A Meeting With Basquiat

A piece of creative writing for Sonic Arts module "Starting out".

"The white walls designed to create a calming effect and allow the art to be noticeable without distraction are failing to carry out their purpose, he feels a slight tinge of panic in this claustrophobic environment. This place has all the characteristics of a cliché art gallery where men and women can enter and pretend to be intellectuals, reviewing the art from an intellectual stance, using those words they learned thirty-something years ago at university. He is not that person although he pretends to as he falls in line and conforms to the stereotype of the art appreciator, standing beside each piece with a fist to the side of his mouth even though he does not understand or care for the art he is viewing. The almost non-existent traces of sensational memory are lost instantly. What draws him to the gallery is the possibility of stumbling across a piece that has a aesthetically pleasing effect that is subjective to him that not he or anyone else can explain through any words without intense questioning to be able to break down the components of the piece that make it so aesthetically pleasing to find answers to that question “how?”. Even then we could never fully understand. The gallery is silent. It is so quiet that he might be able to hear his own heartbeat if his mind wasn’t so occupied with making everyone around him believe he is cultured too by miming interest.
He made his way through the 20th century exhibitions that included a selection of works by Andy Warhol. These were easy to indulge into, sort of like aesthetic appetisers. This was no doubt because the images were familiar and easy to relate to. The meaning behind these pieces were something that went almost completely unnoticed, possibly because for him, looking at Warhol’s pop art was more like looking at fashionable items. Ironically this only makes the term “pop art” more suitable.
Next came a exhibition of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat. These paintings had a different effect. He did not recognise the subjects of these paintings like he did with the Warhol works, yet they still seemed familiar. They were different to everything else he had seen earlier in the gallery. Everything before this had seemed so manufactured, even the 18th and 19th century religious paintings seemed so generic and typical of that era. Basquiat's works seemed to have a vibe to them that he could feel coming off of the walls, it was as if these paintings were alive, or at least they didn't seem dead like much of the other art he had seen. There was something about them that made them very pleasing to look at that he was finding hard to describe even in his mind, yet at the same time they looked like childish scribblings passed off by some no talent bum as art. In some sense he felt as if his opinion on these pieces were being divided into these two separate and very different reactions.
One piece of canvas in particular draws him closer. An untitled piece, although many of these Basquiat pieces are nameless. It has the visual stimulus he has been looking for. He can't seem to describe it but this painting is just pleasing for him to look at, it has an aesthetic value to it that he cannot translate into the English language. Although he feels torn as he cannot figure out exactly how he feels about Basquiat. Were these scribblings the best that he could achieve with next to no talent, or were they created by a genius with skills that he chose to ignore? He really wanted to call Basquiat a genius in his mind but after a couple of hours of viewing “high art” he felt almost embarrassed to even think such a thing around all the intellectuals that populated the gallery.
There was aspects of the paintings that made him smile and giggle a little inside. There were things going on in the picture that indicated to him that the artist had a real sense of humour, such as the crude images of vital organs pumping blood. It was almost like looking at a graphical translation of a Captain Beefheart song.
The initial reason that he came to this art gallery was in search of inspiration for he was himself an artist. It was here among the works of Basquiat that he had found what he was looking for. The absurdness that shined through, the humour, the perversion of the skill and art of painting and drawing. He found himself relating to these in a different way to the Warhol paintings. He was connecting to them in a way where the effects of having eye contact with this piece were coming across in a much purer way than most other paintings. It was as if his brain was a radio picking up the transmissions given out by the painting, he was on the right frequency and could clearly pick up every aesthetic value. Just then, he felt a rumble within his stomach. It was time to leave and seek out some stake."