Last year the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York organised an exhibition entitled "Basquiat's Defacement: The Untold Story". The event took as starting point the painting "The Death of Michael Stewart" by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Informally known as "Defacement", the painting is, sadly, extremely relevant for the times we are living in and could be used to comment upon the police killing of George Floyd.
Despite the simple, almost childish lines used to portray the figures, the painting tells a tragic story: it shows two policemen brandishing orange batons standing one on the left, one on the right of a black anonymous silhouette. There's a splash of pink blood on one side of the painting that also features a question in Spanish "¿DEFACIMENTO?". The work is a call for social justice commemorating the fate of a young, black artist, Michael Stewart, who died in 1983.
Caught by the New York City Transit Police for allegedly tagging a wall in an East Village subway station, Stewart was placed under arrest. While witnesses stated they saw the officers throw him to the ground and beat him, the cops involved reported that he fell attempting to escape custody. The young man died at 25, after 13 days in the hospital, his bruising and brain damage indicating he was strangled. The police officers, charged with criminally negligent homicide, assault and perjury, were instead found not guilty by an all-white jury.
The question in Spanish, "¿DEFACIMENTO?" hints therefore at many things: who defaced what? The young man who tagged a wall, or the policemen who brutally beat him? The final defacement occurred with the vandalisation of justice and the acquittal of the police officers involved.
Originally painted on the wall of Keith Haring's studio within a week of Stewart's death and inspired by a protest poster created by David Wojnarowicz, the painting features a basic faceless figure representing Stewart. Basquiat wanted to hightlight in this way that anybody may have been in his place (the painting could be sadly used today to illustrate what happened to George Floyd). As Basquiat indeed stated, "It could have been me".
There were actually similarities between the two young men: both were artists; they had some friends in common and also had a similar hairstyle as they both wore dreadlocks.
The painting represented a pivotal moment for Basquiat's art that, from then on, focused more on black identity and police brutality, while the artist tried to find a visual language of empowerment.
Police became the subject of two further works by Basquiat, "La Hara" and "Irony of a Negro Policeman", that ended up forming almost a trilogy with "Defacement".
Other artists commented on Stewart's death throughout the years, among them Andy Warhol with his screenprinted 1983 painting integrating a New York Daily News article about the young artist's death; George Condo with his "Portrait of Michael Stewart" (1983), Keith Haring with "Michael Stewart - USA for Africa" (1985), David Hammons with his stenciled print "The Man Nobody Killed" (1986) and Lyle Ashton Harris' photographic self-portrait "Saint Michael Stewart" (1994).
It is sad to see that these works are relevant again, almost proving that, throughout the decades, nothing has changed and black people are still the victims of police brutality. But we could maybe look at these works also as tangible proof of a how artists react to particular moments in history, and link these works to the many graffiti that we have seen appearing on walls all over the world in memory of George Floyd. Art after all is a reflection of society and can spark debates about many contemporary issues, from politics to financial and social matters, while providing us with the energy and the vision to bring real and positive changes.
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