Basil "Baz" King

Basil King was a student at the college from 1951 until 1956.

Basil King was born in 1935 in London and immigrated to the US in 1947.

Before BMC, he attended art classes at the Detroit Museum and attended summer school at the Detroit Society for Arts and Crafts. He studied Albers’ color theory at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, MI, under instructor Donald Thrall, who was also a BMC student, and is expelled from Cass for chronic truancy.

Basil first visited BMC with his mother, at the age of 16. He was admitted after meeting Charles Olson and was the youngest of his cohort. Upon leaving the college he completed an apprenticeship as an abstract expressionist painter in San Francisco and New York.

Moving to NYC in 1959, he was in conversation with Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell among others, was a frequent visitor to the studios of Franz Kline and Philip Guston, and worked as a studio assistant for Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko.

His early work as an abstract expressionist grew in the early 1970s into a new approach to art employing fluid forms that combine abstraction, surrealism, and figuration. He continues his visual art and writing practice daily in Brooklyn. A curated collection of Basil King's work is available here.

His books include Identity (2000), Warp Spasm (2001), Mirage: A Poem in 22 Sections (2003), 77 Beasts/Basil King’s Beastiary (2007), Learning to Draw/A History (2011), and, most recently, The Spoken Word/The Painted Hand (2014). In 2010 he exhibited his visual art at Poets House in New York. He is also the subject and narrator of a 2012 film, Basil King: Mirage, by the artists Nicole Peyrafitte and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte.

Basil has a website that shared biographical information and artworks, as well as an active Instagram account. Basil also participated in the Considering Art Podcast in 2024 and that recording can be heard here.

Alternative Names

Basil Herschel Cohen

Relationships

Wife: Fellow BMC student, Martha Davis

Black Mountain College Project

Mary Emma Harris interviewed Basil and Martha in 1997 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.

Topics: M King introduction to BMC through Black Mountain Review, application for 1955 summer session, and objections of father, director of UNC Press – M King typing course and move to San Francisco – meeting of King and Davis in San Francisco – B King studies at BMC – b King automobile accident at BMC – B King description of Charles Olson – B King childhood in England and war influence – B King immigration to United States – B and M King on jazz – introduction to Abstract Expressionism in Detroit – introduction to Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning in New York – Joseph Fiore as art teacher – Charles Olson’s classes – study with Esteban Vicente at BMC – family objections to marriage – B King’s career as artist – socialism as realistic system or not – purchase of Brooklyn house – M King family background – John Allcott at UNC Chapel Hill art department – students from Cass Tech at BMC – Wes Huss theater productions – M King on John Stix as teacher in New York – final years at college – 1955 summer – Tom Field automobile accident at Lake Eden – Peek’s Tavern

Courses Taken

Fall 1952- 1953 - Painting (Fiore), Drawing (Fiore), Musical Composition (Wolpe), Theater (Huss), Hebrew (Morley)

Winter 1952 - 1953 - Painting (Viente), Drawing (Viente), Hebrew (Morley), Theater, Musical Composition (Wolpe)

Summer 1952 - 1953 - Drawing (Viente), Painting (Viente)