ISSUE 6

Guinotte Wise

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After Basquiat

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Ever since the FBI swarmed the Orlando Museum of Art’s Heroes and Monsters, I’ve had questions. What have the feds done with the 25 allegedly fake Basquiats? Were they wearing white gloves, just in case? Why are they even involved?

 

Why would I (or the FBI) take the word of a nameless, faceless FedEx employee that the typeface on one of the cardboard pieces in question (a FedEx package back) was not in use until after the fake piece had purportedly been done? You’d really have to check the Federal Express style manuals for the years before and after this alleged fake to nail that down. It’s a sans serif typeface, but what is it? Helvetica? Futura? And what subset? Bold? Condensed? What was it before? Has it changed since?

 

What I’m getting at here is that the use of a typeface is hardly the definitive linchpin by which to judge the authenticity of an entire museum show. More is needed; and, unfortunately, there is more. There’s the say-so of the guy who was supposed to have had this Basquiat trove in storage for several years. (He says, 'nope, never had it.') There are the former director’s bizarre emails and texts to those who declined to authenticate the show, and to the alleged perpetrators and forgers. One of the forgers’ admissions. The evidence mounts up.

 

I think Jean-Michel Basquiat would have liked this latest attempt to cash in on his notoriety. He might even have gone along with it to reemphasize what he’d said about art: “A picture I sold to Debbie Harry for $200 only a couple of years ago is now worth $20,000. That’s the art market today.” That was 1984, and Basquiat was making over a million a year on his paintings. Had he lived, he might have been a bewildered billionaire with his angelic smile and his rueful sense of irony. That Debbie Harry painting, Cadillac Moon, would probably fetch $50 million at auction today. Even in its vandalized state. Not many noticed that someone had added a few felt tip pen marks to it while it was on display at Basel. Basquiat might even have declared it a collaboration. Think what that would have done for the Sharpie-wielder’s art career had they been so inclined.

 

As a Basquiat devotee, I had wanted to see this show of newly discovered work. My anticipation had been dashed and I was pissed. In denial. It would be one thing to discover a garage full of previously unseen Caravaggios, or a Twombly cache, then have it disavowed by a federal government bureau not usually associated with the fine points of early eighties Neo-Expressionist art.

 

I’d liked what I saw in the marketing materials for Heroes and Monsters. The OMA ads proclaimed: “The 26 works were created in 1982 while the artist was living temporarily in Los Angeles, California. This is considered by many to be Basquiat’s best period in his short career.” (Wait a minute, 26? The FBI says 25. Where’s that other one?)

 

Frankly, I’d pay to see the show up close, even branded as phony. Or “after Basquiat.” What will happen to the pieces after all is said and judged? I’d like to see the art go up for auction, say Christie’s, and whatever the forgeries make, after paying auction fees, would go to a fund for more investigations of such art crimes. That might save us taxpayers a few bucks. Or the take could be donated to OMA for their victimhood and monetary loss in this whole affair, the former director’s shaky countersuit being tossed as frivolous.

 

A catalogue titled “REALFAKE! The Botched Basquiats” might bring in a few dollars. I’d buy one. The Basquiatish energy, color and fidelity to form can be quite convincing.

 

If the work is to be destroyed, the process should be viewed by a panel of museum staff, the ashes of the paintings buried on the grounds, and, forging ahead (sorry, couldn’t help it), a 25-month calendar printed and sold in the OMA gift shop, after which the sold-out calendar’s first (and only) edition would be colorful testimony to the museum’s resilience, its sense of bemused irony, and the FBI’s white collar crimes department’s due diligence.

 

The forgers would be denied copyright privileges and would get nothing except time in a minimum-security facility (or community service as art historians to unruly middle-schoolers) and the usual inflated advance from one of the few remaining publishing houses. If they can write as well as they can interpret a famous artist, it might well be a bestseller.

 

I’d make do with the catalogue raisonne, the calendar and a (used) copy of the book, a year or so after its printing. Maybe in the same thrift shop, I’ll find a Basquiat scrawled on the back of an Amazon Prime box. Stranger things have happened. The friendship between Jackson Pollack and Thomas Hart Benton, for instance—and the perhaps apocryphal tale of a Pollack on Benton’s mid-town Kansas City garage floor. Or maybe just some drips of various paints by a housepainter. But that’s another story, another investigation.

 

For now, I console myself with my Basquiat books, the latest of which is a vivid graphic novel, “Basquiat” by Paolo Parisi. I also recommend Taschen’s beautiful 500-page monograph “Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Art of Storytelling,” which Vogue called “A cult object of Basquiat’s most important paintings, drawings and sketches.” And Brooklyn Museum’s “Basquiat,” another breathtaking compendium of paintings. Each of these treats him and his work with the respect and awe they are due.