Maybe André Heller is behind the whole thing. Everything was just a prank, just like the campaign with the broomsticks, from which Heller nailed this Basquiat frame and sold it for a lot of money. Jean-Michel Basquiat was the first African American artist to break through in the white-dominated art world. One would think that an open-hearted guy like Basquiat, for example, would have totally rejected the current Moscow regime.
It is all the more surprising that Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, of all people, was filmed wearing a blue Basquiat T-shirt at the G-20 summit in Bali. It shouldn’t come as a surprise if this t-shirt will soon be available for sale at André Heller. And of course you can also buy Lavrov’s iPhone and his Apple Watch from Heller, which can also be seen in the video. The video was released by Lavrov’s ministry. Apparently to show how healthy the boss is. Heart problems and hospital and all that. The fact that the Russian foreign minister, of all people, prefers US digital design and outerwear advertising anti-colonial New York artists can actually only be a prank.
So did Heller manipulate the video? At the very least, he could have put an oligarch’s niece in Lavrov’s vacation home, with a few fun props. Really, you should keep a very close eye on the museum shop of the Vienna Albertina in the coming days. A Basquiat exhibition can be seen there until the beginning of January. Woe betide any outrageously expensive t-shirts!