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Après une pause, Le mot juste en anglais est de retour — sauvé des archives d’Internet et entièrement reconstruit. Nous sommes ravis d’être de retour et reconnaissants que vous nous ayez retrouvés. Mais soyons honnêtes : nos portes sont ouvertes alors que nous sommes encore en train de réparer le toit. Il se peut que certaines images manquent, que quelques anomalies de mise en page datant de nos années sur TypePad soient encore en cours de correction, et qu’un lien rompu que nous n’avons pas encore repéré se cache quelque part.
Le mot juste en anglais a été créé il y a environ 15 ans afin d’ouvrir une fenêtre aux lecteurs français intéressés par la langue anglaise – avec toutes ses singularités et ses difficultés – et, plus généralement, par la culture du monde anglophone. Le blog avait pour vocation de servir de passerelle linguistique et culturelle entre le monde francophone et le monde anglo-américain. Ces dernières années, le blog a fait une pause (en partie à cause de la fermeture soudaine de Typepad, la société qui fournissait le logiciel). Nous sommes actuellement en train de remettre en ligne Le mot juste en anglais (ainsi que notre blog en anglais Wordsmiths Blog), afin que les internautes puissent accéder à l’importante collection d’articles existants, même si nous ne publions plus de nouveaux articles aussi fréquemment qu’auparavant.
À propos de Jonathan Goldberg
Votre bloggeur fidèle est traducteur et interprète assermenté auprès du Judicial Council of California (hébreu/anglais, français/anglais). Il a vécu sur quatre continents et a passé un an à Paris, où il a obtenu un diplôme en Civilisation française de la Sorbonne – un cas d’opsimathie, vu le fait qu’il n’a jamais appris le français à l’école ni pendant ses années d’études précédentes en droit. Il a été membre du Barreau d’Afrique du Sud et du Barreau d’Israël. Il a traduit en anglais RÉVOLUTION d’Emmanuel Macron.
Il ne faut pas le confondre avec un autre Jonathan encore plus ancien – la tortue (âgée de 192 ans), le plus vieil animal terrestre du monde, en confinement sur l’île de Sainte-Hélène (comme Napoléon autrefois). Les deux (Jonathan & Jonathan, et non Jonathan et Napoléon) se sont rencontrés lors d’une visite de l’île effectuée par votre bloggeur.
Jonathan the turtleJonathan Goldberg
Jonathan le grand et Jonathan le petit — réunis sur l’île de Sainte-Hélène.
12 August – the day Jean-Michel Basquiat died 27 years ago at the age of 27
January 1, 1995Jonathan Goldberg
Chargement de l’article…
Our latest contributor, John Wellington is a New Yorker whose art finds its inspiration in Old Master paintings, religious and pop icons, cinema, music, and his fascination with devotion, idolatry and the use of male and female imagery in art and life. He has shown in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Paris and London. His paintings may be seen on the website: johnwellington.com
John Wellington has recently released the first three volumes of Idols Demons Saints, a series of e-books based on his sketchbooks, showing the process of creating from the first inked line to a finished work of art. (See John Wellington : Idols, Demons and Saints by James F. Cooper)
John leads painting groups to Paris.
oil on aluminum, 48 x 25.25 inches See explanation below of the painting's legend [*]
John Wellington in his studio See "Studio Visit" video below [**]
We are most grateful to Mr. Wellington for agreeing to write for the blog and for providing an artist’s perspective of Jean-Michel Basquiat, one that is more personal than could have been given by any art critic.
Basquiat developed from a graffiti artist to a painter of canvases. He was not quite as famous as his friend, Andy Warhol, but his neo-expressionist and primitivist works, which confronted issues of racism, identity and social tension, were displayed in galleries and museums internationally.
He died in 1988 from an overdose of heroin and cocaine but his fame has not subsided since then. As only two examples of his continued popularity
– the exhibition “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time”, presented for 3 months earlier this year at the Art Gallery of Ontario”, the first major retrospective of Basquiat in Canada, featuring about 85 large-scale paintings;
– and the display of some of his works at the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, whose owner was friendly with both Warhol and Basquiat in their lifetimes.
Warhol, Basquiat & Bischofberger
[1] Signature associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat, derived from "same old shit", abridged to "Same Old" then simply to SAMO.
Basquiat and me
When Jean-Michel Basquiat and I met in the Spring of 1975 he wasn’t famous.
Our meeting remains a vivid memory for me not only being the first time I smoked, but because we were stopped by New York’s Finest and questioned while we were hanging out in Gramercy Park with pot and rolling papers in our pockets. The police did not search us and eventually let us go back up to Eric’s home across the street. That evening would be the only time that Jean-Michel and I would talk in his short life.
