Idol Gossip: 'Basquiat' Skims the Surface of the Iconoclast

BASQUIAT: A QUICK KILLING IN ART

by Phoebe Hoban

$29.95, 344 pp.

If you think you have heard the last of the mid-nineties Jean-Michel Basquiat craze that Julian Schnabel started with his film Basquiat, you are wrong. Or at least, Phoebe Hoban, author of the most recent sensationalist Basquiat biography, hopes you are. Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art retraces the steps of Basquiat's quick rise to fame in the midst of the hyper-consuming New York art world of the 1980s. After chalking up Basquiat's success to the happenstance of being in the right trendy scene at the right time and the prevalence of the art world's "reverse racism" (whatever that means), the book seems to revel in the artist's self-destruction and subsequent "fall from grace." Blending descriptions of the decadence of the New York affluent with block quotes from people who claim to have been close to Basquiat, the biography at least succeeds in giving a reader a sense of the hypocricy and egoism that must have caused Basquiat such emotional turmoil. In the end, the book leaves the reader with a greater understanding of Basquiat's circumstances and environment, but not so much an understanding of the man himself.

The back of the jacket cover boasts a quote from Chuck Close, the well known contemporary painter: "Hoban's book is not just the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat but an insightful and devastating portrait of the 1980s art world, its movers and shakers, as well as Basquiat's manipulators, hangers-on, and a precious few genuine friends." Perhaps if this book had been "just the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat" it would have been a more successful biography. This quote, like the biography itself, implies that "Basquiat's manipulators," et al. are, for some reason, more significant or compelling than he was.

It is unclear who these few genuine friends are that Close speaks of. The biography is riddled with quotes from people who claim to have been Basquiat's friends, yet speak of him as some sort of exotic wild child. Hoban slips into this mode, as well. It seems as if Basquiat's hair (he had dreds during his most famous years) or penis size (puportedly large) is mentioned every other page. While Hoban recognizes the racism evident in a few specific encounters, she never gives any sort of profound analysis of the racism that structured Basquiat's most significant relationships, both business and personal.

Perhaps the only person quoted that sounds like a genuine friend of Basquiat's is Jeffrey Wright, a man who never even met him. Wright, the actor who played Basquiat in Schnabel's movie, criticizes Schnabel's directing, saying, "Julian made him out as too docile and too much a victim and too passive and not as dangerous as he really was. It's about containing Basquiat. It's about aggrandizing himself through Basquiat's memory. It's really fucking barbaric. But maybe our culture can't take the real danger of Basquiat right now."

Even through Hoban's bizarre, vulgar-Freudian analysis of Basquiat's artistic ambition as a misplaced search for his father's approval, the meaning of Wright's quote is clear. The danger that Wright refers to is not the danger that Hoban depicts through stories of Basquiat's drug-induced tantrums and unprofessionalism. The danger that Wright speaks of is embodied more in Basquiat's work than in his own damaged body. Hoban lacks the critical eye or artistic sophistication necessary to do any close reading of Basquiat's work. Often, when the opportunity presents itself, because a piece is specifically referred to by an interviewee or is explicitly autobiographical, Hoban breezes over the moment by claiming that the work is self-explanatory. Of course, if Basquiat's work were so literal and simpleminded, then Hoban would be correct in her implicit argument that Basquiat is more significant as a representative of his times than he is as an artist, that his art work is valid only because of the hyper, rebellious lifestyle that produced it, that Basquiat is more interesting for what he destroyed than what he created.

The danger that Wright sees in Basquiat is the danger that is missing in Hoban's portrayal. Basquiat's work approaches the underbelly of capitalistic American cultural values with the perspicaciousness that Derrida brings to the deconstruction of logocentric thought. (The two are often discussed together, since 'erasure' is a recurring theme of Basquiat's work.) His work is to American culture what post-structuralism is to Western philosophy: an intelligent threat from the inside out. By repeatedly glossing over Basquiat's work, and focusing instead on trashy melodramas of the art world, Hoban flattens the complexities of Basquita's short life, making this a rather redundant, even frustrating, read.

Hoban does, however, cover some elements of Basquiat's life that were conspicuously missing from Schnabel's movie. Basquiat had numerous romantic relationships with men, and was fairly out about them. In fact, Basquiat's father's discovery of his son's bisexuality was likely one of the primary reasons Basquiat left home as a young teenager, which lead to his introduction to the underground grafitti culture of the early 1980s. And, where Schnabel's film depicts Andy Warhol as Basquiat's primary connection to the whorl of fame and fortune, Hoban tells us that Basquiat worked early in his career with Keith Haring, and briefly dated Madonna. Warhol does not appear as a major figure in the biography until page 200 or so. In addition, Hoban makes it clear that by the time Basquiat gained access to Warhol, he was already a developed artist and well-connected.

Overall, Hoban's biography offers a somewhat entertaining read to the Basquiat fan who is willing to disregard Hoban's lack of knowledge about art, or to the fan of the 1980s who enjoys tales of decadence and back-stabbing. Yet, the book remains frustrating, not only because of its superficiality, but because of its flippant disregard for the pain that Basquiat's associates and supposed friends obviously caused him. Unfortunately, Hoban manages to depict Basquiat as both a "victim" and a monster, without touching upon "the real danger of Basquiat right now."