to hide in plain sight,
the first stratagem from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a book on military strategy, where the goal is to win the war without fighting. SUN TZU you can read in his art. A trivial example for „to hide in plain sight“: the chief art critic of the New York Times on “The unknown Notebooks”, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, curator Dr. Dieter Buchhart, the Basquiat expert. That the meaning of the neologism and the “misspelling” remained unrecognized? „With “Suzane” he reveals more about his girlfriend. Z and S sound the same, they are homophones which he frequently used. zane – sane = smart. Since Susan Sonntag often visited Warhol, he could also have meant Miss Sonntag, the critic, author and director. After all, she knew an above-average amount about films. In addition, her first name ‘Susan’ had only one n.
Leapsickness: the four words that follow in his notebook explain it. THE LAW OF LIQUIDS. And that can be named: gravitation. The context for this is provided by the BLUE RIBBON PAINTINGS. Even better:
I. CRAZYOLOGY, the mad science. II. CRAZYOLOGY, the maddening science. CRAZYOLOGY a portmanteau, a suitcase word of Craniology + Zoology. Thus, craniology + zoology becomes the craniology of animals. In the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, craniology was used by anatomists to prove the inferiority of non-European`s. In the Third Reich also Roma, Sinti, Jews and people with disabilities. He abstracts the CRAZYOLOGY into a synthesis of skull and baseball stitches in UNTITLED (Scull B) and the FAMOUS NEGRO ATHLETS paintings. The sutures are reminiscent of scars and thus of wounds.
Zoomorphisms:
The dehumanised representation of a human being declared to be inferior has always been one of the most common devices of religious or political propaganda. Jean identifies the perpetrators of this method of dehumanisation, the pseudo-scientific researchers, with his neologism ‘CRAZYOLOGY’, which ostensibly describes their ‘science’ alone. A Zoomorphism by Gustav Doreé.
It is fair to ask: who is not constantly learning?
his „PrimitivisM“ disrobes
as Camouflage shown 2019
with „Mister Basquiat– the real one“, a travellogue exibited in the „Parkhaus“ of the art association MALKASTEN, founded 1848 in Düsseldorf, curated by Karl Heinz Rummeny. SAMO© left the recognition protocol to his method of covert communication, of „to hide in plain sight“ in my diary. Prove by the evidence shown, a steganography [gr.] στεγανός ‚hidden‘, γραφία ‚to write’ he used. So that third party should not arouse suspicion when looking at it. Mary, Queen of Scots brought hers to the scaffold, unmasked by the code-breakers of Elizabeth I.
„Style is fraud“,
William de Koonings position executed Jean, made canvases his stage, played “divine comedy” as a tragicomedy. Also together with Warhol in the Collaborations.
proven assertions
John Berger, NZZ, March 12, 2011, „Metaphysics from Downtown.“
Basquiat chose a different strategy. He felt that hidden truths could not be described with the help of a language that at the same time served to spread lies; in his eyes, every official language was merely a code for conveying distorted messages. His strategy as a painter was to discredit and break such codes, thus creating space for vibrating, invisible, clandestine truths – like a saboteur„.
Prof. bell hooks, Art in America, 1993[…] Like a secret chamber that can only be opened and entered by those who can decipher hidden codes, Basquiat’s painting challenges folks who think that by merely looking they can „see“, Altars of Sacrifice, Re-membering Basquiat.
„Part of Basquiat`s strategy of occlusion was playing the primitive„, Dr. Kellie Jones, Lost in Translation, catalog Retrospective Brooklyn Museum 2005 p.164. „His paintings are deliberate enigmas“, Prof. R. F. Thompson, Yale, in „A Radiant Child“ a film by Tamra Davis, 2010.
erroneous experts
“… a meticulous analysis of Basquiat’s symbols and signs is a trap that lures us away from the abstract and oneiric intention of these paintings. They do not send us encrypted messages that we are supposed to interpret iconologically, but they confuse and disarm us at the same time with their discursive artifice.” Marc Mayer, Basquiat in History, Catalogue Retrospective, Brooklyn Museum, 2005.
Anyone who tries to draw conclusions about the life of this artist from the slogans that appear in Basquiat’s drawings or from the codes contained in his paintings finds themselves in the position of the shepherds who spell out the letters (note: the shepherds of Arcadia, Poussin). The artist’s life followed laws that can no longer be understood a year after his death“. Dr. Carl Haenlein, Archetypography, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kestner-Gesellschaft catalog, Hannover, 1989.
