I only met Jean-Michel Basquiat a couple of times. Andy Warhol showed up at my bar at very ritzy parties at the Palladium. I was a bartender there while just getting started in art myself. Frankly, I always thought Basquiat looked very weird and was not very friendly. Andy brought many celebrities to my bar. I recognized Debra Harry, but I did not know who Jean-Michel Basquiat was. A few times, Andy was looking through my chromes, as we called them back then. Basquiat looked along with him. Debra did the same.
Again I did not know him but for some reason, Andy always came to my bar. I never want to criticize another artist. However, when I look at Basquiat’s art, I often wonder what people see in it. To me it looks like extremely “Bad” scribbling of a child.
It leads me to think art critics and the art establishment have no idea what they are doing or saying. They just want to keep their vaults of art generating income. This occurs in a day and age where the art monopoly is folding to new generations. These generations do not care about artists or what the art monopoly says anymore. The collectors just want something pretty and colorful on their walls. They want to buy from artists directly now. Well, at least the smart collectors do.
A “work of art” made by someone famous, like Johnny Depp or Andy Warhol, is not automatically “precious”. It is not necessarily even good! Many auction houses and art markets work solely with “celebrity” artists. This happens regardless of how poor the quality or outdated their art might be. The contemporary art market is a winner-take-all market. It is subject to network effect. Collectors influence the artist’s notoriety. This influence makes the artist even more attractive to additional buyers. It accelerates the process of mainstream adhesion.
This celebrity effect tends to reinforce the same artists in the art market. The works of the most famous artists are the most demanded. These works also achieve the highest prices on the market. Meanwhile, emerging artists face high barriers to entry. In many cases, emerging artists are better than these terrible works.
People are just so easily fooled especially with NFTs. It’s a joke!
This is one of my originals from that same period early 80s many would say this is also rudimentary, but for the computer power in that time is was a miracle and Mohamed Ali was one of my first celebrity clients
