The Sad Story of 'Boom for Real' Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

A Ticket to see

I think I've seen some of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work at the Saatchi Gallery before and certainly heard his name mentioned by others so decided to visit exhibition of his work at the Barbican Gallery.

It's a big exhibition with a lot to see including a full length film that he was in (it includes Debbie Harry too) - so if you're going allow enough time.

No longer with us

Basquiat was part of the flowering of an American/New York  rebirth in the late 70's/80's where Keith Haring Fab 5 Freddy and others started to bring work from the street to the attention of galleries and collectors (as well as Andy Warhol).

Early recognition of his gifts meant that he was able to pursue his own passions and he was the epitome of (and listed as in Wikipedia list!) an Auto-Didact.

What came out of the exhibition though for me was something of a rather confused body of work - so sad that Jean- Michel's life was not longer and he was unable to fully realise his early potential and  promise.

UK TV and US Consolidation 

Changes in the US TV market as customers increasingly 'cut their cords' means that Discovery TV has been able to  complete an agreement for merger with Scripps Network.

Discovery TV which has one of the highest paid bosses in the world has performed poorly over recent years and failed to make the strategic changes needed as it is outmanoeuvred by new players like Netflix and Amazon TV.

The repercussions are likely to be felt at UK TV where the BBC's commercial arm mulls over taking full control of UK TV (where Scripps was a major shareholder) - this though is small fry in the mega business that TV has now become. 

UK TV is one of a number of 'second level' TV operations reliant for audiences  on BBC TV re-runs.

It would indeed be sad if Publicly owned  TV was so far weakened that all commercial TV needed to care about was the bottom line - it is (I still think) more important than that -time will tell