A Moving New Play About Jean-Michel Basquiats Collaboration With Andy Warhol Explores the Price of Artistic Immortality – artnet News

Arriving at Londons Young Vic theater to see a new play about Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, I was thrust into the thick of 1980s New York. Basquiats signature SAMO tags were scrawled throughout the theater, while a record-scratching DJ was spinning hip-hop and disco in an effort to recreate the electricity of Studio 54. Onstage sat several reproductions of Basquiat paintings. Thats the $110 million Basquiatthere, I whispered to my partner as we sat down.

Its hard to talk about Basquiat these days without nodding to the insatiable appetite for his work on the contemporary art market. Written by Anthony McCarten and directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah,The Collaborationwhich, after its run in London ends on April 2 will head to Broadway, before being adapted for the Hollywood screenknows this.

The drama gives us a fictionalized take on the real collaboration between two titans of art history. It also advances something of a cautionary tale about the toll that the cynical forces of the art market take on artistic expression.

The action opens at Bruno Bischofbergers eponymous downtown gallery. The Swiss art dealer and Warhol are taking in work by Basquiat, whose star is rising fast. Hes mine now, Bischofberger declares, as he announces a scheme to pair the two artists together in a selling exhibition, a cynical PR stunt which he hopes will generate a healthy profit.

Jeremy Pope and Paul Bettany in The Collaboration. Marc Brenner.

McCarten has written both artists as reluctant to collaborate, which is a simplification and less than historically accuratebut their hesitation opens the space to establish one of the central tensions of the play: both are disenchanted, in their own ways, with the mercantile machinations of the contemporary art market.

Paul Bettanys laconic, whiny Warhol acridly bemoans the art worlds tendency to move onto the next hot thing. Jeremy Popes restless, babyish Basquiat, meanwhile, is already fed up with a so white establishment and his place within it as a Black man. Why cant his talent survive on its own without hitching his wagon to Warhols star? And how come his graffiti is elevated to art that sells for $60,000 when equally talented contemporaries, such as his friend Michael Stewart, are arrested for defacing public property?

The titular collaboration itself begins in Andy Warhols ascetic studio, conjured in Anna Fleischles set design using recreations of Warhols Marilyns and Campbell Soup cans to adorn the walls. There, it becomes apparent that the two artists have very different ideas about what art should be.

Basquiat, who paints with spiritual fervor and believes paintings can be imbued with supernatural powers declares Warhols mechanically reproduced works to be bereft of soul. Im Dizzy Gillespie, blowing a riff, hes one of those pianos that plays all by itself, he shrugs. For his part, Warhol defends his theory of art: Im trying to make art that forces you to ignore it, the same way were ignoring life.

The second act is where the play really comes to life, as the action jumps forward a couple of years to Basquiats messy downtown studio. The two men have grown closer. Their walls have come down and a few tender moments relay their character outside of their cultivated public personae. Basquiats infectious spirit has disrupted Warhols detached performance of himself, exposing his self-loathing and trauma after being shot a few years earlier.

Meanwhile, Basquiat is deteriorating. Grappling with his own trauma, a worsening heroin addiction, and the indifference of the art industry, he turns to nihilism, stuffing his fridge full of cash, Cristal, and caviar.

The climax of the play comes after Michael Stewart is brutally beaten by police in a subway station, and Basquiat begins to paint his friend in an effort to heal himthe work ultimately becomes Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart).When Basquiat finds out that his friend has died from his injuries, he explodes at Warhol, distraught at his arts inability to resurrect the dead.

Jeremy Pope in The Collaboration. Marc Brenner.

In a review of Julian Schnabels 1996 film, Basquiat, the curator Okwui Enwezor once derided the painter-turned-director for reducing the nuances of Basquiats life to a simplified narrative about a Black artist losing a Faustian wager with fame, money and the white art world. Schnabel was wrong; Basquiat didnt sell his soul to the art market. But nearly three decades on, the market has taken it anyway. Basquiat the man has been totally swallowed up by Basquiat the brand. (Perhaps Schnabels film even played a role in cementing that brand.) McCarten and Kwei-Armahs drama gets this. It resurrects Basquiat the man brieflybut doesnt stop reminding us of what is to come either.

The drama comes to a close shortly after Warhol emotionally implores Jean-Michel Basquiat I order you to live forever There are layers of dramatic irony to this line; we all know Basquiat tragically died of a heroin overdose at 27. We also know that Warhols prophecy comes truebut in true Warholian fashion. The exhortation calls back to the first act, when Warhol hits us over the head with a more cynical message: Were not painters anymore, Jean. Were brands. Well, youre almost a giant brand, and after this exhibition with me you will be too. Then just watch the language change, Jean. People will have to have you suddenly And not you. Not you. Your paintings.

The Collaboration doesnt get into the lukewarm critical reception the pairs joint show actually received, which played a role in Basquiats subsequent decline. The omission is possibly because to todays audience, that hardly matters anymore. Its the Basquiat brand that has been immortalized. He is todays top-selling contemporary artist, and his work is used to sell everything from skateboards to Tiffanys diamonds.

As the lights fade at the Young Vic, you hear the voice of Sothebys auctioneer Oliver Barker come over the speaker, a snippet of the historic moment in 2017 when that same skull painting I picked out at the beginning of the play sold for $98 million! That would be the highest ever price ever for a U.S artistfinally unseating Andy Warhol. Its haunting.

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A Moving New Play About Jean-Michel Basquiats Collaboration With Andy Warhol Explores the Price of Artistic Immortality - artnet News