasquiat stands head and shoulders overthe cartoon copyist would-be social

commentatorRoy Lichtenstein .


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19 Ro

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Lichtenstein

http://www.os 7 atfineart.com

Even if one rejects the tedium of counting the variety of graphic marks these artists have

employed to arrive attheir finalimages one might expect even the dullest neural-responsive

mind to identify the differences in electromagnetic impulses received from the Basquiatin

contrastto that ofRoy Lichtenstein.

20J-M Basquiat Untitled (An

8

el9

http://www.thecityreview.com

If aesthetic value can be assessed merely through counting the number and variety of graphicmarks involved in a work (which I do not believe can be done) then there is no question that

Basquiatis the more effective artist....hands down! From what I remember having readsomewhere one writer defended Lichtenstein on the grounds that he, Lichtenstein, hadnt

really copied the cartoons from which he tookthe images, at first he believed he saw some


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minute differences between the Lichtenstein works and the original cartoon images. Now,this observation, iflegitimate, would only indicate that Lichtenstein had been unable to

handle the brush effectively.

I have never been sure thatthis author hadnt been pulling the readers leg in making such

fine, and basically meaningless distinctions in discussing the value of a work of art. I believe

it safe to assume that Lichtenstein, like so many others, enjoy ridiculing the values of othersand quite probably takes greatjoy and thinks extremely well of himself for having shredded

the cultural pretences he may have no understanding to emulate. Hyman Bloom took a more

respectful approach and was, thereby, able to make significant and insightful contributions to

the development of Western art.

21 HymanBloom Seascape I

www.decordova.org

Despite the factthatBasquiat had been denied the exposure (since he was only 27 when he

died and it would appearthatthe personal contacts he had been able to make seemed

restricted to people, such as Andy Warhol, who themselves are unsympathetic to the Western

tradition) great credit must be attributed to Basquiats ability to naturally respond to the

rich visual vocabulary available to the creative painter.

There is only one artist I can think of who lived for only 27 years who remarkably exceeded

his periods expectations and that was the early Renaissance painterMasaccio.


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22Masaccio The Tribute Money

http://en.wikipedia.org

The most obvious common denominator between Masaccio ad Basquiatis thatthe died at 27

years. The only significance I find in that factis that, normally, following known paths of

maturation, after 27 years of experience one might expect comparable levels of development.

Placed within their appropriate milieus in Masaccio we see a more highly developed and

technically sophisticated practitioner as compare to his contemporaries than is possible. I

believe, in Basquiat. I suspectBasquiat was more street-wise aware than Masaccio who

otherwise might not have allowed himselfto be poisoned, as is suspected, by a jealous

competitor.

I do not believe we can assume that both artists built on their respective milieus for, in theory,

at any rate, Basquiat had a more complex and varied ,milieu from which to draw inspiration

than did Masaccio butthere seems little evidence to suggest he drew on allthatthere was.

I thinkitjustifiable to assume, therefore, that at some point, or at some periodic points,

Basquiat might have chosen differently and the factthat he did not may be related to that

singularly outstanding commentin the Schnabel film where this ostensibly highly perceptive

female commentator and judge asserts thatBasquiats workis the true voice ofthe gutter.

How commanding, how attention getting and how good a line fort he public relations expert.

Now, with allthese matters taken into consideration, and quite probably a few more, it

remains that on the most elementary levelBasquiat was already equipped with the aesthetic

awareness of a broad graphic vocabulary and had he not been unduly influenced andmaliciously warped in his perceptions may well have developed into the true voice of

someplace. But, it seems, the harpies took over and it might be of greatinterestto learn how

and by whom the Basquiat estate is controlled.

It seems that I am able only to approach this question from the ideals of a humanitarian

educator where the omoeba-like life forms ofinterest, desire and need are very carefully andperceptively nourished and where there is a strong and moral restraint on making decisions

about other peoples lives on the basis of selfinterest.


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23J-M Basquiat

http://art-doc @ ments.tumblr.com

(1)In modern English usage, "Moloch" can refer derivatively to any person orthing which

demands or requires costly sacrifices.

(2)In 1936 he scraped together enough money to buy a BSA motorbike and travelled to Paris

to become a student of Kandinsky. However when he discovered that Kandinsky was instraitened circumstances, barely able to sell his own paintings, Jorn decided to join Fernand

Legers Acadmie Contemporaine. In 1937 he joined Le Corbusierin working onthe Palais des Temps Nouveaux

basquiat.: a sacrifice to moloch

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