This month is all about heroes, and the art world has many of them. From the likes of Peter Max, who raised funds with his art to save the Statue of Liberty when it was near ruin, and then in 2001, painted all of the first responders who fell responding to the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11 to present these paintings to the family. To Michael Godard, who lost his daughter, Paige, to cancer at 16 and continues to raise money with his artwork for St. Jude, the hospital she was treated at. We are going to take a bit of a different direction, rather than presenting his work, we are going to talk about what made this issues artist so special.
However, in this issue, we are going to talk about a different type of hero. On August 1, 2023, the art world mourned the passing of David "Lebo" Le Batard, who had spent a good portion of the last year of his life in the hospital, dying of cancer. He was only 50. To understand why I consider him to be a hero, first, you need to understand where he comes from.
Lebo got his start in Miami and became one of Florida's most well-known artists, though he was born in NY to Cuban Immigrant parents. He pioneered the innovative art style for which he gave the playful name "Postmodern Cartoon Expressionism." In this style he incorporates bold colors and fun phrases, symbols and letters with adorable animals like cats and owls. With his art style, he helped bring more joy into the world. Upon his death, many auctioneers said they had thought that Lebo would have one day been considered a master if only he had more time, but in my opinion, his legacy is far more impressive even with his relatively short period of time creating art.
As a child, Lebo studied comics and cartoons because, in this humorous and casual art form, he saw limitless potential. He was as inspired by Saturday morning cartoons as he was by Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Upon his passing, a senior gallery director for the gallery company Park West had this to say regarding Lebo. "David was one of the most extraordinary artists I've ever met in my career. I often said that I believed he was destined for greatness because there was something residing deeply in his work that usually wasn't immediately recognized. He was a seeker in the greatest sense and a spiritual antenna to wisdom, knowledge, and the most profound aspects of the human experience. He will be deeply missed by the Park West family and all of his collectors and fans worldwide, and we will do our best to continue to spread his message and shine his light."
Two weekends after his death, Park West also hosted an online auction in memory of Lebo. To date, this is the longest online auction that they have hosted, lasting at almost 4 hours as people bid on his works and shared touching tributes of meeting Lebo and the smiles his artwork brings.
In life, what Lebo wanted more than anything was to engage people in art and make them smile and feel good. I heard from several Lebo collectors that they didn't "get" art, and while they still didn't understand Lebo's style, it made them smile, and that was good enough for them to be interested in his art. Lebo really met his goal of making people interested in art and happy when they look.
Perhaps what truly inspired me to consider him a hero is the information that his wife wrote about in a memorial post on Facebook. In it, she spoke about his time in the hospital fighting cancer. He never let this horrible disease take away the things he loved and was still so invested in making people happy through his art. She spoke about how he continued to make original drawings and he would hang them on the wall in his hospital room. Every time a nurse, doctor or someone to draw blood came into the room, he would talk to them about his love of art and insist they take one of the drawings off the wall to keep in thanks for helping him in his time of need. This really captured how important it was for Lebo to share his love of art and make connections with people through art. Even while fighting terminal cancer, he wanted to bring beauty into other people's lives. And he succeeded.
Lebo will forever be greatly missed by those who had the chance to know him or hear him speak passionately about what art means to him and what he wanted to make it mean to others. But his legacy will live on in his artwork, in his art on the hull of the Norwegian Getaway, in his collabs with other brands and in his everyday products like shirts. He will continue to make people smile and fall in love with his art over and over again.
Lebo makes me think of the song "Only the Good Die Young", and Lebo was one of the best.
I thought it fitting to end this article with one of his paintings. It is called See you on the other side.
