It was Christmas, 2010, a particularly cold one. I was in Paris alone, mittenless, and walking briskly away from clouds of my own smoke.
I was staying with a dear friend and future art dealer Guillaume Pinaut in a flat on the Boulevard St. Michel.
The Musée d'Art Modern de la ville de Paris was hosting a retrospective celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Basquiat's birth...the largest of this size ever in Paris. I planned to meet an old friend whom I met in former years living in Aix-en-Provence, Marie Hélène. She had spent years living in India and it was merely by chance that we found ourselves both in Paris. I stood at Pont d'Alma cellphoneless and staring wildly at women flocking the metro steps. Marie Hélène did not surface and I grew tired of noticing and un-noticing the tip of the Eiffel tower in the backround. Basquiat was on my mind. It is unusual for me to carry an ipod in my pocket, I must have had a headache this day. It occurred to me that I could experience the exhibition whilst listening to the sounds of Mark Mothersbaugh. If you can imagine a stack of claymation blocks in primary colors stacking and unstacking themselves-then you can imagine Basquiat to the tune of Mark Mothersbaugh.
What a pinnacle of vie, the solo exhibition. In a curatorial sense, I am looking for my Basquiat. Do I already know him? I suppose the inception of a 3,000 sq. ft. gallery will be my litmus test. I walked slowly through that exhibition experiencing the nonchalance and novelty- the obdurate energy of his beginning strokes, and unto the coherently cultivated movement into public consciousness, to the hand grabbing of other artists, to the 'too much' in respect to the 'too little', to the warm reaping of heroin, and to the masterful veil which immediately shadowed his death...the exhibition was a real experience, a touching of a vastly talented body. I exited Basquiat's late works after a couple hours. My mind was soaring with the inspiration of a thousand questions and near immediate answers. I had accidentally wandered into the gift shop where a russet haired girl smiled with eyes that had seen the far east, peering from behind a postcard- a portrait of a young Basquiat pushing the corners of the great veil.
