New York City is my home and has been since the 80’s. I was too young to have known the artist JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT but my first boss, at La MaMa ETC, Wickham Boyle, did.
For those who don’t follow the fine art world the name, Basquiat might not have any relevance. But for those who follow the work of African-American fine artists, this man's art, life, and death remains of interest. At a recent art sale this past May “Untitled,” a Basquiat painting from 1982, sold for $110.5 million at a Sotheby auctionThe news of the sale was significant because, in this exclusive world not many pieces of art ever get to join the $100 million-plus club and it was reported, in the salesroom, that the amount a collector was willing to pay made the assembled crowd gasp: I think Jean-Michel Basquiat would have loved to witness that collective inhale of air! It’s a 1982 painting of a skull.
In the new documentary (screening at NYFF55) “Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat” by Sara Driver gives an intimate glimpse into his life, struggle and his
rise in the art world. “I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life,” that’s a Basquiat quote. In many ways it was his very lean years in New York City that helped shape his work. And he made art everywhere. That included using the sides of buildings, discarded pieces of trash, refrigerators doors, bathroom doors, radiators, coats, dresses, and canvases--as a canvas; all of them an outlet to help express the ideas, thoughts, and imagery that lived inside the man. In examing Jean-Michel Basquiat's life pre-fame, Driver weaves the story of his life in the city with never before seen works, writings, and photographs.
When I asked my former boss about Basquiat’s personality— she offered this slice from her memory: “OK so Jean Michel was a downtown fixture and as so was I, not a cult figure, but still I was downtown endlessly running a theater called LaMama. All of us on the Lower East Side and so I saw him. I rode my bike everywhere, at all hours of the night, went to the Mud Club, Area, CBGB's and Phoebes. We were a much smaller group back then, just kids, as Patti Smith's book title says. Jean Michel had a sweet, far away sense about him and he was often scribbling and making, what we now know is world-changing art.
I was not into drugs or booze. No high and mighty calling, just not my thing. But I went to parties where everything flowed, and then I'd ride my bike home to TriBeCa, where only artists and rats seemed to live.
I saw Jean Michel at his most human in TriBeCa down on North Moore Street at Carlos and Paulette Almada's crazy spread out the loft. Carlos was involved with the Club MK. We had kids the same age, I lived across the street and Jean Michel was often there for dinners or holidays and of course, the kids adored him. He was one himself.
Tragedy seemed sewn into the arts community in the 80's. The AIDS crisis was seemingly everywhere and it terrorized all of us as we watched friends fall every week. So when Jean Michel succumbed to a drug overdose it hit hard, but it was another tall timber hitting the cluttered forest floor.
I bet he would not have been surprised to see the copycats and soaring prices. Don't we all wish we had scooped up the scribbles as a nest egg for old age after decades downtown.”
His life was short: Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York City, NY. He died on August 12, 1988.
To see the work in Los Angeles, here is the link to The Broad, located at 221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
collection: https://thebroad.org/art/jean%E2%80%90michel-basquiat
In New York, the documentary is part of NYFF 55https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2017/
