Artsology

Art Critique Game with Basquiat and Warhol

We go back in time to the mid 1980s, and you're a young artist trying to get your foot in the door of the New York art world. You see Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol having lunch in a restaurant, so you work up the nerve to walk in and show them some of your drawings. Select one of the four paintings in your portfolio and click on it to see what they think. If you'd like to show them more than one painting, just click the "play again" link under the picture of their critique reply. **The idea for this game comes from a story about Basquiat approaching Warhol when he was still an unknown artist ... scroll down for more on this story.

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The story behind the game:

There's a story about Jean-Michel Basquiat as a still-unknown struggling artist who had an obsession with Andy Warhol and wanted to be recognized by him. Basquiat approached Andy Warhol in a downtown restaurant where he was eating with Henry Geldzahler, a one-time curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The story goes on that Basquiat had a handful of xeroxes of his paintings, and persuaded Warhol to buy one or more for a few bucks.

In the 1996 film "Basquiat," directed by Julian Schnabel, this particular story is recreated, but with a fictional twist that Warhol was having lunch with the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger. The image at right is a still from this film, with Warhol played by David Bowie, Bischofberger played by Dennis Hopper, and Basquiat played by Jeffrey Wright.

Scene from the Basquiat movie where Jean-Michel Basquiat sells art to Andy Warhol in a restaurant