The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., is planning an unlikely pairing of two blockbuster-worthy names: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy. A display of a pair of related works by the two artists will go on view later this month, kicking off a year-long exhibition of the two paintings.
Basquiat, of course, was a talented but troubled African American painter who died at the age of just 27 in 1988. He left behind a critically acclaimed body of Neo-expressionist work that blends abstraction, figuration, and the written word. It’s an oeuvre that has spawned an entire commercial industry with everything from Barbie dolls to designer handbags bearing his recognizable mark.
Banksy is an anonymous British artist known for the humorous, often bitingly critical stenciled artworks he has been creating since the late 1990s. He also directed the 2010 Oscar-nominated documentary film ,
Both men often use the public sphere as their canvas—Basquiat started out as one half of the graffiti duo SAMO, and Banksy’s guerrilla paintings generate headlines around the world wherever they appear, often on otherwise nondescript city streets.
Banksy, (2018). Courtesy of Phillips.
“Positioning Basquiat with Banksy brings into focus elements of Basquiat’s legacy, notably the movement of street art tropes into museums through his studio practice,” Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu said in a statement.
Both artists have also become market darlings.
Basquiat’s $110.5 million record at auction was set at Sotheby’s for an untitled 1982 skull painting in 2017, and he is the most expensive American artist of all time. In 2018, Banksy infamously sold a print that was set to self-destruct after the hammer came down on the final bid for a then-record £1 million ($1.4 million) sale. The half-shredded version—rechristened —sold for £18.6 million ($25.4 million) in 2021, setting his current auction high.
The Basquiat work in the show is his 1982 painting .
The Barbican placed a protective sheeting over a mural by street artist Banksy of his version of a work by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, created on the occasion of the late artist’s 2017 solo show at the London museum. Artist Danny Minnick then added his own drawing to the piece, titled . Photo by Rune Hellestad – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images.
Hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin reportedly bought the work in 2020 for more than $100 million in a private sale. The museum hasn’t identified Griffin as the owner, but noted that the exhibition has the “generous philanthropic support of Kenneth C. Griffin.”
The painting previously belonged to noted Basquiat collector Peter Brant, who included it in a 2019 solo show of the artist inaugurating the East Village branch of the Brant Foundation private museum. (It also was exhibited last year at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland.)
At the Hirshhorn, it will go on view alongside Banksy’s version of the painting, where Basquiat’s skeleton-like figure is joined by a pair of stenciled police officers who pat him down. The British artist created the work as a means of drawing attention to Basquiat’s beginnings as a street artist on the occasion of the late artist’s solo show, “Basquiat: Boom for Real,” at London’s Barbican Centre.
Banksy made a pair of guerrilla works outside the museum, pointing out on Instagram the irony of Basquiat showing at “a place that is normally very keen to clean any graffiti from its walls.” (The exhibition ultimately drew 216,389 visitors, the most the museum had seen for a single show in 35 years.)
A member of the public takes a photograph a woman wearing a foil crown next to a new work by street artist Banksy on a wall by the Barbican Center in London, England. The two new Banksy murals which have appeared mark the opening of an exhibition by the late American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat at the museum. Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images.
The Barbican opted to leave the illicit Banksy works in situ, covered by a protective sheet of acrylic. (The second piece likened the exhibition to a carnival, with a stencil of a crowd queueing to buy tickets for a ferris wheel with Basquiat’s signature crown in place of the carts.)
Banksy also made a wood panel version of his version of , which he titled . The 2018 work sold for $7.1 million (or $9.7 million after fees) at Phillips New York’s 20th-century and contemporary art evening auction in May 2023.
The Hirshhorn show will also include 20 small Basquiat works on paper and wood from the collection of Larry Warsh, as well as a gallery screening , the Glenn O’Brien-produced film starring Basquiat in a semi-autobiographical turn as a young artist and musician struggling to get by in the East Village.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