Five years later, in 1980, while I was beginning my sophomore year at The Rhode Island School of Design, Jean-Michel had already become a star of the downtown music and club scene with his band Gray.
By the time I received a B.F.A. in 1983 and returned to New York to live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Jean-Michel had dated the soon to be famous singer Madonna and “The Radiant Child,” written about him by the poet René Ricard for ArtForum, brought him to the attention of the art world.
with Madonna with Warhol
2:52 minutes
He painted a series of works in Modena, Italy, another series in a studio in Venice, California that Larry Gagosian had provided for him, and began showing internationally alongside some of the most famous artists of his time. He had also produced a rap single with Rammellzee and K-Robb, and began what would be a two year collaboration of paintings with his mentor Andy Warhol.
In 1985, while I was bartending at a restaurant on Upper Madison Avenue, Jean-Michel was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, wearing a dark Armani (or was itComme des Garçon?) suit – AND barefooted – for the article New Money, New Art: The Marketing of an American Artist. He had also been making noteworthy art for five years and was widely recognized for his achievements. While Jean-Michel was becoming an international art star, I was trying to learn Old Master techniques of painting in my studio in Greenpoint and was still as much art student as artist. The contrast of our lives was not lost on me. I was in awe that someone so young could bring something not only new, but personal and vulnerable to the world of art. There have of course been other artists like this. Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon when he was 26 years old, and Egon Schiele, like Jean-Michel had developed his signature style at the cusp of his twenties. For me, still struggling with handling paint and trying to find my visual voice, Jean-Michel’s art and life were awesome in the true meaning of the word.
Although we never hung out again, I would see Jean-Michel at clubs like Area and Palladium in the mid 1980’s. A friend from college had a VERY short romance with Jean-Michel, where she told me that on their first night, in the back of a limo downing bottles of Moët, he said how “used” he felt by the art world. A year or two later, on August 12, 1988, he was found dead from a drug overdose on the top floor of the loft on Great Jones Street he had rented from Andy Warhol (who had died months before in 1987). When I heard that Jean-Michel had died, I was working at Marvel Comics as a colorist, collaborating on graphic novels for artists such as Jean Giraud AKA Moebius, painting on my days off, and starting an MFA program at The New York Academy of Art. Jean-Michel had painted studios full of singular art, lived a rock star’s life, and died, while I was still trying to just learn how to paint.
Marvel Comics graphic novel JW colored for Moebius Portrait in gouache (an opaque water color) JW painted one night in 1998during dinner at the home of Moebius
There have been a number of young masters but so many of them die young – especially at that Rock and Roll age of 27. In contrast there are the slow learners, the goats that go up the hill one considered step after another. We slow learners need all those extra years of living just to maybe catch up. I finally sold my first painting at the age of 30, in 1991, a few months before the birth of my son. Eventually I sold enough art to make it my profession. Now in my 50’s, I still paint and sculpt almost every day. My artistic vision over the years is telling its own story, and every now and then, I include a reference to Jean-Michel in my art. I still have my copy of the New York Magazine article that featured him on a bookshelf in my studio. It is the one magazine I will never throw out.
So often one is attracted to what is most like us, but just as often I am drawn to the opposite of my spirit in both art and life. Jean-Michel created while high, staying up for a week at a time, then crashing for another week; scrawling, painting, and composing his angst, his humor, his skulls and his crowns on canvas and any other material that was available to him, and all beginning before his twenty-first birthday. How could I have not been awed by him?
John Wellington
Blog notes :
["]Inspired by the Black Madonna represented in Haitian art, John composed a Madonna clad in armor, holding a young Jean-Michel Basquiat. “I’m not a real person. I’m a legend.” was something Jean-Michel said a month before he died, when comparing himself to Marilyn Monroe, who was referenced in the song he was listening to - A Candle in the Wind by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. There is a golden tattoo of a crown on the young boy’s right arm.
[1]"The 27 Club" or "Club 27" is the colloquial name given to a group of influential rock musicians that died at the young age of 27. There are a few "members" who are always listed in "27 Club" groupings – such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain , and more recently Amy Winehouse - while other musicians who were 27 at the time of their death are included sporadically. Everyone on this list will never turn 28 – they will be forever 27.
later, Jean-Michel and his friend Al Diaz would gain underground notoriety by spraying their subversive SAMO© phrases across the walls of downtown Manhattan.
wearing a dark Armani (or was it Comme des Garçon?) suit – AND barefooted – for the article 
felt by the art world. A year or two later, on August 12, 1988, he was found dead from a drug overdose on the top floor of the loft on Great Jones Street he had rented from Andy Warhol (who had died months before in 1987). When I heard that Jean-Michel had died, I was working at Marvel Comics as a colorist, collaborating on graphic novels for artists such as 
Marvel Comics graphic novel JW colored 
["] 