All language subtitles for BBC.Basquiat.Rage.to.Riches.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

This programme contains
very strong language.

Jean-Michel was going to make things
happen in the creative space

by any means necessary.

He was this kid that had taken
New York by storm.

This work that's just screaming
revolutionary intentions.

I'd never seen a black artist with
this kind of unbelievable talent

and unbelievable charisma.

So they have this image of me,
you know, wild monkey man.

Whatever the BLEEP they think.

We went from total poverty
to having so much money

that we didn't know
what to do with it.

There was a lot of resentment,

there was a lot of envy and it had
definitely had a racist edge to it.

Whether one regards themselves
as an artist or a black artist,

it never stops being complicated.

$69 million.

We're going to produce him,
we're going to market him.

I'm selling on this
side of the room.

It's Yuki's bidder, fair warning.

We are going to cannibalise him.

And selling for $98 million.

Thank you, Yuki. Congratulations.

As his sister, almost 30 years
later, I continue to be saddened

by the fact that my brother
isn't still here.

I think if you want to know what
there is to know about Jean-Michel,

the place to go is to his work.

Of course there is.
Yeah, of course there is.

Tell me about the anger as well.

Mm.

Um.

You're on top of the world.

I mean, I like the way, you know,

I hear we're doing some work
together and you paint me out.

When do I paint you out?

I mean, everything I've done, you've
painted me out. Where? Well...

Where? Just... Where?

What's your earliest,
most vivid childhood memory?

Probably getting hit by a car,
I guess.

How did that happen?
I was playing on the street.

How old were you? I was seven.

Seven or eight years old.

We lived in Brooklyn,
we lived in Flatbush,

and Jean-Michel was playing outside
when he was seven...

..with a group of friends,
they were playing stick ball.

My mother asked me to go out and
get him for dinner, which I did.

He came running across the street,

forgot something
and turned around to go back.

As he was running across the street,
a car came around the corner.

He was in the hospital for
a really, really long time.

One of the gifts that
my mother brought to him

was the book Gray's Anatomy.

She wanted him to have
the opportunity to see his own body

as it related to
the way it had to be reconstructed.

His spleen was removed.

That was a book that was
highly influential for him.

My father played music from the
moment that he came home from work

until he went to bed.

And he played all different genres.

Jazz was a big influence but he also
played classical and Donna Summer.

Our mom took us to museums.

NEWSREEL: For the schoolchildren
of Brooklyn,

these visits to the museum
are creating an awareness of art

and its development
through the centuries.

Jean-Michel was our older brother.

He was incredibly mischievous.

He was incredibly creative.

He always drew.

You don't envision that
your brother would be famous

but it is always something
that he felt that he would be.

I also believe that his creative
influence just came from inside,

I think he just came here that way.

PLAYS JAZZ MUSIC

The city looked big, I felt big,
because I was part of the landscape.

I'm an artist.

When you tell people that,
they usually say,

"What's your medium?"

I usually say, "Extra large."

Jean-Michel left home

because he had something
that was burning inside of him.

He did whatever he needed
to do in order to be a painter

and in order to be an artist
and in order to express himself.

And I think it takes a tremendous
amount of balls to do that.

New York City from the mid-70s

up to the early '80s

was a creative paradise.

New York was falling apart,
going bankrupt.

The straight people
were all leaving,

so all the crazy
artists flocked here.

The time was electric.

Anything felt possible.

Very inexpensive rents.

I was able to live

for $80 a month.

Like almost everyone who was
living downtown in the late 1970s,

we were intrigued by the remarkable
conceptual graffiti of SAMO.

Even in my own building,
there was the SAMO graffiti.

Right by the door.

I thought, this must be
a street philosopher,

somebody who is writing multiple
choice questions on the wall,

asking profound questions
about values.

SAMO was everywhere.

It was on all the buildings,

I was thrilled by it.

Everyone downtown
had seen SAMO tags.

I can remember first moving to
New York and seeing lines like,

"A pin drops like a pungent odour,
copyright SAMO."

There was a lot of conversation
downtown - "Who is SAMO?"

People claimed to have seen SAMO.

I first met Jean-Michel
in the fall of '76

because that's when I first
went to City-As-School.

Me and Jean-Michel
and other students

that were interested in writing
created a high school newspaper.

And Jean-Michel wrote a brilliant
essay about an ideal religion

that would... just filled all
the needs and he named it SAMO.

