Our latest contributor, John Wellington is a New Yorker whose art finds its inspiration in Old Master paintings, religious and pop icons, cinema, music, and his fascination with devotion, idolatry and the use of male and female imagery in art and life. He has shown in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Paris and London. His paintings may be seen on the website: johnwellington.com
John Wellington has recently released the first three volumes of Idols Demons Saints, a series of e-books based on his sketchbooks, showing the process of creating from the first inked line to a finished work of art.
(See John Wellington : Idols, Demons and Saints by James F. Cooper)
John leads painting groups to Paris.
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oil on aluminum, 48 x 25.25 inches |
John Wellington in his studio |
Wellington’s family name may conjure up British associations and Jean-Michel's name may sound quintessentially French, but both were born and raised in the United States. Basquiat’s father was Haitian and his mother was of Puerto Rican descent. So who was Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988)? He was an American artist, musician, and producer. He first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO ©, [1] a graffiti tag used from 1977 to early 1980. It accompanied short phrases mainly painted on the streets of downtown Manhattan.
Basquiat developed from a graffiti artist to a painter of canvases. He was not quite as famous as his friend, Andy Warhol, but his neo-expressionist and primitivist works, which confronted issues of racism, identity and social tension, were displayed in galleries and museums internationally.
He died in 1988 from an overdose of heroin and cocaine but his fame has not subsided since then. As only two examples of his continued popularity
- the exhibition “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time”, presented for 3 months earlier this year at the Art Gallery of Ontario”, the first major retrospective of Basquiat in Canada, featuring about 85 large-scale paintings;
- and the display of some of his works at the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, whose owner was friendly with both Warhol and Basquiat in their lifetimes.
Warhol, Basquiat & Bischofberger
[1] Signature associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat, derived from "same old shit", abridged to "Same Old" then simply to SAMO.
Basquiat and me
When Jean-Michel Basquiat and I met in the Spring of 1975 he wasn’t famous.
Jean-Michel and my friend Eric were classmates at City As School (CAS), a high school for students that were better suited to a non-traditional form of education. He and some other students from CAS had met up at Eric’s apartment overlooking Gramercy Park for the sole intention of getting stoned. Jean-Michel, his classmate Shannon, and I all drew – especially comic book style art – and showed each other drawings in our notebooks. Still, being a grade younger and having never smoked pot, I felt intimidated by this group that seemed not only older but cooler. They were also into graffiti which I only dabbled in at I.S.70 (my junior high school at the time) tagging more of my textbooks than subways or walls. Two years
later, Jean-Michel and his friend Al Diaz would gain underground notoriety by spraying their subversive SAMO© phrases across the walls of downtown Manhattan.
Our meeting remains a vivid memory for me not only being the first time I smoked, but because we were stopped by New York’s Finest and questioned while we were hanging out in Gramercy Park with pot and rolling papers in our pockets. The police did not search us and eventually let us go back up to Eric’s home across the street. That evening would be the only time that Jean-Michel and I would talk in his short life.
Five years later, in 1980, while I was beginning my sophomore year at The Rhode Island School of Design, Jean-Michel had already become a star of the downtown music and club scene with his band Gray.
He was known for the writings of SAMO©, starred in a fictional version of himself in the film New York Beat (later renamed Downtown 81), sold postcard art to his then idol Andy Warhol, lived as a homeless person in Washington Square Park, had his art showcased at the seminal Times Square Show, featured in a Blondie music video as a DJ, and given the basement of Annina Nosei’s gallery to produce paintings for his first solo show.
By the time I received a B.F.A. in 1983 and returned to New York to live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Jean-Michel had dated the soon to be famous singer Madonna and “The Radiant Child,” written about him by the poet René Ricard for ArtForum, brought him to the attention of the art world.
with Madonna with Warhol
2:52 minutes
He painted a series of works in Modena, Italy, another series in a studio in Venice, California that Larry Gagosian had provided for him, and began showing internationally alongside some of the most famous artists of his time. He had also produced a rap single with Rammellzee and K-Robb, and began what would be a two year collaboration of paintings with his mentor Andy Warhol.
