VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.” —Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988)
The Broad announces Time Decorated: The Musical Influences of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a three-part video series dedicated to the famed New York City artist. The video series includes three segments, Jazz and Bebop, Punk and No Wave, and Bebop 2 Hip Hop via Basquiat, where musicians, creatives and scholars discuss the impact of each music genre on Basquiat’s now iconic style. All three segments were filmed at the Broad, in newly installed Basquiat galleries displaying the museum’s uniquely deep representation of the artist’s work.
Home to an unparalleled collection of Basquiat’s art, The Broad seeks to honor his legacy by exploring its musical foundations. For the first time in the museum’s five-year history, all thirteen paintings by Basquiat in the Broad collection will be on view when the museum reopens to the public, including Horn Players, Untitled 1981, and With Strings II. New digital tours and a segment of the series Up Close with The Broad’s Curators will give the public access to the Basquiat installation as well as a deeper look at his works while the museum is currently closed due to COVID-19.
Today we share Bebop 2 Hip Hop via Basquiat, featuring Professor Todd Boyd of USC. Boyd speaks about the through lines from bebop to early hip-hop via use of particular iconography in Basquiat’s paintings and showcase musical pillars such as Public Enemy, Rammellzee, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
The series launched on January 21st, across The Broad’s digital platforms, the first video segment of the series, Jazz and Bebop, was produced, co-directed and written by Alyssa Lein Smith of Quincy Jones Productions and featured LA jazz musician Terrace Martin, as well as input from Quincy Jones himself. Martin delves into how the bebop genre, born in New York City much like Basquiat, played a role in his artistic vision.
On January 28 The Broad shared Punk and No Wave, hosted by James Spooner, co-founder of the Afropunk Festival and who ran an underground club on Canal Street in the early ‘90s. The segment features tunes by James Chance and The Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Basquiat’s band Gray, Liquid Liquid, DNA, and Mars.
Founding Director Joanne Heyler said, “The Broad’s new series, Time Decorated, offers nuanced insights from commentators whose expertise and knowledge in jazz and bebop, hip hop, and afro-punk illuminate music’s bedrock role in Basquiat’s life and art. The series explores the wealth of music references in his paintings, and the themes of justice and resistance inseparable from those references. As the museum with the deepest representation of Basquiat’s work in the United States, the Broad strives to present programming to bring to our audience a clear understanding of his achievements.”
The series includes works by bebop artists such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. Music for this segment includes Ornithology by Parker, Hot House by Parker and Gillespie, Ol Man Rebop by Gillespie, and music from Martin’s Dinner Party.
During the temporary closure of the museum due to COVID-19, the Broad has introduced new ways to present its unparalleled collection to the public including Talks & Conversations, Artist Spotlights, and Family Art Workshops. Last fall the museum unveiled L.A. Intersections, a three-part video series, filmed at the Broad, that incorporated music, poetry, and dance into the museum’s galleries. The Broad’s digital programming is available on demand at thebroad.org/fromhome.
About Todd Boyd | Dr. Todd Boyd, a.k.a. “Notorious Ph.D.,” is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the University Of Southern California School Of Cinematic Arts. Dr. Boyd is a media commentator, author, producer, consultant and scholar. He is especially well known for appearing as a commentator in numerous documentaries. Some recent documentary appearances include The Last Dance (ESPN/Netflix), winner of the 2020 Emmy award for “Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series,” The Movies (CNN, 2019), I Am Richard Pryor (Paramount Network/Comedy Central, 2019), Sammy Davis, Jr.: I Gotta Be Me (American Masters/PBS, 2019), Shut Up and Dribble (Showtime, 2018), The Nineties, and The History of Comedy (CNN, 2017) among numerous other titles.
Dr. Boyd also appeared in Twenty Feet From Stardom (2013), winner of the 2014 Academy Award for “Best Documentary Feature” and the 2015 Grammy Award for “Best Music Film.” Dr. Boyd was Executive Producer of the Netflix documentary, At All Costs: Life Inside AAU Basketball (2016), and he was writer/producer on the Paramount Pictures celebrated cult classic film The Wood (1999). He has written over one hundred articles, essays, reviews, and other forms of commentary, with his work having appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune and ESPN, among other publications.
Dr. Boyd’s books include The Notorious Ph.D’s Guide to the Super Fly 70s, Young Black Rich and Famous, The New H.N.I.C, and Am I Black Enough For You?
About The Broad | The Broad is a contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement, all within a landmark building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. The Broad is home to 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is one of the world’s leading collections of postwar and contemporary art and welcomes more than 900,000 visitors a year.
The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984.