SAMO was part of the slang back then

where you would hear elderly
black guys talking to each other

and say, "Hey, what's up?"

And the other guy would answer,
"Samo, samo."

In other words, the same old shit
or the same old thing, whatever.

And that's really where
we borrowed that from,

that's absolutely
where we borrowed it from.

Me being the graffiti artist,

I liked that format and we started
to write SAMOs using that format.

And then they became like SAMO
as an alternative to God.

So it now was this thing.

I started going around
with Jean-Michel with a Magic Marker

and he would do the SAMO and
I would do my Jetson thing.

Al Diaz, there was a partnership,
SAMO, was also hanging around.

I introduced him to Keith Haring,
who I had met that same week.

When I first arrived at
the School of Visual Arts in '78,

not everyone hanging out there
was actually a student.

Jean-Michel was not a student
but he wanted to meet artists,

he wanted to be
hanging around artists,

so that was a natural place
to just hang out.

I think there was

a very self-conscious dimension
to what he did.

You know, he didn't
do SAMO, his tag line graffiti,

he didn't do it just any place.

He did it real close to Soho.

It was a successful hype project.

It is the Canal Zone and it's
happening here and now.

If you're lost, you can
find yourself right here,

right now in the Canal Zone.

I first met Jean-Michel Basquiat
April 29th, 1979.

It was the night of the Canal Zone
party thrown by myself,

a British artist named Stan Peskett
and Fab 5 Freddy.

It was called Canal Zone

and it was kind of our first
Soho downtown party.

We were going to have a party

that would introduce aerosol
graffiti artists from uptown

to the downtown fine art scene.

Jean-Michel showed up. He was SAMO
at the time, he was known as SAMO.

Jean-Michel came out of the shadows.

I didn't know who he was.

He said, "I'd like to do
something as well."

And I said, "Sure,"
and I put a spray can in his hand,

"There's a wall, do it."

It was magic. Suddenly, everybody
kind of went crazy.

All of a sudden, someone,
I hear voices, very excited,

and I walk over and I see someone
spray painting on the wall.

He did one of his
multiple-choice SAMOs.

It was like, oh, my God.
This is SAMO.

SAMO. S-A-M-O. Come on,
you've seen it on the walls.

Everyone, especially in the village.
This gentleman right here is SAMO.

Nobody knew who SAMO was,
he was totally enigmatic.

It was like a Banksy figure.

And I immediately ran over
and grabbed his arm and I said,

"I've been looking for you."
And he looked at me and he had,

like, the most beautiful smile,
he said, "You have?"

And I said, "Yes." And he said,
"Well, why are you here?"

I said, "I live here."

When we went into my room,

I had books and music
that he knew and loved

and it's like an automatic pass.

I used to take baseball cards
and paint them with white-out,

paint the faces out.

He really liked what I was doing.

Plus I had a room.

We clicked and
that was amazing and he said,

"I want to make postcards with you."

We went to photo booths
and got our picture taken and, like,

I would do something and
then he would come and do it.

And we'd get to the point
where we both agreed,

"OK, that's really
good. Let's use that."

We were going out on the street,
we did it every day,

and we'd make, you know,
sometimes we'd make, like, $15

and that was a bonanza.

He would shave his head
on the street with a razor.

People would be like,
"Oh, my God. What is that?"

We'd come out of Jamie Canvas
after making another bunch

of colour Xeroxes and we're
walking down the street talking

and Jean-Michel looks in the window
of this brand-new restaurant called

WPA and sees Andy Warhol and
Henry Geldzahler sitting at a table.

Jean-Michel grabs my arm, and
says, "Oh, my God. It's Andy."

And I was like, "Oh, my God."

He said, "You stay here.
They're fags." He goes in...

..comes back out after ten minutes.

I'm waiting out on the sidewalk.

And I said, "What took so long?"

He said,
"Well, they only had a five

"and they needed to get
change of the five."

And I said, "How many did they buy?"

Two. So they bought one that
said, "Stupid games, bad ideas,"

and another one that was a colour
Xerox of a pair of sunglasses

that we had splattered white-out
on and re-Xeroxed.

He loved Andy

and to meet him in person
was, I think,

a really important moment for him.

Andy Warhol bought something
that he made

and that was amazing for him.

It was like, "Oh, my God,

"you not only met him but he
actually bought something from you,

"he purchased...?" This is amazing.

