Bob THOMPSON (1937-1966)
Island Reflections
Oil on masonite
Signed and dated lower right “R. Thompson ’58”. Title on the reverse.
17 3/4 x 36 in. / 45 x 91,5 cm.
Provenance: – Peter Cook, Kingston, NJ
– Private Collection, New York, NY
– Michali Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
Suppose that Basquiat had been a smash and Hollywood wanted a follow-up. There’d be Bob Thompson the movie. And they wouldn’t have to make up a thing: young black hipster painter pals with legendary jazz musicians, lives high, wanders through Europe, shows with legendary New York gallery (Martha Jackson), lives high, dies horribly early, at twenty-nine, in 1966. If he hadn’t existed, as was said of Pollock, Time-Life would have had to invent him. Given the mythifying circumstances, we’re way overdue another look at Thompson’s actual work, to which Meyer Schapiro, no less, ascribed a “rhapsodical hotness.” And how many artists get written about by both Schapiro and Jackie McLean?
(David Frankel, Art Forum Sep. 1998, for the Bob Thompson exhibition at the Whitney Museum.)
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