Untitled (Michelangelo's Fall of Phaeton)

During his brief career, Thompson achieved fame for his figurative expressionism rooted in the European tradition. Borrowing the composition of old-master paintings, he reworked them in bold color, eliminating narrative details and disregarding traditional perspective in favor of surface patterns and linear rhythms. The present gouache was executed on a reproduction of a drawing by Michelangelo representing the Fall of Phaeton. With its brilliant palette of warm colors emphasizing the themes of fire and passion, the drawing can be read as a metaphoric self-portrait of the young artist living dangerously -- Thompson would die of substance abuse at the age of 28. A jazz drummer and friend of famous jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Nina Simone, Thompson adapted the concepts of variations and arrangements from the jazz aesthetic. As the first Black artist to embrace a systematic reinterpretation of the old masters based on Black culture, he played a seminal role in the development of a practice that would become more common in the 1980s and 90s.