Jean-Michel Basquiat on How to Be an Artist

I agree far more with the top response to that quote than I do to the quote.

Creating a market for you product is an art in and of itself.

By "this guy", I take it you're referring just to the guy from the original piece. Basquiat very much created a myth about his life -- partly in collaboration with Andy Warhol, one of the greatest self-mythmakers in the art world.

I don't mean to diminish Basquiat's art or his story. I'm just affirming (by way of clarifying) what you said: the artist's life is a part of their art, and part of what you pay for.

Susan Sontag sums up the ultimate social achievement of the artist well. It's about the Aesthetics of Silence. The more withdrawn an artist becomes, the more celebrated. The ultimate level according to her, is not communicating, and not even creating anything.

> So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience which is a leading motif of modern art, with its tireless commitment to the “new” and/or the “esoteric.” Silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.

– Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence

Read the associated text, the art is specifically and purposefully not meant to be "easy".

The best way to appreciate it is to learn the history and immerse yourself in the culture.

Contemporary art is not typically created for instant gratification or understanding but rather for an audience familiar with the world within which it sits.

Like Free Jazz or heavily peated whiskies there is a path into appreciation that isn't necessarily short. Also it just isn't for everyone. I love much of those things but struggle to get anything from contemporary dance. Precisely because I haven't invested much time or effort into it.

Finding a local contemporary artist scene and socialising with these people can be extremely rewarding, especially if you yourself are not a full time artist.

I can relate. I actually used to work at Artsy (the company who published this article), and before I worked there, I felt much the same way. What I learned after being immersed in the art world is that occasionally, art will "speak" to me immediately. But more often, it grows on me as I understand the context of the art and who made it. This is definitely the case for me with Basquiat, whose work can look like childish scribbles at first glance.

In my farewell email to my Artsy coworkers, I wrote that as I really began to engage with the art world in my time there, I realized I had gained a whole new layer of perception. I was seeing new references and callbacks everywhere in the world around me.

So what I would say is that if you feel like it's going over your head and want to invest the time, it can be extremely rewarding to go down the rabbit hole. You can do this by reading articles, watching documentaries, visiting exhibitions, and finding spaces inhabited by enthusiasts.

Some things to check out:

- The book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark

- The film Exit Through The Gift Shop

I felt the same about reading poetry when in school. None of it ever clicked with me and for exams ("Explain why this poem is great") I would just regurgitate various points teachers and books had told me about the poems. I didn't typically agree with any of it, and didn't care about it either.

Regarding art, I never studied it but I have two books. One is a collection of photos taken by Francesca Woodman, and another is on about Art Brut. I quite like the philosophy behind Art Brut and had never heard of it before buying the book. Something clicked.

First step involves asking yourself what is Beauty? To You.

Most people are unconscious of what they themselves find beautiful.

What are those things that have made something inexplicably stir in your head?

If things on that list (which varies massively from person to person) doesn't overlap with something in front of you, it doesn't matter what tricks of appreciation anyone presents.

Basquiat in particular requires knowledge of 1970s-80s New York, the birth of hip-hop culture and graffiti, the art world, and a whole lot of other things. In short, Basquiat is appreciated because he was a visceral, anti-establishment, extremely young guy whose work was raw and real, in comparison to the somewhat corporatized minimal aesthetic [1] that was popular at the time. He was also a really good storyteller (most famous artists are) and crafted a great narrative around his life.

Basquiat's work is basically "80s NYC" in high art form. There was so much creativity coming out of the city at that time, it was really magical, especially compared to Lower Manhattan today.

If I had to make a tech world comparison, it might be something like early Apple Computer against IBM. Hippies in garages vs. the suits.

The film Basquiat is pretty good dramatization of his life. So is Downtown 81, which is a creative film starring Basquiat himself. Both are on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1Q44H2QyE&list=PL411118_g6...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(visual_arts)

There is no trick to appreciating it, just that people that own work by a particular artist have a vested interest in talking that artist up and getting others to 'appreciate it.'

The best advice I can give is to spend time with a particular work of art.

Go to a museum or gallery, pick a specific painting or sculpture, and then come back to visit the same work of art multiple times, preferably on different days of the week, at different times and under different lighting conditions.

A good work of art will show you something different every time you visit.

As some others have noted, having context for the art will deepen your understanding of it, which might make you appreciate it more or maybe even appreciate it less. Either way it'll help lead you into the work.

For an artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat it's especially important to understand it in the context of what it meant for a young black man to create art in an art world that was (and is still) predominately white. Keeping that in mind, take a look at the "Untitled (Rinso)" work that is shown in the article. Rinso was a brand of soap that introduced a blue powder in the 1950s and had advertisements that would say things like "Whiter Washing" with smiling blonde women. You have his infamous crown icon, with "No Suh No Suh" under it. All of these elements can help lead you to see the commentary he's making.

There was a documentary a number of years ago about him called "The Radiant Child", which might be a good place to start.

I'm not an artist, but I have grown to appreciate art more and more. I think you learn to appreciate art the same way you learn to appreciate any other product.

The first step is to accept that some things just aren't your cup of tea, even if all the true fans love it. I don't like Holy Motors, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and IPAs. Popularity is a signal, not an obligation.

The second and most important step is to learn how the sausage is made. It gives you a much greater appreciation for the final product. My recent interest in gardening completely changed my forest walks. It quite literally made me see the forest for the trees. Likewise, I learned to appreciate film by paying more attention to the camera work, the sound design, and the many other things that make great movies great. YouTube has many great video essays that will show you a lot more than meets the eye [0].

