Al Diaz
Working under the joint name of Samo, Diaz collaborated with Basquiat on his early graffiti projects in the Seventies
Jean-Michel Basquiat and I became friends in the autumn of 1976, when we were just teenagers. Both of us had transferred to City-as-School, a school for clever misfits in Greenwich Village. Even then, he was a fragile person. His life at home with his family in Brooklyn was difficult. He would complain about his father being violent, and his mother was in and out of institutions due to mental illness. The two of us understood each other almost right away. There was a part of our brains that just matched up. Before it became legendary, Samo developed as a private joke between the two of us. The name itself came from the phrase “same old shit”, but it was never intended to mean that in the long run. It was a malleable term that evolved with us. I had been a graffiti artist since I was 12 years old – but the Samo graffiti was different. It was in the same vein as ancient Roman graffiti, a way of making statements to our community. At night, the two of us were all over the Lower Manhattan grid, spray-painting our messages. I thought it was cool to keep our identity hidden. At first, hardly anybody knew who we were. Then the Village Voice published articles about our work. Even back then, Jean-Michel was all about becoming famous – and Samo became a springboard for him to do that. Eventually, we started to drift apart, as you do with childhood friends. By 1979, he was hanging out more and more with what I thought of as the beautiful people – and probably starting to play around with a little bit of heroin. I last saw him a couple of years before he died, when he arrived at my house with a painting that read: “To Samo, from Samo.” It was a sweet gesture of reconciliation, of acknowledging our connection.
Alexis Adler
Basquiat’s girlfriend Alexis Adler witnessed his creative process at first hand when they lived together in 1978
I met Jean-Michel Basquiat at a sort of travelling party in downtown Manhattan in 1978. The area was pretty desolate at that point – the only reason that anyone came past First Avenue and into our neighbourhood was for drugs – but there were always leaflets and flyers on the walls announcing parties. At the end of this particular night, everybody rolled out on to the street and a strange man threatened me with a knife. Jean-Michel was the person who stepped in to help me. I had seen his Samo graffiti by that point – everybody had – and I was pretty enticed by him. The two of us quickly became friends, then lovers. Shortly afterwards, he ended up moving in with me on the top floor of a semi-abandoned building.
Right away, our apartment became a sort of creative laboratory. He would go out to the clubs, get home in the middle of the night, and start painting. The middle of the house was his gallery space. There was nothing in there except for his turntables and art. As a friend of mine once said, he completely had his way with the apartment. It was constantly being transformed. There was no money for canvases so he would work on paper – and any other surface that was available, including the door of our refrigerator. I would get out of bed in the morning and my feet would land on wet paint. I once found a gold lamé coat in a thrift store that I loved. I brought it home, and the next day he had painted all over it. Once, he even found a box of Silly Putty outside our building – and decided to use it to create performance art. I have photographs of him stretching it across his face. Eventually, he sort of faded out of the apartment – although I would see him occasionally at the clubs or picking up drugs. He was already on his path, and he had to follow it to the end.
Michael Holman
The screenwriter for Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic, Holman also played in a band with Basquiat as a young man
In 1979, my friends and I organised the Canal Zone Party to introduce graffiti artists to the fine-art scene that was just beginning downtown at that point. As we were setting up the party, this teenage boy wandered up and asked if he could do his tag. One of us gave him a sheet of plastic, and he spray-painted a Samo tag. As soon as we realised who he was, we lost it. Later that night, he came over to me again and asked to start a band together. He had no musical experience – but that was almost the point. At that particular moment, everybody downtown was in a band; the New Wave was in full swing.
Our approach to music was different, almost painterly. For a while, Jean-Michel would “play” this machine that consisted of a 15hp engine inside a shopping cart, which would bang around the stage when plugged in. He did that at the dealer Leo Castelli’s birthday party, and it nearly gave him a heart attack. Then I bought a little Wasp synthesiser for him which made different tonal noises, and he played that. It was Jean-Michel who came up with the band’s name, Gray. When he was seven years old, he had been hit by a car. It ruptured his spleen, and his mother bought him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy to explain to him what had happened to his body. It became one of his favourite sources of inspiration. There are countless references to it in his work.
