Watch our art handling team install Jean-Michel Basquiat's Hollywood Africans (1983), from the Whitney's collection, which was recently installed as part of the Edges of Ailey exhibition. The painting is on view on the 5th floor of the Whitney Museum, from Sept 25, 2024 through Feb 9, 2025.
Hollywood Africans is one of a series of Basquiat's paintings that feature images and texts relating to stereotypes of African Americans in the entertainment industry. It was painted while the artist was on an extended visit to Los Angeles in 1983.
The painting is featured in the Black Music section of Edges of Ailey, which is now open to the public. Find more information about the exhibition here: [ Ссылка ]. Book tickets to see the show here: whitney.org/admission
Hollywood Africans is one of a series of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings that feature images and texts relating to stereotypes of African Americans in the entertainment industry. It was painted while Basquiat was on an extended visit to Los Angeles, California, in 1983. Several of the work’s notations are autobiographical: the trio of figures on the right depicts the artist with the rap musician Rammellzee and the painter Toxic, who had traveled with him from New York, and he includes the digits of his birth date: 12, 22, and 60. Other notations are historical: phrases such as “Sugar Cane,” “Tobacco,” “Gangsterism,” and “What is Bwana?” allude to the limited roles available to black actors in old Hollywood movies. The notion of exclusion or excision is reiterated in the way that Basquiat often crossed out words or phrases in his works. The technique, he explained, was actually meant to direct attention to them: “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”
Edges of Ailey is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. Special acknowledgment to the Allan Gray Family Foundation and the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City for access to archival materials. The exhibition is curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Joshua Lubin-Levy, Curatorial Research Associate, and CJ Salapare, Curatorial Assistant, with thanks to Katie Fong, Curatorial Assistant, for research support.
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