The third step is to understand the context behind a work of art. My favourite example is Guernica by Picasso [1]. Look at it, then listen to this [2] from 1:12:54 to 1:16:00, then look at it again. You will get a far different impression of that painting. If you grew up in the 90s, the sound of a computer modem probably elicits some sort of emotional response to you. It would seem weird if you robbed the phenomenon from its context. That's also true for art.

That, or date an art student for a few years.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc

[1] https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernic...

[2] https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity

> For me artists are nothing more like the embodiment of the survivor ship bias. I can appreciate something that takes skill to create, be it a craft, a poetry, or even a photorealistic drawing. I can appreciate something that raises emotions in me (I'm aware that rasing emotions is a highly subject criteria as well). I can appreciate something that is new and unique.

A lot of reasons to like art.

> None of these things is true for 99.9% of art, this artist included. I think these artworks are not different from atleast thousands of other graffiti doodles from other people. Somehow people start to praise this guy (seemingly random?) instead of anyone else. That's just survivor ship bias.

I would rather say it's some sort of network effect. The better known you are, the more interest in your art, the higher the price. Interest and higher prices attract more interest generating even higher prices, loop.

> I know people say it all the time but it's true "I could have made this". My point is that probably most of art critic's couldn't tell the difference between a random doodle of some random art student and most famous abstract art.

Isn't this the same every developer said about Dropbox? Amazon? Writing an online file-storage/sharing app is not hard, writing an online bookstore is not hard. But actually executing it for 26 years (in Amazons) case and building in from there to the empire it is today, that's the art.

> It's also not about having an unique idea, banana on the wall is not something special, people do crazy things all the time. There are probably thousand of wanna be artists that tape things on walls and make some random things in hope of getting famous and could tell you some deep thinking why it criticises our modern society.

I'd say it's about execution as well as marketing, sometimes one can compensate for the other.

> So for me art is just a random circle jerk of people telling each other that this special guy is good and the rest isn't and if you don't agree or see it you are just someone that has no idea about art. And my take on really high expensive art is that it's just a form of tax evasion or similar goals.

It certainly is also an investment and way to signal status, probably always was. But does that minimize the value for you, if you find an attribute of it to be appreciable?

We're talking here about a very narrow segment of Fine Art that has practically nothing to do with the lives or work of the vast majority of artists -- even successful working artists. It attracts a lot of attention, and is often spoken of as if it's the most refined and pure and important form of art, but most artists don't see their art that way.

Don't worry about the "banana on the wall". It's the art equivalent of a reality show.

If you want to be interested in art, go to some galleries, talk with the people there, and ask what the art means to them. There are lots of different kinds of art and poke around until you find one that interests you.

And if you don't want to be interested in art, don't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, despite the implication from some circles that there's some kind of taste you're failing at. Just ignore them. It's not really the "circle jerk" you imagine it is, but neither is it really that important that you're not inside this particular circle, jerking or otherwise.

You are probably missing the context. To a non-programmer, C and Python look the same.

Take Citizen Kane. I'd call it a 7/10 film and kinda boring, but that's because I'm seeing it in a "post-Kane" world. At the time, however, it was so revolutionary that people still call it the best film ever made. Nowadays it's quite standard because everyone has been building on it ever since

While I'm not going to disagree with you regarding some art, there is a point to be made that what to us, un-cultured people, may seem like random scribbles could actually be something revolutionary. We simply don't notice it because we are missing the context.

I do believe, however, that you are right and that there's an element of luck too. But that's not exclusive to art - how many technologies are we using right now not because they are the best but because they got a lucky break at the right time? And then again, while many good painters may never get their big break, I doubt there are that many bad painters who get famous.

Do you get the music world and how it works? It's very similar, and someone who didn't get music could make the exact same arguments you're making.

The visual arts take a tiny bit more effort to get into but once you're over that hump it's very similar.

"I could have made this"

That is a common trope but it misses the immediate counter...."but you didn't".

Many can code, not all come up with something that takes off, regardless of talent or skill. Any number of things can go into that. Art is very similar in that regard.

I say this as someone with a bias; I've worked in tech for the last 20 years and I've been a paid illustrator and painter since high school (Art and Commerce isn't alien to me).

I'm not going to try to convince you you're wrong. You can change you own mind about this, but it takes investment. Many, many people have found that journey toward "getting art" to be life enriching.

I'll say that for me, what blows my mind about modern and contemporary art is the willingness of individual artists to follow a conceptual idea waaay beyond what is reasonable. Whether the destination ends up being critically acclaimed is beside the point. You have to at some point be able to not care in order to play, because artists, more than anybody, know just how much of a crapshoot it is to get commercial attention.

All arts are a form of story telling, and all story tellings are a form of art.

What makes a story? Or better yet, what makes a good story? There're a lot of good answers for that, which means there isn't a one-liner fits all answer.

There is, though, a common ground for all the answers: stories are about all the different and complex ways we communicate, with ourself and each other. The ancient paintings were epic. They were big, full of gods and battles. It easy for us to look at those and think that this is what people liked at the time, but the truth is that this is the only thing the knew. When Van Gough presented a photo of a simple room or a pair of shoes, it is not is paintings techniques (though very good) that was exclaimed, it was the message and the novelty: a pair of shoes also exist, and therefore can be an object of a painting - they deserve a story.

There are infinite amount of ways to tell a good story, but there is only one way to distinguish one: a good story will always stick.