Andy was like our hero figure.

He redefined what the role of
an artist could be.

Say cheese.

He had told me that he sold
a postcard to Andy Warhol,

and he was really excited.

I began to understand
that he wanted fame.

He really wanted fame.

Probably, you know, in the same week

he goes on the Glenn O'Brien Show
as SAMO.

So now he's become SAMO.

I mean, it was us and now he
had become the face for SAMO.

Tonight, we're lucky enough to
have with us probably the most

language oriented of
all graffiti artists in New York,

Sammo, and his associate.

It's SAMO. SAMO, sorry.
It's Mr SAMO.

It's my personal signature.

Sorry, Mr SAMO. Well, you know,
you see it written on the walls

and you don't know
how to pronounce it.

And do you write something
different every time

or do you write the, you know...?

I've written the same thing
before, just...

It all depends, you know,
like how inspired I feel.

At a certain point, you saw
the graffiti, "SAMO is dead."

So Jean, here he is killing SAMO,

cos he's the only one that
ever wrote, "SAMO is dead,"

I never wrote, "SAMO is dead."

And as a result,
it damaged our relationship.

That was the point where Jean-Michel
began to assert himself

as the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

I never went to art school.

I failed the art courses
that I did take in school.

I just looked at a lot of things
and that's what...

That's how I think I learned
about art, by looking at it.

When we met in the late '70s,

one of the things that made us
become really good friends

was we both spent a lot of time
going to museums as young kids.

And somehow the idea
popped up, like,

let's start Museum Club,
and Wednesday was the day

when we would hop in a cab and
head up to the Metropolitan Museum.

Jean-Michel and I would often
act like we were art students

when we would come here.

We'd have our little sketch pads,
acting like we were sketching.

These are all school of
Caravaggio, by the way.

Young black man in
the painting up there, nice.

Caravaggio, he's just so great.

Me and Jean-Michel talked
about this.

Like, we dug him
and we did some reading about him

and the fact that he,
like, carried a sword

was pretty bad boy
for that time period.

You know, like, you see it in
movies, people carrying swords,

you just think it's a regular thing,

but if you carried a sword,

you were gangster,

you carried it because you knew
you were going to use it

or you were not afraid
to use it, so,

some real bad boy business going on.

This guy invented creative lighting.

It's just amazing, you know.

Chiaroscuro.
Light to dark, baby, simple.

Simple stuff, basic stuff.

Pretty good crown
he's got on there, huh?

You know, the crown was a
significant part of early graffiti,

you would put a crown over your name
if you felt you were worthy.

Jean would get a good kick
out of that guy's crown.

This is Autumn Rhythm, so
this is a really famous Pollock,

and I remember Jean and I
looking at it,

appreciating it and also
talking about the fact

that, at this time in the
early '50s, when these paintings

were being made, Jackson Pollock's
studio was in the Village

and he was going to jazz clubs,

and this is something
that's not often talked about,

the fact that the abstract
expressionists were developing

at the same time as bebop music
and the improvisational nature

that was going on in there.

Because of the racism at that time,

a lot of critics and art historians
wouldn't really elaborate

on the fact that, I mean, you can
see the improvisation going on

and, like, I remember Jean-Michel
and I talking about that

right here in this building.

I remember talking to Jean about how

the insides of the subway cars at
that time were just blitzed

with tag over tag over tag.

There was an unmistakable connection
between Pollock and, interestingly,

this Franz Kline over my shoulder.

Like that broad brush stroke,

that calligraphic energy
just was just crazy.

Undeniable, you know.

Ah, man.

This is cool. Like, I remember
when me and Jean would come here

to Museum Club, you know,
we had to talk about Pablo

but what's really interesting,
particularly with this piece,

you can see the Cubist period
had unleashed

and that whole period was
a break-out moment

when Picasso got hip to
what Africans were doing

and how they were
depicting the image.

It just broke the whole mould of

European artists trying to recreate
exactly how the image looked,

perspective, all that kind of stuff,
just smashed the game,

broke it wide open.

Once again,
that African influence, you know,

you need to recognise, baby,
from the motherland.

Dora Maar, you know,

she was a hot one.

Can't you tell?

Back on the street again.

The Lower East Side.

Looked like a war zone.

Like we dropped the bomb
on ourselves.

But it was OK.

