If only they were a bit less cool: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons at the Guggenheim Bilbao

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time
Guggenheim Bilbao, until 1 November

Jeff Koons: Retrospective
Guggenheim Bilbao, until 27 September

Manhattan in the late 1970s early 1980s was, by all accounts, a pretty scary place. It was caked in graffiti, lawless, and in certain areas, almost emptied by the so-called ‘white flight’ to the suburbs. It was, in other words, a perfect stomping ground for artists and musicians.

This is the romantic notion, anyway. It’s what someone will tell you when trying to justify Jean-Michel Basquiat’s posthumous superstar status and its accompanying price tag. His work is supposed to evoke not just the hip-hop heavy whirl of pre-Aids New York, but if you are to believe the (mostly white, middle-class) curators who burn the candle for him, he also captured the black American experience of the era. Personally, I’ve always found Basquiat a troublesome artist. I’d never seen any single painting that legitimised the ‘genius’ tag.

His biography is romantic in a way that makes Shelley look like Richard Madeley.