Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Starvation), 1981. Estimate $250,000 - 350,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale New York.
PHILLIPS: I understand you were the person who suggested your family begin collecting Basquiat. Could you share how you first encountered his work and what attracted you to it?
GEORGI PAGE: Growing up in Minneapolis, we had great exposure to the arts. We lived about a mile or so away from the Walker Art Center, so instead of going to the mall, a lot of times we would just walk up to the Walker Art Center and check out all of these artists. So we had some familiarity and when we got into high school—and I’m talking about Minneapolis public schools—we had an amazing art teacher who would take us to see exhibits.
So I think I was kind of prepared when that Basquiat cover of The New York Times Magazine came into our house. After I did the dishes at night, I would sit and read the Times and do the crosswords and I saw this article and I was totally transfixed. It was a real perspective shift because I saw this artist of color being elevated, and it was seismic. The audacity of his work and the originality of it kind of gave me a lift, gave me a sense of courage: the fact that he could do this powerful work, be recognized for it, and own it. And you could see he was totally enjoying owning the moment, as he leaned back in his chair.
P: And how did you bring up the idea of actually going to see his work in person and what happened after that?
GP: I wasn't directly involved in the purchase of those specific works—I didn’t really even know it was possible. When my parents went to New York on that trip I asked if they could go to Trash & Vaudeville to pick me up some creepers! They went into the store in search of the shoes and there was a bald guy walking around with a big mustache and a giant snake around his neck. They had written on a piece of paper, “creepers, size 40.” And they did bring me those creepers, with the thick rubber soles, the really pointy toes, a buckle on the side.
But they also brought back these Basquiats. I felt like it was a vote of confidence in my voice, in my opinions, in my acumen, and so it reinforced my point of view. And I was just beside myself to have the works in the house while I was growing up. I was going through a rebellious phase, smoking, and staying out late—so to have discovered Basquiat at that time and then to have the drawings in the house helped reinforce that it was okay to be different. It was the rawness of what he was doing and the space he was claiming for himself. I was very lucky to have those works around me as a reminder to be brave during that time.
P: I imagined you hadn't seen his works in person prior to that. Was your reaction to them different from your reading about them?
GP: Oh, definitely. On two levels. One, to bring something that was so visionary to me, and so in this other world, to bring it home, and to have it accessible, and to have it feel like it's part of my world was totally different than just reading about it in a magazine. You know, I felt like, wow, it's part of our home, it’s part of our story.
Then to be able to see the work every day, and look at it closely. To be honest with you, there are things that I’m still noticing about it. When you look at them online, the images are digital, and it kind of flattens them out. But in person, you see the color and texture of the paper, the crumbs of the oil crayon, the subtleties of color. I don’t know if people think about this as much, but his composition is as brilliant as his use of metaphor, and I think that was very apparent from having the works close at home and experiencing them over time. You can especially see that in the athlete, with its economical use of lines and color.
Coming from a multicultural family it was such a gift to grow up with these pieces; it has helped form my lens, my view of what constitutes art and what constitutes beauty, how to find meaning. That was such a huge opportunity, along with the storytelling and witnessing in the work, like in ‘Starvation’. These are very grounding concepts that keep you humble.
P: Did having these artworks affect the artwork that you were attracted to later in life?
GP: I definitely draw a line between growing up around the Basquiat and then later on, connecting very strongly to Egon Schiele. His exhibition at the Whitney was actually one of the first shows I saw when I moved to New York. There was something in the awkwardness and the vulnerability of his figures that I relate to Basquiat. When I went to the University of Washington, I saw a show of Kara Walker’s work and then started following her pretty early on. I also love Kerry James Marshall, Charles White. My taste is somewhat "off the radar" I think, but I find myself drawn to work that feels liberating or breaks boundaries in some way.
P: I was wondering about the shift in your family collecting Warhol and Frankenthaler to collecting black American artists, and later African American artifacts. What inspired that transition and the collection?
GP: My parents tell this story that a friend came over to our house and looked around and wasn’t suitably impressed with the work that was on the walls. The friend kind of prodded them and questioned them a little bit and said, “Well what about African American artists? You’re raising these kids and there’s so much incredible work and heritage there.” From that point on, it was like a flip was switched, and they started really networking with dealers and researching and discovering what they liked. I think this happened shortly after they bought the Basquiats. So just after that was a pivot point where they started focusing more on African American Art and Americana.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (The Athlete), 1981. Estimate $200,000 - 300,000. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale New York.
P: I was wondering about the family activity nature of this and the community you may have developed. It feels like it was a very collaborative interest?
GP: I was kind of the one most interested in art and so sometimes I was pulled in to consult if they couldn’t make up their minds. My stepmom would plan special dates for us to go see collections or meet dealers. She wanted to see which work I liked, and at that time I was studying art in college so I was experiencing it on a different level. Beyond that art was more a part of the broader cultural conversations we were having as a family.
P: There are so many stories in this collection of community, family, and human experience. What has been the most meaningful part of it to you? What do you really want people to take away from these works and the collection?
GP: We haven’t even talked about Testify, an exhibition our family did together that was one of the last big projects. It was about bringing together so many threads of the journey of African Americans in this country: slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, reconstruction, the ways we transcended our circumstances and built ourselves back up—and all of that all dovetailed with the conversations happening around the Super Bowl. Who are we? To what do we testify?
We had people write their responses to the exhibit and tell their own stories in this book, so it wasn't just about our family telling our version of the story, but also about eliciting other people’s stories, to become part of the exhibit and part of the record. I think art and my involvement in the collection has taught me to pay better attention, to really cultivate my capacity for discovery. That has been the most meaningful and moving for me, and what I hope people will take away.
P: Do you still have the book?
GP: Yes! It was hand-bound in the East Village by a Hasidic bookbinder and my stepmom treasured it. It meant so much to see how moved people were by the exhibit, and to give them a place to immediately process their emotions and memories, because it was very powerful.
P: It makes it an ongoing conversation, more than a record.
GP: Yes, we were trying to have a conversation. And afterwards, we have gotten a lot of interest from local communities, small towns across Minnesota. And then we got a call from the Smithsonian, saying that some of their curators were very interested in learning more about the collection. So it really is part of a big conversation that many people are eager to have.
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