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April 03, 2005
Marilyn Monroe and Basquiat
We made it to the Brooklyn Museum despite the torrential downpour and caught both the Marilyn Monroe show and the very popular (and packed) Basquiat show. The lines for everything were long (the coat check line was endless) and I had an embarrassing run-in with the membership people, who were skeptical about my "I thought I renewed my membership in December" argument. The whole thing was exhausting and we left before the dance-party social scene picked up -- hard museum floors and big, quiet museum galleries make me sleepy -- but I'm glad we went.
There are some gorgeous shots in the Marilyn show, but there's an aura of sadness over the whole thing. She clearly found a successful character to play early on -- the glamorous, sexy, suggestive, blond model -- and then got stuck with it. In some video clips you can see her playing to the camera, changing her expression constantly for photographers, never really breaking from the photo-shoot persona. It reminded me a bit of Klaus Nomi and of Andy Kaufman, who similarly adopted fictional characters that the public latched on to and forever associated them with. Having to play that character out for years and years without moving on to something new takes its toll -- you become very good at that character but you lose your sense of self (and your self-confidence, in Marilyn's case) in the process.
For the Basquiat show we took a tour with a group, which gave us a good overview of the work. Looking at Basquiat is like learning a language -- phrases, words, and symbols are repeated on different canvases, and the same images appear in different contexts. Our tour guide gave us some clues about some of these symbols and repeated words and also helped put things in context a bit. Still, we both felt like we'd have to take a day off from work and come back to make sense of it all.
The influence of Gray's Anatomy is apparent in the skeletal figures and detached limbs -- there's a nightmarish, dislocated feel to the figures that you sometimes sense when looking at anatomical drawings. There's a lot of anger and distortion and energy. In some cases, the process of thought seems to be represented by the collage of images and words and color on the canvas. Sometimes a large head with a black outline and bared teeth and a hodgepodge of images and words inside the skull gives the impression of the burden of too much thought/anger/knowledge. The bright colors make things even more intense. There's a good deal of cynicism -- a lot of references to racial inequality and corporate exploitation of individuals. Because some of the work is so complex -- hundreds of little illustrations or words make up a piece, standing in front of it for a while pays off. The words also help set things moving for me -- possibly because I'm more comfortable with language than art. Hopefully we'll find the time to go back for a second look.
Posted by csageday at April 3, 2005 10:20 PM