For some years, promises of a full-scale Bob Thompson exhibit
tantalized those of us interested in the work of this talented,
self-destructive, and all-too-short-lived African-American painter.
(Yes, another one.) A show finally materialized this fall,
offering a welcome opportunity to take stock of what Thompson
managed to pack into a brief eight years as an intensely serious,
full-time painter. He died in Rome in 1966, just short of his
twenty-ninth birthday—
exactly the same age as Frédéric Bazille when he was
killed in the Franco-Prussian war and a year older than Jean-Michel
Basquiat when he, like Thompson, died of a drug overdose.
Comparisons here are, I suppose, inevitable. Like Basquiat, Thompson
was not only a confirmed fan of illegal substances, but also achieved
a great deal of success, at least by the more modest standards of
the 1960s art world, while remarkably young: a series of
solo shows in several well-regarded New York galleries, favorable
attention from critics and collectors, and a contract with the
prestigious Martha Jackson Gallery—all by the time he was
twenty-six. Unlike Basquiat, though, Thompson was
a deeply committed,
enthusiastic, wholly unironic painter with an informed sense of
connection to the great tradition of Western painting. His ambition
seems to have been focused on what he could achieve in his art, not
on media-driven notions of fame and glamour.
Thompson was a natural storyteller who quickly found his voice,
developing a language of brilliant, almost harsh, saturated hues,
thick paint, and blocky structures,