On Tuesday, October 21, the city of New York dedicated a stretch of Great Jones Street, between Bowery and Lafayette Street, to Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the most influential artists of the New York scene of the 1980s. At the opening ceremony of Jean-Michel Basquiat Way there were municipal officials, members of the artist’s family and representatives of the local community. The new road signal was installed in front of the building at number 57, where Basquiat had lived and worked until his death in 1988.
The building at 57 Great Jones Street, once owned by Andy Warhol, has long been a landmark for the artist’s fans. Basquiat had transformed him into his main study since 1983, in the period of maximum creative activity. Today, the facade of the loft is still covered by graffiti, writing and drawings left by visitors from all over the world. In 2016 the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation had already recognized the importance of the place, installing a memorial plaque.
During the title ceremony, the sisters of Basquiat, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux received an official proclamation of the city in the name of the artist. The document recognises Basquiat’s contribution to the cultural evolution of New York and its international influence, which goes beyond the world of art. According to municipal authorities, the initiative aims to make permanent the memory of a figure that represented the creative ferment and social complexity of the city.
In January 2024, the building had been purchased by Angelina Jolie to host Atelier Jolie, a project dedicated to collaboration with artists and artisans. The actress declared her intention to preserve the historical nature of the place, maintaining the identity of open creative space that already characterized it in Basquiat. The intervention is part of a wider effort to safeguard the spaces linked to the cultural history of New York.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn in 1960 by Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother. Grown up in a multilingual and culturally diverse environment, he showed an early talent for drawing since very young. The mother, passionate about art, often took him to the museums of New York, where Basquiat approached the great modern masters. After a childhood marked by family instability and school problems, he left the house at 17 and began to live on the streets of Manhattan, in the middle of the underground scene of the Lower East Side.
His career began with graffiti signed “SAMO©” (Same Old Shit), made with his friend Al Diaz. Those cryptic and provocative messages appeared on the walls of SoHo and Tribeca, quickly attracting the attention of the media and the world of art. Starting in 1981, Basquiat began painting on canvas, merging symbols, words and cultural references in a style that mixed primitivism and avant-garde, jazz and African American culture, anatomy and urban mythology. His painting, energetic and fragmented, became a direct representation of the social and racial tensions of New York in the 1980s.
In 1983 he began a collaboration with Andy Warhol, who introduced him to the most visible circuit of contemporary art. Their sodalicy, often told as a confrontation between two eras – Pop Art and New Wave – made it a prominent figure even out of alternative turns. Basquiat was the first black artist to gain significant recognition in an environment until then dominated by whites. Despite the success, however, the media and personal pressure overwhelmed him: died in 1988, just 27 years old, for a heroin overdose.
After his death, interest in his work has never decreased. His canvases are today one of the most popular in the international market, and his name has become a symbol of rebellion and authenticity. Basquiat is considered one of the first to bring street culture to museums, affecting generations of artists and redefining the border between high art and popular art.
The initiation of Jean-Michel Basquiat Way adds to other initiatives of the city to commemorate personalities that have had a lasting impact on the artistic and social community. Over the years, streets and squares of Manhattan and Brooklyn have been dedicated to figures such as Lou Reed, Biggie Smalls and Jonas Mekas, in an attempt to keep alive the link between urban memory and the protagonists who have defined its identity.
Article The New York road that now bears the name of Jean-Michel Basquiat comes from IlNew York.