Together, we played CBGB’s and all the other major clubs. Often, the band produced otherworldly sets for our gigs. Once, I worked all day to build an iridescent dome out of scaffolding for us to perform inside at the Mudd Club. Jean-Michel wandered in just before sound check, took a look at what I had done, and ran out again. Within five minutes, he had returned with a shipping crate, hauled it up on to the stage, and climbed inside of it with his synthesiser, ready to perform. He never missed a beat.
Kai Eric
The musician helped to stage acts for the legendary Club 57 on St Mark’s Place, a favourite hangout for Keith Haring, Madonna, RuPaul – and, on occasion, his friend Basquiat
I had been friends with Jean-Michel for a couple of years when he first signed to Annina Nosei’s gallery in 1981, and his life changed practically overnight. Annina introduced Jean-Michel to the Italian gallerist Emilio Mazzoli. Jean-Michel was a little intimidated by Europe – he came home from his first trip to meet Emilio after only a couple of days – and he asked me to join him on his second visit to Italy to make it less lonely. His girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, came as well. I will never forget the three of us arriving in Rome, at a hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps, where Emilio had reserved us a suite. It was pure luxury – bottles of champagne on ice and views of the Roman rooftops and a colour television that stretched across an entire wall. Jean-Michel absorbed it all like a sponge. The next day, I rented a red Italian convertible, and the three of us made our way north to Modena.
When we finally arrived, Emilio showed us the place that Jean-Michel was going to be working. It was the size of an aircraft hangar. Half a dozen workmen were assembling these vast canvases for him to paint – some of the largest pieces he ever did – while another half-dozen assistants were waiting to help him. It took my breath away, the amount of work that he was expected to produce – but he did it in just a fortnight.
The only difficulty was that he was paid about $100,000 in cash. There was a lot of red tape about carrying that much money across international borders. On our way to the airport to fly home to New York, the three of us divided up the money between us, with Jean-Michel hiding it in his wrinkled Armani suit, and Suzanne in the heels of her cowboy boots. Of course, the police caught us – and refused to believe that the African-American man whose luggage consisted of a few boxes tied with heavy rope had made that amount from his paintings instead of drugs. It took several emergency calls to Emilio before the misunderstanding was cleared up.
Suzanne Mallouk
Arriving in New York in the early Eighties, Mallouk fell in love with Basquiat and soon became his muse
I lived with Jean-Michel Basquiat during that surreal year where he went from being homeless to becoming a millionaire at the age of 21. The gallerist Annina Nosei arranged for us to move from a tenement building at Sixth Avenue and East 81st Street to a glamorous loft on Crosby Street in Soho. There’s no way of preparing yourself for that kind of a shift in circumstances. At that point, Jean-Michel had yet to even open a bank account. I would be tidying the apartment, and there would be thousands and thousands of dollars between the sofa cushions and the pages of novels. People wandered in and out of our loft at all hours. There was always a party going on, with Beluga caviar, Cristal, 10oz of cocaine on a mirror. The refrigerator was stuffed with Italian pastries from Dean & DeLuca. Usually, Jean-Michel would take drugs with people in the living room and work through the night. He would wake me up to ask me what I thought of a painting or to have me name whatever he was working on.
For Jean-Michel, money was a weapon – a tool that he could use to expose people’s hypocrisies and racism. We would take limousines everywhere as a sort of parody of the hip-hop stars like Run-DMC who did the same. Occasionally, he would drop $100 bills out of the window for the homeless people outside. Once, we were at dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant called Barbetta, and a group of Wall Street bankers started laughing and pointing at us, asking, “How can you afford to be here? Are you a pimp? Is that your whore?” Jean-Michel kept quiet, called over the waiter, and paid for their dinner. It must have cost thousands of dollars. When one of them sheepishly came over to thank him afterwards, he just slapped another $500 in his hand and said: “Sorry, I forgot the tip.”
