Radient In Seville/Plato and Jean Michel Basquiat In Conversation
“If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you’ve got to realize that influence is not influence. It’s simply someone’s idea going through my new mind.” JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
“Artistic representation is at best a third remove from reality. Evil represented in art is an illusion. It is not God, it is not real and should be treated with caution in artistic representation.” PLATO
“Rorro Berjano: Radiant In Seville”
The exhibit is called “Santos, Difuntos, Dieux et Fétiches.” The artist, Rorro Berjano, born in 1979, the same year Basquiat began emerging in the NY scene, is five years younger than I am. We are of the same generation. In all regards the dialogue his art presents is very similar to the dialogue we have been having in the United States about the cultural appropriation, the connections of Basquiat to contemporary hip hop, and the ways materialism has replaced spirituality.
The first piece in the exhibit is a flashing neon sign- “Urban art is now a fashion.” Behind the sign is a painted brick wall. Another painting is of a street scene- with the graffiti letters SEEN, a and sign for Kodak, hanging in the sky- Andy Warhol is in a bright yellow taxi, Basquiat is standing on the street wearing an over-coat and holding a spray-can and the graffiti, “SAMO, for those of us who merely tolerate civilization.” Another painting says, WILD STYLE.
The art is seemingly reminiscent of Basquiat, but it is not an imitation of Basquiat’s art, or a retrospective of Wild Style. And I am not in New York. I am in the center of Seville, Spain at The Delimbo Gallery, an urban art and graffiti gallery.
Many paintings have the silent symbols of Andalusia- El Cristo Negra, La Virgin Negra. Several Cristos on the cross are tattooed with more modern but equally familiar symbols — Facebook, Ray-ban, Nike, Ebay, Ford, Audi.
On a pillar of brick is a virgin of bricks. The brick virgin has a giant golden halo, her hands are clasped as she presides over a leaking AGIP oil barrel.
The head of another virgin is white. This white virgin is as she is in Revelations, the virgin of the Apocalypse: “A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1) Yet, instead of battling demons, this virgin is tattooed with symbols of FIFA, AGIP, COCA-COLA.
Santa Muerta is given an alter of gold- the patron saint of death, the patron saint of all those involved in dangerous occupations.
There is a painting of Hector Lavoie, and depictions of afro-cuban ethnography, as well as the Notorious B.I.G.
High up on one wall is a medium sized painting that that leaves me amazed. Scrawled on top of the painting is, “LA FORTUNA NO MUDA EL LINAGE.” (FORTUNE DOES NOT MOVE THE LINEAGE.) The images are disturbing nightmarish: With a black Christ-child John The Baptist stands over a Ferrari, he is holding a cross, except he is not John the Baptist. He has Darth Maul’s red face, but a woman’s off-white naked body, and giant breast implants, and is wearing a Jedi cloak.
According to Francisco Umbral, “Andalusia, because of the dynamism that comes to it due to its mixture of bloods and races, it is of such a condition that it liberates itself from logic in favor, not of philosophy, which one supposes, but in favor of dream, of mystery and esotericism. Andalucia is a province cultivated for surrealism…it is not saved from narrative even the musicians are narrators.” And in 2016, so are its graffiti artists.
I cannot help but think of Federico Garcia Lorca. Then again, I always think of Lorca. “What is this? Once again Spain? Once again the global Andalusia?” Federico Garcia Lorca said upon arriving in Cuba. Rorro Berjano’s art answers all that I wondered about the global Andalusia when I first visited my family Seville and was struck by the juxtaposed emblems of empire: The Giralda, once a minaret, next to the Starbucks. I wondered about Lorca who said being born in Andalusia gave him a sympathetic understanding of all those who are persecuted- Gitano, the blacks, the Jews, The Moors, which all Andaluzes have inside of them. I wondered what happened to the questions Lorca asked as an Andalusian poet about a world “shameless and cruel enough to divide people when in fact color was the sign of God’s artistic genius.” I wondered what other Andalusian artists of the 21st century were continuing the discussion Lorca began about the diversity of Andalusian as a way to be a “citizen of the world.” What Andalusian artists are continuing Lorca’s cosmopolitanism that nationalism cut short?
Andalusia. Carnation. Hybrid. Flower. See that Onyx along the curve of her petals? Shares a Coast With. Is a Cross-Mix of. Castilian. Jew. Gypsy. Moor. Scratch a Spaniard find a Jew. Scratch a spaniard find a Gypsy. There are Moors along the coast. Clare, in Nell Larsen’s novel, Passing, passed as a Spaniard. Langston Hughes is one of the poets who translated Lorca’s In Search of Duende into English.
Hughes breaks with the Talented Tenth in writing poems of Blues.
Lorca breaks with the 27 Generation in writing of the Deep Song.
The Deep Song and The Blues share no coincidental echo but the persistence of memory.
