A night of tribute to iconic Brooklyn artist Jean-Michel Basquiat comes to Green-Wood Cemetery ... Byron Williams: Trump is a symptom of a deeper disease - Brooklyn News Review - 9:12 AM 8/18/2023
A night of tribute to iconic Brooklyn artist Jean-Michel Basquiat comes to Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn has produced many artists who have influenced the entire world, and one of best known is Jean-Michel Basquiat. Through his productive years, art critics agree, he revolutionized the art world with bold expressive works that spoke to the grit and excess of the 80s.
Thirty-five years after he died at age 27, Basquiat’s legacy still drives hundreds of people to honor him at his grave site in Green-Wood Cemetery each year — it’s the most-visited site on the property, according to the cemetery’s president, Richard J. Moylan.
On September 8th, Green-Wood will honor and celebrate his life with “From Canvas to Stage,” a night of live music, poetry, and visual art. Multidisciplinary artists will project, display, and perform their new works — each inspired by Basquiat’s art and legacy.
Jazz, Blues Gospel and Soul by Lezlie Harrison will lead the musical part of the night followed by the band Shrine for the Black Madonna, and classic music by Firey Strings Company with Nioka Workman. Seven poets and four visual artists will take part in the performance too.
“We should commemorate his death this year and every year as a way to remember that we too can be unapologetically vulnerable in this aggressive world,” said Joanna Sagesse, an associate art history professor at Brooklyn College. “His art is so full of feelings and it is so New York: busy, expressive, inviting and yet troubling.”
Jean Basquiat’s obituary in The New York Times read, “Jean-Michel Basquiat was remembered as a man who pursued every aspect of his life with drive and devotion, including those that were destructive.”Photo courtesy of Getty ImagesThe artist produced approximately 2,100 artworks from small drawings and sprayed walls to large canvasses and even a paint-adorned refrigerator door, according to the Brooklyn Museum. Toward the end of Basquiat’s life, his works were selling for around $25,000 to the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, where he had never been invited to put up an exhibition.
“They still call me a graffiti artist,” Basquiat told Vanity Fair at the time.
Basquiat was born in Brooklyn as the son of a Haitian immigrant father and a Puerto Rican mother. By his accounts, his father was physically abusive and his mother suffered from mental health issues. She was hospitalized for depression when Basquiat was young, but she started him into the art world by taking him to the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum often. She also gave him a copy of “Gray’s Anatomy,” and the anatomical drawings from the book impacted most of his art.
The artist often said he felt friendless and misunderstood. He ran away from his home and spent nights sleeping at Washington Square Park.
“He went through pain, he took it and he turned it into jaw-dropping paintings,” said Sagesse. “The heroin addiction that costed him his life was a product of the circumstances he tried so hard to scape from through his early life, and ultimately, he did, but the [suffering] remained.”
He first gained recognition as a street artist in the late 1970s when he and his friend Al Diaz created the graffiti tag “SAMO”, an abbreviation of “same old shit,” which appeared all over the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Toward the end of his career, Basquiat (second from left) met and became friends with many famous artists — including Andy Warhol (far left.)Photo courtesy of Galerie Bruno Bischofberger/Wikimedia CommonsAt 19, Basquiat and his work were featured in “Times Square Show,” a groundbreaking group exhibition held in a shuttered massage parlor on Seventh Avenue. That event kick-started his career. Soon, his paintings were selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Basquiat once paid for a doctor’s appointment with drawings.
He became close friends with famous lucrative artists who were also icons in New York and the rest of the world such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. He went on to conquer the art scene in Paris. The French newpaper Le Monde called him “the star of the American underground.”
This year, he is showcased in two exhibitions at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Philharmonie de Paris.
“The art world can never forget him, and neither showd New York,” said Sagesse. “In a time when Andy Warhol wanted to mass produce art that reflected beauty and a luxurious way of living with neon colors, Basquiat had galleries in Europe showing the ugly and the real face of Brooklyn’s sorrows.”
