Basquiat at the Museum of modern art in Paris

photos by the Museum of Modern Art, Paris

Museum of Modern art in Paris is showing a retrospective of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, of haitian and porto rican descent, who lived in New York in the Golden Age of clubbing, graffiti, street art, and pushing limits.
He became a star of the wild expressionism or "neo-expressionism" wave that countered the minimalism and conceptual art in the USA.
Prolific in his works, as if constantly urged to produce, he never doubted his being as an artist. He did not bend into a style or a trend. He just painted in the rawest manner, without obvious skills.
it came out unrestrained, spontaneous.
Subjects were deep, painful, violent.
He started as a graffiti artist in the streets of New York signing under the name of SAMO (same old shit). Galleries recognized his potential, collectors started buying.
He made a collective work with Andy Warhol, the association produced interesting pieces. Although they shared a lot of similarities, Warhol had a plastic aesthetic side to his work that did not necessarily match the violent, naked self expression of Basquiat.
He died at 28 years old.
Short existence for an artist.
But the retrospective is a great overview of his work.
If you're in Paris by the 30th jan 2011, don't miss the show.

link to the Museum of Modern Art

Routes d'Arabie: roads of Arabia - Louvre Museum

The Louvre Museum hosts a large exhibition on Saudi Arabia, with the title : Roads of Arabia, from the 14th of july to 27th of Septembre.
With a historical backgrounds of Saudi Arabia as a crossroads to many civilizations pre-islamic and after the emergence of Islam, the exhibition will show what was left as evidence of these passages. From the Antique period to the incense caravans to the development of different parts of Saudi Arabia and several oasis's until the Islamic era to the pelgrimage roads and sacred locations.

For the small story behind the important exhibition, the newspaper "Le Monde" titled today: "King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia sulks France" (le Roi d'Arabie boude la France) and the paper gives a geopolitical explanation of why the King will not attend the opening of the "Routes d'Arabies" as a way to express his unease with the French president.
If "le Monde" is correct in its assessment, art and culture can be used as tool for nations' interest or disinterest!

Louvre Museum link
Le Monde link