The American Art Industry just want to highlight their superiority. The American Art Industry is welcoming Basquiat, it may seem. Says art critic Robert Hughes in his insightful critique: Requiem for a Featherweight, November 21, 1988. The otherwise monochrome Late American Art Industry felt a need to refresh itself with a touch of the “primitive… the racist idea of the black as naïf or as rhythmic innocent, and to the idea of the black artist as “instinctual,” outside “mainstream” culture, and therefore not to be judged by it: a wild pet for the recently cultivated white.” “ This was partly because Basquiat was black. To be clear, part of his appeal to the white art world, and it is white, is that: “My mother tried to get me to bleach my skin,”…She said I was too “Arab looking.” Suzanne Mallouk recognized the nuance that white folks don’t get with black folks she knew Basquiat was a human being, not just a black man. Suzanne Mallouk being from a ‘non-white’ culture understood racism.

Her ethnicity may seem trivial, but this is America where everything is about color. In her story about Mallouk, a Canadian with Palestine roots who came to New York and befriends badass graffiti (“graffiti art” in the art world is the politically correct way to say “nigger art”) artist Jean-Michele Basquiat, the New York 1980’s art scene’s enfant terrible. Jennifer Clements’s book Widow Basquiat exposes the exploitation, the exploited and the need to be exploited. Not the stuff with all the nudity and sex, artists call that art. Not just any salacious sexy porn, but art porn. In comes, Jennifer Clements’s book Widow Basquiat, a very personal accounting of the relationship of her friend Suzanne Mallouk longtime lover of Basquiat’s, and it reads like porn. You think that you’re true about an issue, and then all of a sudden, a perspective comes along that causes a paradigm shift in your thinking. Collection of Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, Celebrando Jean-Michael Basquiat by Manuel Palacio Acrylic on canvas 4’X5′ PARADIGM SHIFT

Widow basquiat book