‘9-TO-5, WENT TO COLLEGE, NOT 2-NITE HOMEY BLUES’
Jazz and the American mundane in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s writing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.37810Keywords:
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charlie Parker, jazz music, Beat literature, bebopAbstract
This article looks at the influence of jazz music-specifically bebop-in Jean-Michel Basquiat's use of the written word, arguing that the artist incorporates improvisation and dynamic rhythms to build a fragmentary stream of the everyday across his canvas. Looking towards Basquiat's graffiti, paintings and notebooks, this article will read Basquiat's works as jazz texts that rewrite the everyday, protest against social barriers, and reveal beauty in the mundane. This article will contextualize the musical and literary influences referenced across Basquiat's work, as well as the techniques he took from such influencers and used on the canvas. By positioning Basquiat within a literary canon, this article will also consider how the multi-formality of jazz enabled Basquiat to create works that were literary, musical, and painterly at once.
References
Basquiat, Jean-Michel (1979) ‘SAMO©’. In Henry Flynt, The SAMO© Graffiti. http://www.henryflynt.org/overviews/artwork_images/samo/41.jpg.
——(1983) ‘Tuxedo’. The Paris Review 87: 205.
——(1985) ‘New Art, New Money’. Interview by Cathleen McQuigan. New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/09/specials/basquiat-mag.html
——(2010) Interview by Tamra Davies. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Directed by Tamra Davies. Arthouse Films. DVD.
——(2015) Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, ed. Dieter Buchhart and Tricia Laughlin Bloom. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications Inc. and Brooklyn Museum.
Baker, Houston (1994) ‘Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere’. Public Culture 7/1: 3–33. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-7-1-3
Blanchot, Maurice, trans. Susan Hanson (1987) ‘Everyday Speech’. Yale French Studies 73: 12–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930194
Conyers, James L., Jr. (2001) African American Jazz and Rap: Social and Philosophical Examinations of Black Expressive Behaviour. London: McFarland.
Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books.
Farley, Jeff (2011) ‘Jazz as a Black American Art Form: Definitions of the Jazz Preservation Act’. Journal of American Studies 45/1: 113–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875810001271
Ginsberg, Allen (1993) Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Gnopik, Adam (1992) ‘Madison Avenue Primitive’. The New Yorker, November: 137–39.
Haring, Keith (1988) ‘Remembering Basquiat’. Vogue, November: 230–34.
Hoffman, Fred (2015) ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat in Venice’. Humanity. https://mag.citizensofhumanity.com/blog/2015/12/14/jean-michel-basquiat-in-venice/
hooks, bell (1993) ‘Altars of Sacrifice, Re-membering Basquiat’. Art in America Magazine (June 1993). https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazines/from-the-archives-altars-of-sacrifice-re-membering-basquiat/
Johnson, Lotte, Dieter Buchhart and Eleanor Nairne (2017) Basquiat—Boom for Real. London: Barbican.
Jones, LeRoi (2002) Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Reprint. New York: Perrenial.
Kerouac, Jack (1968) ‘The Art of Fiction No. 41’. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4260/jack-kerouac-the-art-of-fiction-no-41-jack-kerouac
Kun, Josh (2005) Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lefebvre, Henri (2002) Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 2: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. John Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Lott, Eric (1988) ‘Double V, Double-Time: Bebop’s Politics of Style’. Callaloo 36/4: 597–605. https://doi.org/10.2307/2931544
Méndez Berry, Elizabeth, and Chi-hui Yang (2019) ‘The Dominance of the White Male Critic’. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/we-need-more-critics-of-color.html?fbclid=IwAR3ISyxXTyuGyRaM2WlmKd_E7hiGKoJfLzdPt4oB9pKZmmXucUX8C1iM6fQ
Moore Saggese, Jordana (2014) Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Nicholson, Stuart (1995) Jazz: The 1980s Resurgence. New York: Da Capo Press.
Pogrebin, Robin, and Scott Reyburn (2017) ‘A Basquiat Sells for “Mind-Blowing” $110.5 Million at Auction’. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/arts/jean-michel-basquiat-painting-is-sold-for-110-million-at-auction.html?emc=edit_th_20170519&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=41473240&_r=0
Rammellzee. K-Rob (1983) Beat Bop. New York: Tartown Record Co. Vinyl.
Warhol, Andy (1989) The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
