Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Blue Ribbon II, 1984. Private collection. Artwork: © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Jean-Michel Basquiat is embraced as one of the artists who defined the 1980s; this exhibition platforms one of his essential but less-known series—the Blue Ribbon paintings—and his incorporation of reproductive media to understand him in a new and compelling light.
The exhibition examines Jean-Michel Basquiat’s radical engagements with replication and reproductive media, situating his work within postmodern concepts of the 1980s—authorship, appropriation, and the blurred boundaries between original and reproduction. At its center are eleven paintings from 1984, together called the “Blue Ribbon paintings,” works that are dense with layered imagery, including anatomical diagrams, film logos, crowned figures, and textual fragments.
Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction explores Basquiat’s connections with artists including Robert Rauschenberg, and with pioneering Black printmakers such as Bob Blackburn, revealing and celebrating a lineage of Black experimentation and intergenerational exchange in reproductive media. Assembling nearly all of Basquiat’s known print projects, the exhibition focuses a lens on Basquiat as a conceptual artist, probing identity, reproduction, and visibility in an increasingly commercialized art world.
Curated by
Jordana Moore Saggese, professor of modern and contemporary art and director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, University of Maryland
Exhibition Project Support
Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction is made possible by leadership support from the Richard C. von Hess Foundation; the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; and the Princeton University Humanities Council’s David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic Fund.
Additional support is provided by the Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Fund for Contemporary Art; the Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund; Lisa Beth Podos; H. Vincent Poor; Michael W. Scherb; and the Sara and Joshua Slocum, Class of 1998, Art Museum Fund.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Valuation support provided by Christie’s.
The accompanying publication is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund; the Annette Merle-Smith Publications Fund; and the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications, Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.
Exhibitions at the Princeton University Art Museum are made possible by the many generous contributors to the Director’s Exhibition Fund: Allen R. Adler and Frances Beatty Adler, Len and Laura Berlik, Julie Neuffer Callaghan and Kevin T. Callaghan, John L. Cecil and Celia A. Felsher, Jeannie and Jitender Chopra, John and Susan Diekman, Donald and Martine E. Elefson, Barbara Essig, Luke Evnin and Deann Wright, William S. Fisher and Sakurako D. Fisher, Stacey Roth Goergen and Robert Goergen, Preston H. Haskell III, Robert and Lynn Johnston, Gene and Sueyun Locks, David and Catherine Loevner, Shelly and Tony Malkin, Edward E. Matthews, Dean and Jill Mitchell, Sassona Norton, Christopher E. Olofson, Anne C. Sherrerd, Preeti and Sanjay Swani, and Theodora D. Walton and William H. Walton III.
Additional support is provided by Tena and Chris Achen, Stephanie H. Bernheim, Sarah Lee Elson, Christopher C. Forbes and Astrid Forbes, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Paul G. Haaga Jr. and Heather Sturt Haaga, Padmaja Kumari Parmar and Kush M. Parmar, Mark W. Stevens and Annalyn Martha Swan, Judy and Ed Stier, and Jonathan Lee Walton.