The star of Downtown 81
is Jean-Michel Basquiat.

And it's not a documentary,
like a lot of people think it is.

It's a fairy tale of
what our life was back then.

Come on, let me see your painting.

It's a story of a struggling artist
who goes around the city

to sell his artwork to pay the rent.

This is really nice.

Thanks.

You want to sell it?
You want to buy it?

I'd like to buy one but
I can't even afford your paintings.

You have to realise he really
didn't have money and no job

and we bought him a lot of canvas
and we needed that painting

for the story.

And so the first paintings he did

were really
for the purpose of the film.

Hey, man, that's private property.

Hey, my man, I'm a taxpayer, I can
paint anywhere I want to paint.

They chose to focus on Jean-Michel
as the kind of star of this movie

and we all had little scenes and
cameo scenes in this little snapshot

of the world we lived in.

He's serious, man.
You want to check him out.

The pre-gentrified, gritty, grimy,
extra fun New York City.

# Fab 5 is in the house and

# Jean-Michel is in the house. #

I met Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981.

He was working on
Downtown 81, the film.

So he told me he was living

in the production offices

for the film, which was
a storefront somewhere.

He very quickly
moved into my apartment.

It just happened.

I don't feel entirely responsible.

He, erm...

..just moved in.

We both were biethnic, bicultural.

I'm half Palestinian
and half English.

He was half Puerto Rican
and half Haitian.

We both had very authoritarian,
proud fathers that were tough.

He stuttered a little. His mom had
been institutionalised

and that was a very sad
point for him.

And it made him terribly sad
to tell me.

And he would stutter even more when
he talked about her.

I had come from Canada at the age
of 20 to the East Village

to be an artist.

Hey, man. Hey, man.
Later. All right.

Every artist, whatever you were, you
were also in a band, you had to be.

If you weren't in a band,
you were, like, lame.

Jean-Michel Basquiat
made this decision

that we were going to
start a band.

Jean wanted me to be
a part of that band as well.

I showed up to the first rehearsal.

I was going to do scat rapping
or whatever, but I was like...

I fell back, it wasn't for me.

And we were just
jumping around with names

and we really weren't
sure what it was

and then one day Jean stops
and says, "I know the name now.

"Gray."

I believe the reason
that it was spelt with an A,

it was named after Gray's Anatomy,
which was a book

that was very inspiring
for Jean-Michel Basquiat

as a young child.
He was hit by a car.

The music he made would create the
collage aesthetic.

It's there whether he's doing music,
whether he's doing poetry,

whether he's doing painting.

Jean-Michel was painting or drawing

constantly.

There was a drive there that
I've never really seen before.

At that time, there were
a lot of burned-out buildings

in the East Village.

He couldn't afford art supplies

so he would bring things
from the street.

He would bring doors, wooden doors,
from these burned-out buildings,

and he would paint on that.

We would get in arguments.

I was the one working
and supporting both of us

and he wasn't contributing.

He would always answer my concerns

with the reassurance that
he would be famous very soon

and wealthy
and that he would look after me.

That would end the argument.

I mean, what could I say?

The first painting that he sold
was to Debbie Harry from Blondie

for $200.

# Fab 5 Freddie
told me everybody's fly

# DJ's spinning
I said, "My, my." #

And that was a lot of money to us
at that point

so we went out to dinner
in a Chinese restaurant

on Second Avenue and...

Just an ordinary restaurant,

but this was a real treat for us
because we were so poor.

It was very special, and
he was so happy and so proud.

Jean-Michel's in the video, yeah.

I had wanted Grandmaster Flash
to come and be in the video

for the part when
she starts rapping.

She mentions me.

"Fab 5 Freddy told me
everybody's fly."

And then she says, "DJ spinning,
Flash is fast."

Flash didn't believe
I really knew them at the time

so he never showed up.

So Jean-Michel was there,

I was like, "Yo, put Jean-Michel
at the turntables.

# Fab 5 Freddy told me
everybody's fly

# DJ spinning
I said, "My, my." #

I saw the first works
which Basquiat showed.

It was a show called

New York, New Wave,
where Diego Cortez

was the driving force
and the main curator.

That was 1981.

Basquiat was given the main wall.

How do you envision the future
here for these artists?

Do you think a lot of them
are professionals or...?

I don't really worry about the word,

I haven't worried about
the word professionals.

