Saturday, February 10, 2018

The Ernie Advantage

... or, "Bert Like Me."

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On a work trip to Washington, D.C. recently, I had one off night with nothing much to do, so I gratefully curled up in my hotel bed with a biography of the Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, written by Phoebe Hoban, and dug in. Hoban, you may recall, is the author of an aforementioned biography of Lucian Freud -- a similarly catastrophic individual who must have been a terror to know, but is a delight to read about.

Basquiat, like Freud the Younger, was one to rather burn his candle at both ends -- to such an extent in his case, however, that he tragically passed away from a heroin overdose at age 27 -- all-but-self-consciously modeling himself in so doing on Charlie Parker and other creative titans who guttered early, but who "gave" while they lasted "a lovely light." (Robert Hughes deemed him the Thomas Chatterton of the 80s art world -- albeit a comparison he did not intend flatteringly.)