Basquiat "Wherever he was, in his loft or in a studio provided by his gallery in a foreign city, two or three assistants would build his stretchers and prepare his canvases. Meanwhile, three large primed canvases, measuring anywhere from 8 by 6 feet to sometimes 15 feet long, would be set before him, flat on the floor or fixed to a wall. Wearing a new $800 Armani suit, elegant shirt and tie—but with bare feet—he would enter the brightly lit space, looking like Ali entering the boxing ring. Situated at convenient locations around the space would be a mound of top-quality cocaine on a large piece of tinfoil, several ashtrays containing the strongest marijuana which, like Burroughs on a writing binge, he would chain smoke and an open bottle of the best red wine costing about $500. Battered copies of his favorite books, Junky by William Burroughs, The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac and a biography of Charlie Parker,Bird Lives!, lay next to expensive art books on Cy Twombley and Leonardo da Vinci. A state-of-the-art boom box flooded the space with beautiful, pulsing jazz music by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and others. Like Kerouac, he believed in spontaneous composition and would never change a line once he had started it. In this manner, while the mound of cocaine slowly disappeared, marijuana was crushed out in ashtrays, a bottle of wine was replaced by another and his new suit was splattered red, black, yellow and gold, Jean-Michel would paint until all three canvases were completed to his satisfaction. This often meant filling an entire canvas with a brilliant work, only to paint entirely over it, producing an even more brilliant work. He sometimes worked for as long as three days without stopping."
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 17:03:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015