Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) is now regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His art was as unique as it was extraordinary, forming a rare, early bond between street art and the international institutions of the art world. Basquiat created a form of symbols in his career that he used across multiple works. One of the most famous elements of his iconographic set was his “Crown”.
Crowns quite obviously symbolize royalty, which in itself connects to power and influence. Artists, for many centuries, have depicted ruling monarchs in portraiture, associated with themes of strength and confidence. Many artists have progressed in their own careers due to their connections to a ruling monarch.
Banksquiat depicts a Ferris wheel in which all the carriages have been replaced by Basquiat’s famous crown motif. By referencing Basquiat so openly, Banksy seems to be aligning himself with the tradition of street art as high art, which arguably has its origins in the work of Basquiat whose career was launched by his many interventions in the urban environment. Banksy makes further reference to street art history by choosing to print his design in grey with the crowns outlined in a chalky white against a black ground. This clearly refers to another icon of street, Keith Haring, who started his career with a series of subway drawings, rendered in chalk on empty advertising panels in the New York Metro system.
Banksquiat comments on the excesses of late capitalism that allows artworks to be commodified. At the same time, there is a paradox at play; in order for art to be accessible to all – which is perhaps central to Banksy’s mission as an artist, as well as that of Haring and even also Basquiat – art must be reproduced and shared rather than held ransom by a handful of the elite who own the original artwork or the intellectual property. In this way, Banksy cleverly comments on, as the original website description puts it, “the relentless commodification of Basquiat in recent times – by crassly adding to the relentless commodification of Basquiat in recent times.”
This commodification of artworks was exemplified by the opening of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) itself, which began life as a showroom in Croydon in October 2019, intended to publicize the launch of a new online Banksy’s “homewares brand.”
While thousands of fans attempted to buy something from the store, many were disappointed as they found that GDP did not operate as a traditional retail model but instead required the prospective buyer to enter a lottery system in order to acquire one of the products. In this way, Banksy opened the floodgates to the commodification of his own work while still retaining a certain amount of control over who his primary sales went to.
Banksquiat (Grey), 2019
Screen-print on board
Edition: 300 signed
Basquiat studied and appreciated traditional European art, and his inclusion of crowns in his work was his attempt to connect his visual language with some of the art of the past, while simultaneously playing with the concepts of power and influence.
Even though there are layers of meaning behind the crown imagery within Basquiat’s oeuvre, they all relate to Basquiat’s assertion that Afro-Caribbean is the “new monarchy,” as illustrated by numerous allusions to the finest black athletes in the world such as Sugar Ray Robinson, or to the legends of jazz (a genre of music that Basquiat loved, and played). Trumpet, for example, is among many of Basquiat‘s works that not only pay homage to the legends of jazz, but also tell a story of black struggle at a time of widespread racism.
Basquiat, Trumpet, 1982
“Portrait of Basquiat being welcomed by the Metropolitan police – an (unofficial) collaboration with the new Basquiat show.” portrays two police officers strip-searching a figure as the dog looks on. It is largely inspired by Basquiat’s famous 1982 painting Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump.
Is this the scenario that Basquiat would have encountered as a black artist had he not passed away too young?
The exhibition proved to be the most successful in 35 years of art shown at the Barbican Center with 216,389 visitors. It also received extra publicity because of the Banksy murals outside.
The Barbican Centre Board agreed to a long-term strategy to protect the street level murals on the side of the Barbican Exhibition Centre. They have since been encased with Perspex in order to preserve them for future generations to appreciate.
As soon as the mural had been identified as a Banksy, security was quickly organized, for fear that city cleaning teams might erase the mural. US artist Danny Minnick subsequently added his own work to the mural.