I mean, the important thing to me
is building a sociology of elements

that depict the scene.

I went to PS1

because I wanted to see
the artists of New York.

The work of Jean-Michel's paintings
were particularly sophisticated.

What interested me
in his work immediately,

they were a new visual language.

I was Andy Warhol's dealer
in exclusivity after 1965.

This painting was in
the show of New York, New Wave

and one of the biggest paintings,
I think, was this,

showing a cityscape of New York.

There are the two World Trade Towers

and on the top I think it's an
invented type of writing.

It reminds me a little bit,
I said, of works by Twombly.

It's one of the 15 paintings
I bought from Diego Cortez

at that time.

I didn't ask him to be in my
gallery.

He asked me to be in my gallery.

And I said, "But my next group show
doesn't have anything

"to do with your work." Why?

Because it's called Public Address
and he said, "No, on the contrary,

"I fit in it."

He defended his point in a way that
was extremely sophisticated

for his age. He was so strong,
the works that he presented,

that I decided that
the second part of the gallery

was completely for him.

I walked over to Annina's gallery,
a couple of blocks from my loft,

and I walked into the last room
in Annina's gallery.

Literally my hair stood up

on my neck. It just had an
electrifying impact on me.

The one that's called Skull
is almost anatomical

but also with fierce eyes.

The perspective, the colour, the
intensity, just incredibly powerful.

And I saw, I think,
four or five paintings.

I had never seen the work before,
I'd never heard of the artist,

I didn't even know that this artist
was going to be in the show.

I knew nothing.

Annina at that point came out
to greet me, and I said, "Wow,

"how much are these paintings?

"If you'll allow me to,
I'll buy three of them."

With the discount, it probably cost
me about $9,000

for the three of them.

She says, "Would you like to
meet the artist?"

I'd just bought three paintings.
I said, "Absolutely."

I thought I was going to meet some
old French guy when I heard the name

and then I see this black guy
sitting in her office

with hair like, you know,
if you've seen the photographs,

and literally paint-stained jeans
and smoking a big, fat joint.

Right off the bat there was
a rapport between us.

Coming out of minimalism in its
grids,

this next generation Jean-Michel,

a great example of,

blew that all up.

And he didn't have any place to make
a lot of paintings so he started to

paint them in my
basement downstairs.

He was very productive and it was
like he had a nine-to-five job

that was very interesting.

He would wake up early
in the morning and go there

and then come home
around five or six.

I had a job at a gallery called
Sperone Westwater Fischer.

On my lunch hour Jean would say,

"I'm painting in this basement,
come visit."

Jean would talk about

France Klein
or even Robert Motherwell,

people that I was kind of amazed
that he even knew about

since he hadn't been to art school.

Jean was in awe of Cy Twombly
and would talk about Cy Twombly.

I said, "Jeann, you know, Cy Twombly
is staying in the apartment

"at the gallery where I work."

"I want to meet him. I want to meet
him now. Can you take me there?"

I said, "Yeah, sure,
I have the keys to the apartment.

"Let's go meet him,"

so we walked over to the gallery
and, you know,

knocked on the apartment door.

This was during gallery hours.

Cy Twombly opens the door.

I said, "Cy, this is
Jean-Michel Basquiat.

"He really wants to meet you.
He's a big fan of yours."

And Jean was beginning
to enter the apartment

when one of the partners came up and
said, "How did he get here?

"Get him out now. Why is he here?"

I said, "Well, he wants to meet Cy."

"No, no, no, that's not going
to happen.

"Now, I want, Brett, I want you to
get him out immediately.

"Did he take anything?"

The word got out in the art world
very quickly that there was

a genius working
in Annina's basement.

But Jean-Michel, just hold on.

I think I have to ask you,

is this collage?

It's called Slave Auction.

A slave auction. In America,
with the tobacco trade.

And this is a complete irony,
you put a halo on top?

He's a martyr,
he's, like, dead, you know.

It's like the boat,
you know, this is a boat.

The boat that brings
them from Africa, you know?

He's like, "Well, how much
do I get for the slave here?

"How much do I get for him?"

$50 for the slave, you know.

And these, who are all those...?

These are people who are bidding
on slaves. That's another slave.

People hear it was
a kind of dungeon.

There were all these
pictures and rumours

that she would keep him locked

in the basement to make paintings.

You know, for being a prison
with a skylight and two windows,

that's kind of nice.