It was as that year progressed that the trouble started – and the parasites came. Collectors would come by and say, “I need a painting to go with my couch.” Jean-Michel would immediately throw them out of the loft. He went through a period of writing Not for sale on whatever he created because the paintings were selling so fast. Eventually, he became paranoid and started isolating himself – covering the windows of our apartment with black construction paper so that nobody could see in. He worried that, as a famous African-American man, the CIA or the FBI would have him murdered. I expect that a lot of it had to do with the drugs.
Our relationship came under a lot of external pressures. Models were throwing themselves at him. He started hanging out with Andy Warhol. Even though the two of us remained friends for the rest of his life, at some point I had to get out of that loft. It had become too unhealthy.
Herb & Lenore Schorr
Some of the earliest collectors of his work, the Schorrs also had a strong personal relationship with Basquiat
We first read about Jean-Michel Basquiat in René Ricard’s now-legendary feature in Art Forum magazine in December 1981, in which he was nicknamed the Radiant Child. The two of us drove into Manhattan to meet his gallerist, Annina Nosei, and bought the painting Acque Pericolose (Poison Oasis) that same day. Jean-Michel told us that he was most proud of the coiled snake at the bottom of the work. In hindsight, there was a lot of symbolic meaning behind that.
The three of us quickly became good friends. We would visit him in his studio, and he would be painting in his favourite Armani suits, all of which were splattered with paint. Quite simply, he was a genius. His mind was like a sponge. He assimilated everything – and trans-formed it into art. Jean-Michel was terribly innocent commercially. He was a 21-year-old trying to grapple with sophisticated art dealers. Eventually he learnt the hard way about the reality of the Manhattan art market – and it made him incredibly sensitive.
Once, we brought him to a dinner party organised by a prominent gallerist. It took about five minutes for him to say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He dismissed everyone there as “real-estate collectors”, people who bought art for status. On another occasion, a dealer visited him at his studio and brought him a sack of nuts as if he were a monkey. He tossed her out of the door before going up to the second-floor window and dumping the nuts out on to her head.
Even after Jean-Michel started to be better known, it was never easy for him as an African-American artist. He was a genius who broke with the traditions of the past, and curators struggled to fit him into their narrative of art history. About six months before he died, he told us that he wanted to see his paintings in a major New York gallery. We said we would donate some of our works to the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. Both turned us down. No interest. After Jean-Michel died, of course, both rushed to purchase his work. Race had a lot to do with it. We would tell collectors that he was an incredibly smart man. Their response was always, “Do you mean street-smart?” And we would say, “No, we mean smart.”
Thurston Moore
The Sonic Youth frontman knew Basquiat by sight and watched his inexorable rise to fame in the Eighties
Before Jean-Michel Basquiat became an artistic supernova, he would hang around at the same clubs as me – mostly CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. Jean-Michel stood out as one of the few African-American kids on that downtown scene. I remember seeing him perform once under the name Samo at a space on Broome Street called A. He was playing this contraption of junk electronics that made a fantastic sound. There was a particular exhibition at the Fun Gallery in 1982 that turned him into a real star. The place was rammed. Crowds spilled out on to the pavement. It was wild – the definition of a glittering Manhattan opening. Suddenly, Jean-Michel’s name was constantly in the paper. He had arrived.
Paige Powell
While working for Interview magazine, Powell began dating Basquiat. She recalls visiting him in Hawaii, where he had retreated from the art world
In 1984 I flew out to visit Jean-Michel when he was staying in Maui. I met him at the airport in Kahului and from there we were flown into Hana by helicopter and landed right in the yard of the beautiful plantation-style ranch house where he was staying. The home was in walking distance of the seven sacred pools of Oheo. The environment was so lush and wild. We would take long meandering walks, ride horses and cook every night. Jean-Michel was working on water-colour paintings on paper at the time. I helped him with some of them, filling in his drawings with colours. When he finished one, we would put it in the laundry dryer. They were very floral, influenced by the light and natural environment.