From Canvas To Stage: a Tribute to Basquiat will be an event produced by Wordsmith and artist, poet, and philanthropist, Danny Simmons on Sept. 8th from 7pm to 10pm at 500 25th St. Tickets are $45.
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President Joe Biden’s immediate predecessor faces an unprecedented 91 charges, across multiple cases that could total 712 years behind bars if he is convicted on all counts.
If you’re scoring at home, here’s an abridged version: In June, Biden’s immediate predecessor was accused of mishandling top-secret documents at his Florida estate. In July, charges were added accusing Biden’s immediate predecessor of asking for surveillance footage at his Mar-a-Lago home to be deleted.
In August the former president was indicted on felony charges for working to overturn the 2020 election. The four-count indictment includes charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding: the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. It asserts Biden’s immediate predecessor repeatedly told supporters he had won the election, despite knowing that was false, and how he tried to persuade state officials, Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to overturn the legitimate results.
Recently the former president and 18 co-defendants have been accused of breaking multiple Georgia election laws in a broad conspiracy, invoking the state’s version of the federal government’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) that targets criminal enterprises.
There are additional civil cases in New York, including where the former president was found liable in May for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carrol in the 1990s.
Though we’re several months away from a trial for any of the 91 counts facing the former president, the court of public opinion has already entered its verdict(s).
“Not guilty” is the verdict emanating from the former president’s base supporters. Many view the indictments as a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the “Biden crime family” and an overzealous FBI. Some have transformed former president into a messianic figure bruised for the inequities of his people, but upon him would be the punishment that would “Make America Great Again”—again.
Those at the other end of the political spectrum don’t understand why the myriad indictments required so much time before being issued. Many see the two-plus years between the alleged infractions and formal action taken as either fealty or incompetence. Not only is guilt the only possible outcome, they view the trial as a perfunctory exercise.
It is not required that the nation reaches the verdict stage to conclude this is not good for the country, we passed that rest stop long ago. Not being good for the country should not be a deterrent against where the facts lead. But there is no correlation between the former president’s guilt or innocence and what’s required to repair American democracy.
Biden’s immediate predecessor, in my view, was uniquely unqualified to occupy the Oval Office with his bombastic narcissism, lack of intellectual curiosity and thousands of proven falsehoods. During his four years in office the former president, along with a plethora of sycophants, removed the American presidency from its traditional paradigm of amorality, into an immorality that aligned with his personal self-interests.
It is understandably tempting to view a conviction on some of the aforementioned charges as a restoration to American democracy. But that’s only true if one holds the problems with American democracy began in 2016. It is the difference between a symptom and a root cause.
A symptom indicates the existence of something wrong. The root cause is the core issue — the ultimate reason behind the symptoms. Relieving the pain associated with a chronic headache offers much-needed relief, but will predictably return if the root cause is not addressed.
Biden’s immediate predecessor is a symptom; behind him is a root cause that remains largely unnoticed. That the former president could be a standard bearer for one of the major political parties, let alone ascend to the presidency is telling about the state of American democracy.
Grievance, anger and othering are not political policies. They are no more than temporary elixirs to fuel passions. While such impulses may prove pernicious toward certain groups, rarely, if ever, do they improve the lives of the supporters titillated by the banality.
As newsworthy as a former president being indicted for a series of crimes that places Watergate on par with jaywalking it is only a symptom. The root cause remains untreated. If the malignancy reaches the lymph nodes of our democracy the current symptoms will be an irrelevant memory
The Rev. Byron Williams (byron@publicmorality.org), a writer and the host of “The Public Morality” on WSNC 90.5, lives in Winston-Salem.
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Police are looking for two men on a scooter who allegedly knocked the yarmulke off the head of a Jewish man in Brooklyn Wednesday as part of a hate crime.
The suspects were allegedly riding a scooter at around 7:20 p.m. in Borough Park on Aug. 16 before approaching a 49-year-old man who was dressed in traditional Jewish clothing in front of 45-10 18th Ave.