The story that you're always
being locked in the basement

and ordered to paint? Oh...

That's just some...

It has a nasty edge to it, you know?

I was never locked anywhere.

I mean...

Oh, Christ. No, it's just...

If I was white they would have
said artist in residence

rather than saying all that
other stuff. You know?

I didn't see any chains in Annina's
basement when he worked there,

that he seemed to be thriving,

although he was interrupted
a lot of times when they would bring

Mick Jagger down to look
and buy paintings from him.

I told him, "Look,
I know what's going on,

"this is a good spot to work."

He didn't have an adequate
studio space at that time

but I definitely told him, "I think
you should raise up out of here."

I said, "I will help you to
rent an apartment," which I did,

in Crosby Street,
"and I will pay the rent,

"which I will take out of
the sales," which is what I did.

I gave him 50% of whatever I sold.

You know, if I sold
a painting for $10,000,

I gave him five.

In the period of 1981 to 1982...

..Jean-Michel was
incredibly productive.

Perhaps 250 paintings.

At least 500 drawings.

He almost always had music on
when he was working.

It was just very intuitive.

He would work on several paintings
at one time.

He would paint the background
or he might paint one line

and then he would go over to another
and paint something

and then come back to this one and
scratch it out or put words on it,

so it was a constant movement.

It was like a dance.

It was almost like he
was channelling something.

He did many paintings,
one after another, beautiful.

In the structure of these paintings,

there was a direct connection
to No Wave music.

Seeming chaos that you hear
in the best No Wave music,

Jean-Michel was able to articulate
in the structure of his paintings.

They reflect a deep understanding
of avant-garde writing and poetry.

The cut-up technique of
William Burroughs,

to slice up and reconstitute
writing into this new structure.

The zeitgeist was out there
on the street.

The hip-hop community was bringing
all this flash of the spirit,

all this colour and movement
and kind of breaking with form.

Jean-Michel was also trying to
channel the energy of his generation

into his canvases and
into these gallery spaces.

Jean-Michel's work lays out so many
of these essential innovations

in the structure of art, music
and writing at the end of the '70s,

beginning of the '80s.

They were new but they had
the classicism of modern art.

I never know how to really
describe, except maybe...

I don't know how
to describe my work.

It's like asking somebody, you know,

asking Miles,
"How does your horn sound?"

You know, I don't think he
could really tell you, you know,

why he played.

You know, why he played this at this
point in the music or just...

it's sort of on automatic,
you know, most of the time.

What this work had was

an astonishing directness

but part of the discourse
around the work

was this unfortunate
primitivist interpretation.

He was a sophisticated
New York City kid

and it was part of the myth of

the noble savage, of the raw talent.

What it allowed certain people
to do was to throw up their hands

in wonder and say,
"Here's this miracle artist,

"we never expected anybody coming
from where he comes from

"to be this good." The term
primitive is purely racist.

Annina proceeded to offer
Jean-Michel his first solo

New York gallery show
in February 1982.

Everyone was just over the moon
when they saw the work

and that show at Annina's.

Everything sold out immediately.

It just kind of all took off
all at once.

It was just everything
that he had dreamed of.

I'm just happy that
I was able to stick it out

and get things I wanted. After...

I felt like I was right,
you know what I mean?

All of a sudden we went
from total poverty

to having so much money that we
didn't know what to do with it.

There was money all over
the house, hidden,

thousands of dollars because
he didn't have a bank account.

We would have lavish
parties with caviar,

with Cristal champagne,
with cocaine.

When everyone in the art world
starts looking at you

with expectations,
you have to produce.

Drugs helped him, I think,

to work harder and longer hours
and simultaneously

and made his mind free.

It might have helped him to have
more endurance during the work.

Collectors were coming to
the loft to look at the work

before it was even finished
and it was very frustrating

because often they would want
the painting to match their couch.

I saw him do things
on Crosby Street,

there were these collectors
who came in and brought him

a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And he was so insulted
that he told them basically,

"Get out, get out now, I'm not
selling anything to you,"

and as they left,
he was on the second floor,

he took this bucket of chicken
and went over and dumped it

on the heads of these people
leaving his studio.

And then he would start writing,
"Not for sale," on the paintings.

He was very happy that
he was selling his work

but he was also very put off

about the work being a commodity.

He struggled with that dichotomy

throughout his whole life.