But it is not 1927. It is 2016. It has been 80 years since Lorca was killed. Hip hop was birthed from the blues 40 years ago. Basquiat died thirty years ago. Jay-Z says he is the new Jean-Michel, but he is from New York. Rorro Berjano is from Seville, Spain. I will not call him the “Andalusian Basquiat.” Rorro Berjano is an Andalusian artist who talks about hip hop, afro-Cuban ethnography through the crackling blueness of Sevilla graffiti. I am reminded what poet Bob Kaufman says about Lorca in “Ancient Rain”: “I observed all those who read him who were not Negros and listened to all their misinterpretation of him….Those that were not Negro and were not in crackling blueness, those that couldn’t see his wooden south wind..”
The Signifying Monkey and The Duende are siblings. Step into Andalusia, you feel the proximity to Africa, the shadow of Morrocco. To comprehend Al-Andalus, as poet Victor Hernandez Cruz says, is to comprehend modernity.
And what does that modernity mean in today’s world? What does it mean to an artist in Seville, Spain who depicts himself blindfolded in a giant mural next to Darth Vadar, with skeletons who hold scythes with the words, “Nemine parco?” (No one is spared from death.) Rorro Berjano’s art is a call to return Andalusia to the culture of death, which is paradoxically a culture of life. A historical culture that is, at its core, Dionysian and visionary.
The painting that I think best reflects what this visionary modernity means in today’s world is an ex votos, and reminiscent of a style we see most commonly along the border of Mexico that is a votive prayer of thanks in image for all those who cross into the United States. Yet, Rorro Berjano’s Ex Voto is not of the Mexico- US Border, but the watery border between Andalusian and Africa. At the bottom of the painting is the inscription: “Con este retablo quiero rendir tributos a los difuntos immigrantes de los costas de Europa y priendole con este ex votos al cristo negro que cesen con los conflicts en sus paises para que no su sienten obligados a salir de ellos. Que descansen en Paz y que los tenga en su Gloria. Finalizado y firmado por Rorro Berjano en Sevilla.”
“With this altarpiece I pay tribute to the deceased immigrants from the shores of Europe. I light a prayer with this votive to the black Christ to cease conflicts in their countries so they do not feel compelled to leave them. I pray that they rest in peace and with glory. Completed and signed by Rorro Berjano in Seville. “
My cousin who is with me at the exhibit says seeing Rorro Berjano’s art makes her want to go to church. I leave the exhibit thinking of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Jean Michel-Basquiat. Plato hated artists, but I felt that he and Basquiat were in agreement about art as an imitation of an imitation, the same old shit for the avant guard.
Plato and Basquiat In Conversation
Plato: Same. Old. Shit.
Basquiat: Art is an imitation of an imitation.
Plato: Same old shit for the so called avant guard.
Basquiat: Our world as we experience it, is an illusion, a collection of mere appearances like reflections in a mirror or shadows on a wall.
Plato: Where a pin drops like a pungent odor.
Basquiat: We need to escape from the cave and see…the real objects, the Forms… and gain true knowledge.
Plato: Life is confusing at this point.
Basquiat: The philosopher, however, is like a person freed from the cave, who perceives that the shadows are not reality. The philosopher sees the true reality rather than the shadows.
Plato: SAMO as an end to Amos and Andy
Basquiat: Accept the concept that even apparently man-made objects like beds and chairs have an original form belonging to a changeless, eternal world of Forms created by God, leading to his conclusion that life, and art itself, is not a reality.
Plato: Another day. Another dime. Hyper cool. Another way to kill some time.
Basquiat: Artistic representation is at best a third remove from reality. Evil represented in art is an illusion. It is not God, it is not real and should be treated with caution in artistic representation.
Plato: BOOM for real.
Basquiat: The representation of the bad in the arts rests on the following: (i) it is a falsehood, (ii) it is wicked or sinful because it is about serious matters and (iii) it corrupts the young.
Plato: The irony of the negro policeman.
Basquiat: Art cannot represent reality because it is only a mirror, reflecting what is not, in any case, reality. We can strive towards enlightenment through seeking truth by depicting in artistic representation what is good and is, therefore, a reflection of beauty and moral truth. Only in this way, are we to achieve enlightenment, “…and see, in the light of the sun and the fire, the real objects, the Forms, face-to-face and gain true knowledge for the first time.” Yet, there is no personal freedom and no question of the rights of the individual.
Plato: Most young kings get their heads cut off. There is no such thing as personal freedom, or the rights of the individual.
Sing a song for the genius child, sing it softly for the song is wild.
Works Cited
Gibson, Ian. The Assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca Penguin Books; 2nd edition (May 26, 1983)
Hernandez-Cruz, Victor. “Introduction: In The Shadow Of Al-Andalus” In The Shadow Of Al-Andalus Coffee House Press (October 18, 2011)
