'Boom for Real' Jean-Michel Basquiat on show in Frankfurt

A boxer in a victorious pose depicted with a cattle skull and a halo in "Untitled 1982" is a perfect representation of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work. Anatomy and sports, Christian symbolism, TV, but also bebop and the African-American civil rights movement are all recurring themes of his art. His interests were as all-around as were his artistic skills.

This versatility is the focus of "Boom for Real," the retrospective dedicated to Basquiat's oeuvre currently on show in Frankfurt. He started out as a graffiti artist in the late 1970s and achieved his breakthrough in 1981 when he participated in the group exhibition titled "New York/New Wave" in the NYC. Many works from the art show are on display in Germany, too.

Not many people know that Basquiat was also a DJ and that he "sampled" many symbols of the music scene of his time for his paintings. The crown, for instance, that often appears on heads or even on its own, is such a dominant motif it has become one of Basquiat's trademarks. The simplicity of the design is reminiscent of graffiti, yet Basquiat never saw himself as a graffiti artist.

Basquiat wanted to become a cartoonist as a child. His seemingly naive art is just as confrontational as it is interwoven with hidden meanings. "A Panel of Experts" from 1982, for example, combines language and gestural drawings to bring attention to social and political issues. Lava spewing out of a volcano, blood squirting from a wounded man and a shooting gun are combined to everyday words.

The exhibition also addresses Basquiat's friendship with Andy Warhol. The two met on the initiative of art dealer Bruno Bischofberger in 1982, and after the encounter, Basquiat hurried back to his studio to paint the double portrait "Two Heads." He sent the painting, still wet, to Warhol the same day, to which the pop art icon responded: "I'm really jealous, he's faster than me!"

The collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol was very productive; they created about 150 works together. Here, in the painting titled "Arm & Hammer," Basquiat overpainted Warhol's logo print with a portrait of one his idols: the bebop virtuoso Charlie Parker, who died in 1955. But the artists' friendship came to an abrupt end in 1985 when critics called their mutual exhibition a "failure."

Basquiat devoted several of his artworks to his jazz heroes, and "King Zulu" is one of them. The painting features jazz trumpeters Bix Beiderbecke, Bunk Johnson and Howard McGhee. In the center, against the bright blue background, floats the face of Louis Armstrong with a writing noting Armstrong's famous song "The King of the Zulus." The subversive nature of New Orleans pervades Basquiat's work.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a master of self-production and self-promotion. Until his death at the age of 27 in 1988, he created more than 1,000 paintings and objects; the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt is now showing around 100 of them, including the tribute to the football star Hank Aaron displayed above. The show "Boom for Real" runs until May 27, 2018.