I think he had a really interesting
relationship with money.

It seemed, at some points,
worthless to him.

I was with him in cabs where
he would give $100 bills out

to squeegee guys
on Bowery and Houston.

He wanted to just
shock them with money.

There you go, sir. Thank very much.
Drive safe. Have a nice holiday.

He came back to the East Village
with all this money

and started spending it wildly
and we were like, "Oh, wow, money."

There's a lot of jealousies
and animosities at the time

that you could feel the pressure.

This camaraderie ended.

It didn't mean that
I wasn't going to go for it too,

because I did,
but it took out a lot of the fun.

I said to Annina,
"If it's at all possible,

"I would love to do a show of
Basquiat's paintings

"in my gallery in LA," which I had
recently opened in West Hollywood.

So I bought first class tickets.

I can afford first class, so I'm
not going to sit in first class

and have the artist
sit in the back of the bus.

He had friends that were
going to fly out with him,

standing out in the group
was Rammellzee,

who had a white leather trench coat
that was tagged all over the place

and he had ski goggles on and that's
how he walked into first class.

We went up the spiral staircase to
this lounge and the first thing

Basquiat does is pull out a big, fat
joint and just lights it up.

The girl that was there to take our
drink order, she was flabbergasted.

She says, "You can't." She kind
of stammered out, you know,...

And he looked...
This was typical Jean-Michel.

He looked up at her calmly

and he says, "Oh, I'm sorry,
I thought this was first class."

You know, it was a long time ago
but I'll never forget it.

And, hey, when we got there,
we didn't get arrested,

got to LA in one piece.

Jean-Michel arrived and he walks in
a room like a rock star, you know,

with his hair and his outfits.

It was just packed,
the opening was packed.

It was a great turnout.

The word was out that
this was a gifted artist

and also a charismatic artist.

I'm filming him in the opening.
That's his first show in LA.

I was going to LA City College,

which is like the local
city college for film.

And so I was doing that

and then working in the gallery.

Because I always had a camera
in my hand, he's like,

"You should make a movie about me,"
and I was like, You know, whatever,

like, "Yeah, you're going to be some
famous artist one day, why not?"

One canvas, he called
it the LA Painting.

It was his anticipation
of what LA was like.

It almost had like Chicano graffiti
on it and blue sky.

Extraordinary painting.

I was just starting out.
It was the beginning of my career

as an art dealer.

Getting a Basquiat show
was definitely a coup

and definitely gave my gallery
more visibility.

He was part of the jet set
at that point,

after going to Los
Angeles with Gagosian

and then going all over Europe

and starting to get shows
in France, in Germany, in Tokyo.

At that point he started to say
to me, "Brett, you've got to earn

"some more money
so we can hang together."

He was 21 and he was

very well on his way to becoming

a millionaire from his art.

He would take limousines because
taxis wouldn't stop for him.

I had never seen a black artist with
this kind of unbelievable talent

and unbelievable charisma.

There was a lot of resentment,
there was a lot of envy,

and it definitely
had a racist edge to it.

I remember there was an artist I was
friendly with and he had gone for

a dinner party at
a collector's house and I said,

"What's their collection like?"

He says, "They have a really great
collection, Larry," he said,

"The thing that fucks it up
is they've got a Basquiat."

I understood that he wanted to show
in the Fun Gallery

because it was in
the Lower East side.

He feels maybe guilty
that some people of his age,

some younger people,

were not about to make all the money

that he could make or the fame.

Where do the words come from?

Real life, books, television.

And you just skim them and
start including certain...

No, when I'm working I hear them,
I just throw them down.

It looked like he didn't want to be
as famous as he was going to be.

I wanted to do some anatomy stuff.

And...

And then I went out and bought
some books that were about anatomy.

And then you started imitating...

Well, not really imitating,
because you know...

I use them as a source material.

So why did you want to do
anatomy stuff?

Cos I felt like it.

Those images,
things from Grey's Anatomy,

crop up all throughout his work.

It's kind of his Rosetta Stone,
in a way, of imagery.

And Grey's Anatomy
was his dictionary.

In May of '82, my assistant
in New York called me up

and told me Basquiat left
Annina Nosei's gallery.

Bischofberger saw the show PS1
and he was begging me to do a show

with him and I was being
sort of, you know, like,

I was playing it cool, you know,

like telling him,
you know, I didn't want to do it

and so on and so forth, you know.

