Art Scribe No. 51 (March–April 1985) — Basquiat, Kathy Acker, Lynne Cooke

Art Scribe No. 51
March–April 1985

Cover: Bruce McLean
Featuring: Jean-Michel Basquiat (ICA London)

Softcover magazine
Published: March–April 1985
London: Artscribe Ltd
Editor: Matthew Collings

Contents:
– Jean Michel Basquiat — review by Kathy Acker (p.52)
– Neo-Primitivism — essay by Lynne Cooke (p.16)
– Bruce McLean interview by Mel Gooding
– Reviews: Jonathan Borofsky, Richard Wilson, Ger van Elk, Ian McKeever, Chagall, among others
– Report: 2nd International Contemporary Art Fair

A mid-1980s London art magazine capturing Basquiat at a precise moment of reception in the UK. He appears twice here — first through Kathy Acker’s review of his ICA exhibition, written with her characteristic urgency, and again within Lynne Cooke’s essay on Neo-Primitivism, where his work is folded into a broader critical debate around authorship, instinct, and cultural projection.

The issue sits at an intersection: literary critique, institutional framing, and the British art context encountering Basquiat in real time. The Bruce McLean cover further grounds it within the language of British conceptual and post-performance practice of the period.

For Basquiat-focused collectors, this functions less as a magazine and more as a document of early critical positioning — before the narrative settled.

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