Name: Jasper Krabbé
Born: The Netherlands, 1970
ARTZUID edition(s): ARTZUID 2023
About Jasper Krabbé
The sculpture JMB on Tour St. Jacques (2022) by artist Jasper Krabbé is a tribute to the New York painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988. After Krabbé visited an exhibition by Basquiat in the Center Pompidou in Paris, he saw a statue of a winged lion on the Gothic Tour Saint-Jacques, a church tower from the early 15th century, from his roof terrace. This image made such a strong impression on him, that he made a sketch for a sculpture on the spot. The lion with wings is a unique, ancient symbol representing strength, pride, grandeur, nobility, and courage. This theme first appeared around the year 300 BC in Anatolia in present-day Turkey and became the symbol for the Catholic Church of the evangelist Mark, the patron saint of the city of Venice.
Krabbé believed that a lion with wings could symbolize Jean-Michel Basquiat, the renowned graffiti artist who paved the way for much of contemporary painting and is renowned for his autobiographical paintings. The image of a flying lion also represents something impossible, such as the artist’s task to make his vision come alive even when he is often misunderstood in his own time. In Krabbé’s ode to Basquiat, he made use of found objects, known in the visual arts as objets trouvés. The artists found two tables in his new studio that had been left behind by a previous tenant. Stacked on top of each other, these can be seen as the Tour Saint-Jacques. On the Hembrug site, where he currently has his studio, he found a pallet which he also integrated into the work. A painted shape depicting a lion is a rotating part of the sculpture that is intended as a wind vane. The wind vane literally does what the original statue of the winged lion on the Tour St Jacques does, it defies wind. But this wind vane also has symbolic value, it is exemplary of what Basquiat did; despite the initial criticism he received about his work, he kept going steadily. It led him to his famous statement: I don’t listen to what critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.