Larry Gagosian
The gallerist became Basquiat’s dealer in the early Eighties and remained a friend until his death
I first encountered Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work at Annina Nosei’s gallery in 1981. I was thunderstruck. His canvases had a raw power to them. I bought three works – including one of his masterpieces, The Skull – that same day. Shortly afterwards, I suggested to Basquiat that he do a one-man show at my gallery in Los Angeles, and the two of us became good friends. He came out to the West Coast and lived in my house on Venice Beach with Madonna, his girlfriend at the time. I used to watch him paint in his studio. There was an elegance to the way that he worked, a natural confidence to his technique, even though he had no formal training.
It’s been more than three decades since I first clapped eyes on a Basquiat painting – that’s a long time in the world of contemporary art – but his canvases feel more relevant, more essential now than ever. That’s the true root of his incredible commercial success. His works have a bit of Twombly and a bit of Pollock in them but there’s really nobody who has painted like Basquiat before or since.
The last time I saw him before he died, the heroin addiction was pulling him under, and his body was deteriorating. I was completely shocked by his appearance. A lot of different people had tried to help him, including me. Sometimes he would go to Hawaii for a few months and dry out, but he would always relapse. Right to the end, though, he never lost his creative vision.
I had a dinner at my house recently and Leonardo DiCaprio, who collects Basquiat, was there. During the meal, he turned to me and said, “For my generation, Basquiat is Picasso.” That sums it up.
Mary Boone
Dubbed the “queen of the art scene” in 1982, the gallerist represented David Salle and Julian Schnabel – and eventually Basquiat, too
When Jean-Michel joined my gallery in 1982, he was red hot on the arts scene. At first I was wary about signing him, although I had met him long before. The artists that I loved from the Seventies had slow careers – and mostly kept out of the public eye – but the market changed dramatically at the turn of the decade. There’s a quote by Studio 54 founder Steve Rubell: “Artists are the rock stars of the Eighties.” There was definitely a scepticism around the new breed of celebrity artists – and Jean-Michel was at the forefront of that movement. He made a lot of subsequent artists’ careers possible by forging ahead regardless of anybody’s opinion. His first exhibition at my gallery in 1984 was sold out – and closed with a party at Mr Chow. Andy Warhol arrived with Manolo Blahnik. Then, Jean-Michel appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. He dressed formally in a suit and tie but refused to wear shoes for the portrait. That was typical of the kind of contradictions that he played with. There was a lot of romance around him as a figure that appealed to major collectors and the type of people who wore suits all day. Most importantly, he had a good heart. When Julian Schnabel left my gallery in 1984, I was distraught and Jean-Michel found me crying in my office. He walked in, put his arms around me, and said: “Don’t worry, Mary. It’s going to be all right. When history is written, I’m going to be a much greater artist than Julian Schnabel.”
Francesca von Habsburg
The influential art collector recognised Basquiat’s talent at first sight
While I was studying at Central Saint Martins in the early Eighties, I worked as a “coffee girl” at Robert Fraser’s Cork Street gallery. After making a trip to New York to visit Andy Warhol, Robert came back determined to put on a show that featured Keith Haring, Schnabel and Basquiat. Just before the opening, he pressed a Polaroid into my hands of a magnificent blue painting of a skull and vertebrae with the words Study of a Back scribbled on it. “It’s only $15,000,” he told me. He had taken the picture during a recent trip to LA where he’d seen a Basquiat show at Larry Gagosian’s Venice Beach gallery.
