You have to be an informed stroller, or call on tailor-made travel specialists, to find the track of the painter king of the New York underground of the 1980s. Itineraries.
What remains of Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York? An expression, a posture. “To be Basque is to be young, to be cool,” says Dieter Buchhart, a great explorer of the Big Apple, and especially of the American painter, of whom he is one of the finest connoisseurs, and exhibition curator of the retrospective dedicated to him by the Louis-Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Basquiat was not that cool, but young, certainly, he who was born in Brooklyn on December 22, 1960 and died the year of his 28 years in his loft at 57 Great Jones Greet, in the small neighborhood of Noho, near Broadway, Manhattan. A commemorative plaque honors his memory at the foot of his building. It reads: “From 1983 to 1988, the renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and worked here, in this former stable belonging to his friend and mentor Andy Warhol. Basquiat’s paintings and his other works have challenged established notions of art, race, social class, forging a visionary language that defies all labels. ” But you have to be an informed flâneur to find it. No tourism brochure or hotel offers a thematic excursion into the maze of his life.
“Young people will be inspired by this hero of their neighborhood, just as he has inspired so many of us around the world”
Yusaku Maezawa, Japanese collector
Only a tailor-made trip allows us to grasp this shooting star whose four letters which were his signature for a long time, SAMO, have been erased from most of the walls. In addition, the museums of New York have only about twenty works out of the two thousand produced during his short life. The Brooklyn Museum has only two paintings. Ten drawings and silkscreen prints are exhibited at MoMA where he loved to walk. The Whitney has six rooms, the Metropolitan Museum two, and the Guggenheim one.
But when one of his paintings hits the art market, his fans immediately dream of seeing him reappear where he was born. It happened in 2018. Between January and March, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited a large untitled canvas measuring 1.83 m × 1.73 m, depicting a black head on an azure background. “Young people will be inspired by this hero of their neighborhood, just as he inspired so many of us around the world”, declared the Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, who had bought it a year before for the astronomical sum of 110, $ 5 million at auction.
Read also :Basquiat, a name that has become an idol for the market
Tailor-made therefore, we asked three specialists to imagine a route in the footsteps of this artist with paintings bursting with colors of anger against the injustices of his time. Élise Goujon, founder of the local New York Off Road agency, points out in the preamble to her offer: “Our flagship tour in New York devoted to street art passes through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and we are talking about the inheritance of Basquiat. But it is an evocation. There are few places still open or visible and very few works by him are exhibited in New York. “
The itinerary of this specialist in “unusual tours in French” focuses “on the East Village and SoHo part, because that’s where the art of graffiti emerged in the 1970s and 80s”, and ends “ by Kobra’s fresco in Brooklyn which pays homage to Basquiat, in order to talk about his heritage today ”. The walk passes through Andy Warhol’s factory which has moved three times, Club 57 located at 57 St Mark’s Place, where prominent figures of the underground culture of the time met, or the Mudd Club, where Basquiat passed. a lot of time from 1978 to 1983. “A commemorative plaque is affixed to the building at 77 White Street, which now houses a Chinatown carpet cleaning company”, specifies Élise Goujon, who charges 299 euros for this one-hour journey. half day (newyorkoffroad.com).
Decisive meeting at Mr Chow’s restaurant
Another proposal: that of the tour operator Les Maisons du voyage (company of the group Figaro) tracks the galleries of New York where Basquiat worked and exhibited (Gagosian, Nosei, and Mary Boone in particular). There, the local guide wants to reveal “the history of the East and the West Village and the places where the artist lived”, to explain “a little his roots and his private life, and the influence of his art in the American black background ”. A five-day itinerary, from 850 euros from Paris with the return flight in economy class and three hotel nights (tel .: 01.53.63.13.43 and website maisonsduvoyage.com).
As for the à la carte travel expert, Evaneos, he imagined with his partner agent in New York named Julie, a route through Brooklyn and Manhattan, which leaves from the hospital of his birth, in a family of the middle black bourgeoisie, to end in the Green-Wood cemetery, of which the painter is the most famous resident with the composer Leonard Bernstein, in section 176, lot 44603. This route highlights the district of his childhood and his Park Slope home, and an option for dinner at Mr. Chow’s restaurant, where Basquiat and Warhol’s decisive meeting took place. This course of three days and two nights in a 3-star hotel is invoiced 1399 € per person on the basis of two participants, with transfers from the airport (but the flight is not included in the price), breakfasts, an unlimited metro card and guided excursions on the program (tel: 01 82 83 36 36 and evaneos.fr/etats-unis).
Too bad we can no longer rent the Basquiat loft on Airbnb. This 200 m2 located on Crosby Street, where the artist lived in the early 1980s, was offered until recently for 500 euros a night. The video of the place is still on the Internet. But the site indicates that “the offer is no longer available”.
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