Basquiat and Banksy take center stage at the Hirshhorn

The Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden explores the connection between artists Jean Michel Basquiat and Banksy in a new exhibition opening later this month.

Titled “Basquiat x Banksy”, the year-long exhibition will feature two related paintings by the groundbreaking artists: Basquiat’s Boy and dog in a Johnnypump and Banksy’s Banksquiat. Boy and dog in Stop and Search. This is the first time that works by both artists have been shown at the museum in Washington, DC

“Positioning Basquiat with Banksy spotlights elements of Basquiat’s legacy, particularly the movement from street art to museums through his studio practice,” said Melissa Chiu, director of the Hirshhorn, in a statement statement.

Basquiat was a prolific neo-expressionist artist who drew inspiration from “hip hop, jazz, graffiti, beat literature, pop art, folk art, comics and even ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ to forge an emotionally charged style that continues to dazzle,” as Amy Crawford wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2017. He died in 1988 at the age of 27, but his legacy lives on.

The artist created Boy and dog in a Johnnypump in 1982. The brightly colored piece depicts a skeleton boy standing next to an open fire hydrant with a dog (which are sometimes called “johnny pumps”). In 2020, American businessman Ken Griffin paid more than 100 million dollars for the large piece, which is almost 14 feet long.

“[Basquiat] wants to paint these figures, both dog and boy, from the inside,” Hendrik Folkerts, curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicagotold the Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Johnson several months after the sale. He added that the bright hues surrounding them represent a “blazing hot summer landscape.”

Several decades later, Banksy, the anonymous British street artistcreated a tribute to the piece called Banksquiat. Boy and dog in Stop and Search. It features the same skeletal figures, but in this version two police officers knock on the boy.

Banksy painted the piece on a wall in London’s Barbican Centre in 2017when the museum was about to organize an exhibition of Basquiat’s work. He also made a small mural of people waiting in line for a Ferris wheel. Banksy announced the new works on Instagram, to write: “A big new Basquiat show is opening at the Barbican, a place that is normally keen to remove all the graffiti from the walls.”

The Barbican left the Banksy mural in place and covered it with a protective acrylic sheet. In 2018, Banksy created a wood-paneled version of the piece, which last sold $9.7 million in May 2023.

Banksy’s interpretation of Basquiat’s piece “highlights the racial and social inequality that permeated Basquiat’s life, as well as recurring themes in his work that emerged from his real-life experiences,” according to Hirshhorn’s statement.

In addition to the two paintings, the Hirshhorn exhibition will feature twenty small Basquiat works of art on paper and wood, created between 1979 and 1985. Center 81a film about Basquiat and his contemporaries that was released in 2000 will also be shown at the museum.

“Basquiat x Banksy” comes during the Hirshhorn’s 50th anniversary celebration. The museum, which was established by Congress in the 1960s opened in 1974also celebrates this milestone with “Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860-1960”, an extensive exhibition with more than 200 works of art.

“Basquiat × Banksy” will be on display at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC from September 29, 2024 to October 26, 2025.

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