So while he came to be a celebrity and came to be commercial, he was deeply rooted in this practice of the avant-garde.Fascinated by consumer culture, the media, and fame, Andy Warhol himself became one of the most famous and important artists of the twentieth century. incredibly groundbreaking and risk-taking-and he was shunned in many ways for it. In this day and age, when so many artists are celebrated for making unoriginal work that oftentimes looks like luxury products, it’s wonderful to be reminded that an artist like Warhol was making. Over time I came to understand what he was doing, particularly by looking at his work starting in the ’60s: how experimental and avant-garde it was, and how he was really unafraid of taking chances and risks. It didn’t resonate that strongly for me, to be absolutely candid. When I came to work at the foundation, I was a relatively young artist, and I took so much of what he did for granted. You have your own artistic practice, but you’ve also spent so much of your career working with Warhol’s archives. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Warhol served as a confidant for both Powell and Basquiat throughout the last few years of his life. So I felt that the best we could do here is to use what is left behind to tell story from his point of view.īasquiat kisses his on-again, off-again girlfriend Paige Powell in August 1983. They have different perspectives and different point of views. But oftentimes that they tell are in conflict with one another. I’ve had the privilege of meeting and talking to so many different people who knew, and it’s wonderful to hear their stories. I think that’s a different story and a different book.As with any relationship, the people who really know that relationship are the people who are party to it. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.ĭid you feel like you missed anything by not having Basquiat’s side of the story, only Warhol’s? He told me his assistant painted it,” Warhol wrote. And I mean, just getting to Christie Street must have taken an hour. “He went home and within two hours a painting was back, still wet, of him and me together. Basquiat painted this after one of his first meetings with Warhol. Not just these individuals and their relationship, but also this moment in time, which is very, very special.īasquiat, Dos Cabezas, 1982. It’s a real sad and tragic ending.There were so many layers that could be peeled back. Warhol dies unexpectedly and tragically following gallbladder surgery, and about a year and a half after that, Basquiat unfortunately died of an overdose. But then there’s a bit of a separation in the relationship, and, ultimately, there’s no reconciliation to it. So very quickly, they were in this intense relationship surrounded by the downtown New York City art scene and the drama that surrounds all of that, from gallery shows to reviews to auctions to sales.They are constantly together for a couple of years in the scene. They created portraits of each other, and within a year or so they were doing collaborative paintings together. Very quickly you can see that they shared a lot of interests, in shared social circles. It starts with some curiosity and intrigue, after they’re introduced by a mutual acquaintance. It also documents the parties and meals they shared with the other stars in their orbit- Bianca Jagger, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Rosanna Arquette, and Whoopi Goldberg are just a few of the famous faces who make cameo appearances. Michael Dayton Hermann is currently the director of licensing at the foundation, where he has worked for more than a decade, and, in a new book, Warhol on Basquiat: The Iconic Relationship Told in Andy Warhol’s Words and Pictures, he collects the diaries and photographs that lay out the story of their friendship. In 2014, the foundation donated a huge collection of Warhol’s photo negatives to Stanford University so they could be digitized, and the results have greatly expanded the records of the close relationship between Basquiat and Warhol. For over 30 years, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has been preserving and restoring his work, while also finding new ways to revive them. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.Īfter his death, much of his estate went toward the creation of a foundation, and it now houses the results of his decades spent documenting life in minute detail. He also writes about his attempts to match his style as closely as possible to Basquiat’s as they worked. Throughout his diaries, Warhol occasionally expresses frustration with Basquiat’s habit of painting over others’ work. Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat paint in Warhol’s Manhattan loft in 1984.
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