The pair stopped the bike in front of the man, who was looking at his cellphone at the time. The suspects then uttered an unknown statement before the passenger on the scooter got off the bike and ripped the yarmulke off the victim’s head, according to police.
The passenger got back on the scooter, and they fled westbound on 18th Avenue toward 46th Street. No injuries were reported as a result of the incident.
Police have released photos of the suspects taken near the scene of the incident. The pair are described as being males in their late teens to early 20s with medium complexions and thin builds.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is conducting the investigation.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/, or on Twitter @NYPDTips.
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High court rejects billionaire’s effort to have sanctions imposed in March 2022 declared unlawful
A billionaire and close ally of Roman Abramovich has failed in his attempt to overturn UK sanctions, ending a challenge that had been seen as a crucial test of the government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The high court in London on Friday rejected the effort by Eugene Shvidler to have the sanctions on him declared unlawful.
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The notice, made in a letter that was sent to several of the families and obtained by The Associated Press, comes 1 1/2 years after military prosecutors and defense lawyers began exploring a negotiated resolution to the case.
“The Office of the Chief Prosecutor has been negotiating and is considering entering into pre-trial agreements,” or PTAs, the letter said. It told the families that while no plea agreement “has been finalized, and may never be finalized, it is possible that a PTA in this case would remove the possibility of the death penalty."
Some relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed outright in the terror attacks expressed outrage over the prospect of ending the case short of a verdict. The military prosecutors pledged to take their views into consideration and present them to the military authorities who would make the final decision on accepting any plea agreement.
The letter, dated Aug. 1, was received by at least some of the family members only this week. It asks them to respond by Monday to the FBI's victim services division with any comments or questions about the possibility of such a plea agreement. The FBI had no comment Wednesday on the letter.
It was Mohammed who presented the very idea of such an attack on the United States to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and who received authorization from bin Laden to craft what became the 9/11 attacks, the United States' 9/11 Commission concluded. The four other defendants are alleged to have supported the hijackers in various ways.
The attacks led to the U.S. “war on terror,” which included U.S. invasions and prolonged wars in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based, and in Iraq, which had no connection with the attacks.
In a statement Rep. Mike Lawler (R, NY-17) says, in part, "We owe it to the victims and their families to deliver justice - and that should mean the death penalty for these."
Jim Riches, who lost his firefighter son Jimmy in 9/11, went to Guantanamo for pretrial hearings in 2009. He remains deeply frustrated that the case remains unresolved 14 years later. He said he laughed bitterly when he opened the government’s letter Monday.
“How can you have any faith in it?” Riches asked. The update “gives us a little hope,” he said, but justice still seems far off.
“No matter how many letters they send, until I see it, I won’t believe it,” said Riches, a retired deputy fire chief in New York City. He said he initially was open to the use of military tribunals but now feels that the process is failing and that the 9/11 defendants should be tried in civilian court.
The Obama administration at one point sought to do so, but the idea was shelved because of opposition from some victims’ relatives and members of Congress and city officials’ concerns about security costs. As the 22nd anniversary of the attacks approaches, “those guys are still alive. Our children are dead,” Riches said.
It's about “holding people responsible, and they're taking that away with this plea,” said Peter Brady, whose father was killed in the attack. He received the letter this week.
The case "needs to go through the legal process,” not be settled in a plea deal, Brady said.
The 9/11 hearings have been on hold while military officials examine whether one of the defendants is competent to stand trial. Hearings are set to resume Sept. 18.
The five defendants were captured at various times and places in 2002 and 2003 and sent to Guantanamo for trial in 2006.
The case has played out with a changing series of defense lawyers and judges, all grappling with the legalities and logistics of the military trial. Much of the hearings have been mired in litigation over how much of the testimony should be considered inadmissible by the torture that defendants underwent in early CIA custody, including the waterboarding of Mohammed 183 times.
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