Noting the recent arrival of the banners on Sixth Street and Avenue A for the upcoming Basquiat show, the inaugural exhibit at the Brant Foundation, 421 E. Sixth St. between Avenue A and First Avenue...
The exhibit, featuring works from the private collection of Peter Brant, starts March 4...
The free tix are all accounted for... but you can add your name to a waitlist.
The DOT allows for banners that "promote a public event or a cultural exhibit." Application info is here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Here's how to reserve free tickets for the Basquiat exhibit opening next month at the Brant Foundation on 6th Street
10 comments:
Why the advertise campaign when it was predictable the tickets would run out the first day?
As Andy Warhol said, "Art is whatever you can get away with."
The banners are wonderful. It tells all there is still something meaningful about the EV besides bars.
@cmartyy- What this tells us is that there is a sucker born every day. The Brant Foundation "show" is a prime example of the commodification and branding of the contemporary art market. An exhibition of this sort serves to inflate the price of a Basquiat to beyond their already stratospheric prices. This has absolutely nothing to do with "art" and everything to do with the almighty dollar.
@unknown...oh please, enough with the sanctimoniousness. the art world became a global mega-business many decades ago. brant is a private collector, he has every right to do whatever he wants with the art he owns. he doesn't have to make his collection available to the public at all. if he chooses to do so, he has the right to do it on whatever terms he wants.
"oh please, enough with the sanctimoniousness. the art world became a global mega-business many decades ago. brant is a private collector, he has every right to do whatever he wants with the art he owns."
Not so fast. It's the "Brand Foundation." Presumably they are expected to provide a public benefit in exchange for a tax exemption. So comments on the extent of the public benefit are fair, see
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/art-collectors-gain-tax-benefits-from-private-museums.html
of course, but my point is he doesn't need to make a foundation at all. he could just keep his collection private and store all work in a warehouse. he's choosing to create a foundation in order to show it to the public.
@Me- Brant is choosing to show Basquiat for publicity, hype value, tax write-off, and financial gain. My point is he's not showing this for a purely altruistic purpose. That's not an consideration at all. Yes, you're right, the contempo art market became a mega-business decades ago. As for Basquiat himself he never saw a dime bag of anything he didn't like going from street stoner to hardcore addict. That is the entry point into his art. And I'm ok with that. He did some interesting shit if you like that sort of thing: neo-primitive cartoons.
The really funny thing is, even with gentrification and purported demise, the EV hasn't changed at all. The Bowery hustlers and con men are out there in full force, same as it was 150 years ago.
Of course Peter Brant is doing this show for the publicity, the tax writeoff, and to increase the value of his art collection, but so were all the art dealers and collectors who profiteered off of Basquiat when he was alive, and who then screwed over Basquiat and his estate back in the 1980s.
One of the best art openings I ever attended was the show Basquiat had with Andy Warhol at Tony Shafrazi’s gallery in SoHo in the Fall of 1985. There was a huge crowd out on the cobblestones, dancing, drinking and partying in the street. It was like a big block party. Jean-Michel was so happy that day, it’s hard to believe he would be dead just three years later. After the show he was savaged by critics who called him Andy Warhol’s little pet or mascot, and The NY Times was especially cruel to him. As an addict with a growing heroin probem this didn’t exactly help his addiction issues.
Basquiat started saying that he felt the art world, critics and certain Soho dealers like Leo Castelli were turning against him. Even though Basquiat’s work was selling, his career had hit a bit of a plateau, or maybe a hard ceiling, just as his addictions became worse. Many dealers told him his work was just street art, and that graffiti art was just a fad.
Basquiat was never really a grafiiti artist, not in the New York Grafitti art sense of the word; he was an artist who happened to do much of his early work on the street, mostly due to the fact that he couldn’t afford art supplies. So during his life he was mistreated and misunderstood by the same dealers who were just proteering off of whatever they thought the newest fad happened to be.
An art dealer friend of mine who became his friend around that time was shopping his paintings around without much success. This dealer was personal friends with one of the Rothschilds, and even they weren’t buying. Needless to say, Basquiat never saw any of the hundreds of millions of dollars his artwork generated, much less the acclaim he has today. Now his work sits in vaults never to be seen again, and also in Peter Brant’s private collection, to be seen by a lucky few with a ticket. I’m sure Jean-Michel would not be surprised at how little the art world has changed.
@Giovanni- Basquiat's estate is not and has never been screwed over by art dealers, etc. They were never the executors. Only his mother and father had that sort of control after his death. Also the the remaining family members, his two sisters, own at least $50 million of his art work plus of course all artists and their estates remain control of the copyright even if a painting is sold many times for many millions of dollars.
That stream of income is enormous- Prints, T-shirts, coffee mugs etc.
Basquiat was not mistreated by anyone except himself. Nobody made him shoot dope. In fact he got every lucky break a young artist could have. Glad you brought up Warhol because he is central to this story. Had Basquiat not met him he would have been just another punk on the street. From the business side gallerists didn't want to deal with him because of his dope habit.
I've never been convinced of Basquiat's greatness believing it was manufactured based not on merit or talent but on hype and money.
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