In certain respects, the Currier Museum’s Jean Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation may be regarded as a modest exhibition, as it features only six works by Basquiat and seven large paintings by Watts. But the power and significance of an exhibition is not simply a function of its size and scope. Even an exhibition consisting of a single painting – such as Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo currently on view at Madrid’s Prado – can be an extraordinary event. The joint exhibition of Basquiat and Watts is likewise such an event, allowing viewers to appreciate their dialogues with the tradition of Western and African art, and with each other.

Their deepening friendship was unfortunately cut short in 1988 by Basquiat’s untimely death, a mere seven months after the two artists initially met at Basquiat’s solo exhibition at Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris that same year. Basquiat had travelled to Africa in 1986, and by a strange coincidence had even visited the village of Korhogo in Côte d’Ivoire where Watts was from. Their camaraderie took root and blossomed from the day they met, with Basquiat insisting upon leaving his own exhibition to visit Watts’ Paris studio. Basquiat was immediately captivated by Watts’ paintings and helped to promote his artistic career. Following their excursions together in Paris and later in New Orleans, Basquiat was planning with Watts to return to Africa when his fatal overdose occurred.

Basquiat and Watts have very different styles, although they both may be seen as neo-expressionists, not afraid of combining figuration and abstraction, employing words, phrases, numbers and other symbols with which to explore certain themes that occupied both painters. A Distant Conversation highlights a common interest in death, truth, and what one might call a certain heroism or courage in the face of our mortality. Consider Watts’ Intercessor #0 (1989), painted only a year after Basquiat’s death. The image is divided vertically: on the right side a white eye or leaf-like shape predominates, sharply defined against a thickly........

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