This text is part of the special book Plaisirs
What remains of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s New York, 34 years after his death? The question arises as the new exhibition King Pleasurepresented at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, explores the rich legacy left by the icon ofunderground New Yorkers of the 1980s. Weekend in the Big Apple to discover it through the life of a great artist.
To date, no retrospective has painted such a complete and intimate portrait of Basquiat. The artist’s sisters, Lisane and Jeanine, helped by their mother-in-law, Nora Fitzpatrick, have spent the past five years gathering an incredible wealth of memories. In the end, more than 200 works, photos, childhood drawings, letters, poems and other African statuettes are exhibited inside the Starrett-Lehigh Building for the exhibition-event dedicated to the king of neo-expressionism. .
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure offers a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in the artist’s daily life through an impressive reconstruction of his studio at 57 Great Jones Street. Everything is here. Even the bicycle he rode to get around the Big Apple (at a time when it was difficult to hail a yellow taxi when you had black skin).
Located in the trendy NoHo district of Manhattan, the former loft is a must-visit place of pilgrimage for followers of Basquiat. The building has long been covered in graffiti paying homage to one of the pioneers of street art. Today, the same facade displays a desperately immaculate white.
Another New York
The joyful chaos that reigned in the studio where Basquiat was painting with the television on and the music at full volume gave way to the cozy atmosphere of a Japanese restaurant intended for a hand-picked clientele. The artist’s legacy can be summed up in a commemorative plaque which recalls that he lived and worked in this former stable belonging to his friend and mentor Andy Warhol.
It is also within these walls that Basquiat joined the infamous “club of 27”, he who died of a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988. Thirty-four years have passed since his disappearance. And it is clear that the Manhattan of 2022 no longer has much to do with the one that the icon may have known. All the major clubs frequented by the artist have long since closed, from Club 57 in the East Village to the Mudd Club in Tribeca, including CBGB, Area and Hurrah.
The Palladium met the same fate after New York University bought the ballroom. Basquiat was, along with Warhol and Keith Haring, among the faithful of this mythical club, for which he had created an impressive mural, Not Nilein 1985. The 41-foot-wide work now sits enthroned in a huge room at the expo King Pleasurereproducing the interior decor of the Palladium, facing a wall of TV screens broadcasting images of the crazy parties of the time.
Other signs dear to Basquiat have been sacrificed on the altar of real estate speculation. In 2014, Pearl Paint, the iconic Canal Street boutique where he stocked up on gouaches and charcoals, was replaced by a luxury apartment complex. The record store Tower Records, where he found his jazz and bebop albums, also died at the corner of 4e Street and Broadway.
For its part, the Strand Bookstore is resisting and still sells its books, new and used, in the East Village. Admirer of the authors of the beat generation, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, like the works of the anatomist illustrator Paul Richer, Basquiat found his happiness in the shelves of the New York bookstore which nourished his inspiration in the heart of the 1980s. .
The Brooklyn Kid
His early years in Brooklyn also shaped the artist he became. Basquiat grew up between the neighborhoods of Park Slope and East Flatbush, where he lived with his parents, Matilde, of Puerto Rican origin, and Gerard, a Haitian refugee who fled Duvalierism. It was his mother who introduced him to the world of art by offering him, very early on, a subscription card to the Brooklyn Museum (removed from the boxes for the exhibition King Pleasure).
When he was not hanging out in the aisles of the great museum which would later exhibit his notebooks, the young Basquiat often accompanied Matilde to the nearby Botanical Garden. The child from Brooklyn also liked to come and get lost in the immense green oasis of Prospect Park, not far from the Green-Wood cemetery, where he is buried today.
After his parents broke up, the budding artist joined his father at 553 Pacific Street, near Boerum Hill. It was in this charming little neighborhood of Brooklyn with red sandstone houses that he met Al Diaz on the benches of the City-As-School, intended for rebels at heart who had not found their place in the circuit. of traditional education.
With his graffiti artist sidekick, Basquiat created his famous alter ego SAMO, to sign his first anti-conformist slogans on the walls and corridors of the New York subway. It’s 1978, and the gifted 18-year-old is about to leave his father’s apartment to “become a star”, like his heroes Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix. We know the rest of the story.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure is presented at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, in New York, until September 5, 2022.
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