In 1985, while I was bartending at a restaurant on Upper Madison Avenue, Jean-Michel was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, wearing a dark Armani (or was it Comme des Garçon?) suit – AND barefooted – for the article New Money, New Art: The Marketing of an American Artist. He had also been making noteworthy art for five years and was widely recognized for his achievements. While Jean-Michel was becoming an international art star, I was trying to learn Old Master techniques of painting in my studio in Greenpoint and was still as much art student as artist. The contrast of our lives was not lost on me. I was in awe that someone so young could bring something not only new, but personal and vulnerable to the world of art. There have of course been other artists like this. Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon when he was 26 years old, and Egon Schiele, like Jean-Michel had developed his signature style at the cusp of his twenties. For me, still struggling with handling paint and trying to find my visual voice, Jean-Michel’s art and life were awesome in the true meaning of the word.
Although we never hung out again, I would see Jean-Michel at clubs like Area and Palladium in the mid 1980’s. A friend from college had a VERY short romance with Jean-Michel, where she told me that on their first night, in the back of a limo downing bottles of Moët, he said how “used” he felt by the art world. A year or two later, on August 12, 1988, he was found dead from a drug overdose on the top floor of the loft on Great Jones Street he had rented from Andy Warhol (who had died months before in 1987). When I heard that Jean-Michel had died, I was working at Marvel Comics as a colorist, collaborating on graphic novels for artists such as Jean Giraud AKA Moebius, painting on my days off, and starting an MFA program at The New York Academy of Art. Jean-Michel had painted studios full of singular art, lived a rock star’s life, and died, while I was still trying to just learn how to paint.
Marvel Comics graphic novel JW colored
for Moebius
Portrait in gouache (an opaque water color) JW painted one night in 1998 during dinner at the home of Moebius 
There have been a number of young masters but so many of them die young – especially at that Rock and Roll age of 27. In contrast there are the slow learners, the goats that go up the hill one considered step after another. We slow learners need all those extra years of living just to maybe catch up. I finally sold my first painting at the age of 30, in 1991, a few months before the birth of my son. Eventually I sold enough art to make it my profession. Now in my 50’s, I still paint and sculpt almost every day. My artistic vision over the years is telling its own story, and every now and then, I include a reference to Jean-Michel in my art. I still have my copy of the New York Magazine article that featured him on a bookshelf in my studio. It is the one magazine I will never throw out.
So often one is attracted to what is most like us, but just as often I am drawn to the opposite of my spirit in both art and life. Jean-Michel created while high, staying up for a week at a time, then crashing for another week; scrawling, painting, and composing his angst, his humor, his skulls and his crowns on canvas and any other material that was available to him, and all beginning before his twenty-first birthday. How could I have not been awed by him?
John Wellington
Blog notes :
["] Inspired by the Black Madonna represented in Haitian art, John composed a Madonna clad in armor, holding a young Jean-Michel Basquiat. “I’m not a real person. I’m a legend.” was something Jean-Michel said a month before he died, when comparing himself to Marilyn Monroe, who was referenced in the song he was listening to - A Candle in the Wind by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. There is a golden tattoo of a crown on the young boy’s right arm.
[1] "The 27 Club" or "Club 27" is the colloquial name given to a group of influential rock musicians that died at the young age of 27. There are a few "members" who are always listed in "27 Club" groupings - such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain , and more recently Amy Winehouse - while other musicians who were 27 at the time of their death are included sporadically. Everyone on this list will never turn 28 – they will be forever 27.
Additional reading:
Basquiat through the Eyes of Fellow Artists on the Street
Brooklyn Street Art, April 2, 2015
‘Basquiat and the Bayou’ and ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time’
New York Times, June 25, 2015
Michel Nuridsany évoque la légende Basquiat
Midi Libre, 29/1/2015
Video documentary: 1:33 heures
[**] John Wellington - Studio Visit (6:51 minutes)
New York Academy of Art © 2013
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