Be very Careful, you may be staring at Van Gogh's Ear...

Yesterday I went with a couple of people to see this Basquiat exhibit and film(Downtown 81) at the Brooklyn Museum. Basquiat is one of my favorite artists so I was pretty excited. Then one of the people in the audience during the question and answer period asked why Basquiat was treated as some sort of child genuis or childlike sauvant, considering how intellectual he actually was and how much of what was going on at the time he incorporated into his paintings, not to mention past history and tounge in cheek commentary on money and property and coprorate greed. At first I didnt think too much about it. It was a legitimate question certainly, I just didn't think about it. Then one of the people I went with brought it up again at dinner. And he had a point in what he said. He was annoyed at the way the question got answered because every on that stage new what a genuis Basquiat was and couldn't explain why he was protrayed as childlike. It bugged him because so many black artist get down played as some sort of strange phenomena, something out of the norm or some undefinable genuis as though genuis was just granted to them out of the blue. History portrays people like Andy Warhol as these intelligent, together, eccentrics who have all this knowledge and eduction and experience that they utilize to add to and create better art. But Basquiat came from a wealthy haitian family. He had means and education, and the space to choose. Yes eventually he did live on the streets, but that was initially a choice and a rejection of his background. Now this is not meant in any way to diminish his brilliance, he was truly an incredible artist. But why is his learning and education played down? Why is his wealth played down? Is it easier to dismiss someone and their abilities by calling them a fluke? Is it right to ignore all that his education did for him when it could be usitlized as an example of what funding can do for people with talent and how we ought to disperse funding more widely in order that it reaches every talent out there? Anyway, I guess I can see how it can be overlooked, I overlooked that aspect of it myself when the comment was first made. I guess the thing is though, now that I realized I overlooked that, how do we fix it?