After his trip to the States, Robert urgently needed some funds to keep his gallery open. I really loved Study of a Back, and I bought it. I can’t remember exactly how I paid for it, but I must have begged, borrowed and stolen to find $15,000 back then. When the painting arrived in London at my home on Seymour Walk, it was too big to fit through the door. I asked a friend across the road if I could leave it in his garage until I found a solution. It was there for months, covered in a thin sheet of plastic just inches away from his sports car. Then Jean-Michel came to stay at my house while he was preparing for his ICA exhibition in 1984. I was frustrated that his painting was still in the garage, and I showed it to him. He was shocked. “It’s not finished!” he exclaimed. It seemed that Larry had not given him time to complete the work. I was delighted that he was going to finish the painting – but after I delivered it to the studio that the ICA had given him to prepare for the exhibition, I never saw it again. He completely recycled the canvas, transforming it into another painting. I always suspected that it had been turned into his portrait of Robert Fraser. He just added flesh on to the bones along with Xerox copies of Robert’s diary and phone book – where I also found my number. Years later, Jean-Michel gave me a wonderful drawing in compensation, after I had searched for the piece to no avail.
Fiona Golfar
In 1984, Vogue’s future editor-at-large entertained Basquiat at her home
One day in the mid-Eighties, my friend Mel called me – her boyfriend Gérard Faggionato worked for Robert Fraser Gallery and had a young artist in from New York called Jean-Michel Basquiat whom he was looking after. “Can we bring him over for dinner?” she asked. “Why not?” I said. I knew nothing about the art world; I had studied art history at school and barely got past Giotto.
Gérard and Mel arrived with a beautiful man with dreadlocks. I said hello… in French. “I’m not French,” Basquiat murmured coolly. Gérard was laughing, but I wanted to die. “He’s from Brooklyn,” he said. Basquiat was looking around our little house in Shepherd’s Bush like he had landed from outer space. I remember being embarrassed.
Halfway through dinner he rolled a joint. The grass was the strongest thing I had ever smoked. I was barely able to speak. “Can I use your phone?” he suddenly asked. He called Mr Chow and made a reservation. The next thing I knew we were all piling into Gérard’s VW Beetle. I was out of my mind and it seemed mad that one moment we were mid-meatball and the next we were in a Chinese restaurant ordering Cristal.
“Weren’t we in the middle of dinner?” I stammered. “Oh, it was fine – for an appetiser,” Basquiat drawled. I went down the famous spiral staircase and phoned my friend Gaby. “I am really stoned,” I said. “But is this guy a twat?” “Yes, he is,” she replied. I never went back to the table. I left the restaurant and went home and finished my meatballs.
Agnes B
The fashion designer and collector met Basquiat near the end of his life
The first and last time I met Basquiat was just a few months before he died. He had an exhibition at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris, and he was thrilled to be there. At that point, everybody in New York was saying that he was “finished”, that his moment had passed. At the opening, his hair was parted into three dreadlocks, and he was wearing a brown suit – just like in Warhol’s famous Polaroids. For me, it was as if he was the only person in the gallery. After he left, I decided to go as well – but he was waiting for me at a café across the road. He called my name, and I sat there with him for hours – speaking about life and art. I was supposed to go for a meal with my friend the designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, and I forgot all about it. I was completely lost in the moment. Everybody said that he fell in love with me that night. Over the next few days, he would call me at three in the morning to meet him. I never went. Then, a few months later, I heard that he had died. I was devastated. For me, he will always be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Eleanor Nairne
The curator has spent years putting together the Barbican’s new Basquiat exhibition – the first large-scale show of its kind in Britain
In a pre-digital world, Jean-Michel Basquiat deliberately bombarded himself with information, working with and transforming a never-ending variety of source material. At his studios, the television was constantly blaring; novels lay open everywhere; the record player was spinning at all hours. His genius lay in distilling the culture that he witnessed into a visual language full of encrypted references – each charged with endless layers of meaning. In his canvases, you find nods to his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage; to the pioneers of bebop; comic-book heroes; the masters of 20th-century art; ancient Egyptian mythology; notable African-American figures… The list goes on and on. His works, then, are a test. Are you looking hard enough? Have you understood? Or are you taking this at face value and missing the point entirely?
“Basquiat: Boom for Real” is at the Barbican, EC2, from September 21
This article originally appeared in the September 2017 issue. Subscribe to Vogue here