I ask him, "Why did you leave Annina
Nosei?"

And he told me, "I warned her
several times

"that she should not sell my
paintings which I leave down there

"before I sign them."

The idea that I sold them
before they were finished,

it doesn't make any sense.

If he hadn't finished them, he
wouldn't have given them to sell.

Whatever I sold had a slide
and a number of the inventory.

In order to have that,

that meant that with Jean-Michel
we called the photographer

and we had the photograph
because the painting was finished.

He burned bridges
repeatedly behind him

but it didn't seem to stop
his forward movement.

You know, so many collectors were
coming and Gagosian was there

all the time and they were taking
paintings right out of the studio

and he was selling directly
to them without a gallery.

He got paid in cash.

He got paid in drugs as well.

I never did that. I never did that.

This was a different time
in the art world.

Every time an artist did a drawing,

you didn't get a triplicate
contract from a lawyer.

He always had piles of cash
in his studio in Crosby Street,

as well as cocaine
and all sorts of drugs

and so that when you went there,

you never knew who you
would encounter.

I became his exclusive worldwide
dealer at the time with the promise

to find a partner in New York
so that he could show also

in his hometown every now and then.

I did pay quite a lot in cash
because he liked cash a lot

and it was not against the law
to do that then.

And quite often me or my assistant
brought him five or ten

or sometimes even $20,000, I don't
know exactly how much it was.

I asked Basquiat, "Which gallery
would you like best?"

He said, "Probably Mary Boone,"
he said, "Yes, yes, it's Mary."

Now, he was hot.

He was hot. He was this kid that
had taken New York by storm.

He came into the gallery, it was
1982 and he wanted to show with me,

not because I was hot

but because he thought
I showed a serious group of

painters that he wanted
to be part of.

I toyed with whether
it would be a good idea

to take this really young kind of

volatile artist into the gallery,

if that was not going to
tip the scales to be too hot.

She wasn't even sure
whether this artist, maybe,

is only a little fire
who is extinguished soon.

When Warhol founded
Interview Magazine

I was a co-owner of it, 25%.

Whenever I think an artist is
really very promising, very good,

very great, he's glad,
he takes my word for it,

he's glad to make a project of him.

I can invite them
for lunch over there.

I saw Jean-Michel Basquiat.

He was brought by
Bruno Bischofberger,

who was Andy's art dealer in Zurich
and very close to Andy

and the Factory,

and so Andy took some
Polaroids of Jean-Michel,

which is the way Andy
started his portraits.

Basquiat asks me,

"Could you do a few pictures as
well of Warhol and me together?"

So Warhol gave me his camera,
it was this long camera,

and I make a few pictures

of Basquiat and Warhol
standing together.

And then instead of having lunch,

Basquiat said he would like to
go home to do something,

he can't stay for lunch.

And we were hardly
getting up from lunch,

the assistant of Basquiat
came running up

with a five-foot-square painting
which he painted

after this Polaroid
of the two of them.

We all gathered around
to see this portrait of Andy

and there was not only a portrait
of Andy, but a self-portrait

of Jean-Michel and they were
absolutely stunning works.

He put it on the floor because
it was still wet, you know,

so it wouldn't run around.

We'd all stand around
and everybody liked it so much.

And Andy was like, "Oh, God!

"He goes so fast and these
are so great, I mean,

"I didn't even send the Polaroids
out to the lab yet!"

And Andy was looking at me,
halfway smiling, halfway serious,

but still, he said, "Ooh, I'm so
jealous. He's faster than me."

"Oh, God, Bruno, he's so great!"

We have a painting here, actually
it's called Dos Cabezas.

It's here in the gallery.

When Andy died,
it was sold at Sotheby's.

I bought it much more recently.

These were his unbelievable
instincts as a painter.

He is showing Andy,
in a way, his chops,

his talent and he lets Andy be the
dominant presence in the portrait.

Really good portrait,
good likeness of both of them,

particularly Andy, I must say.

And that was the beginning
of everything

between Andy and Jean-Michel.

This was the haunt of Andy Warhol's
and Interview Magazine

and that whole gang.

I started working at
Interview Magazine.

We'd come here frequently and
it's always a party in here

and everybody knew everybody else.

Jean-Michel had been showing
at Annina Nosei earlier in 1982

but he had left
so he was without a gallery.

And I'm not an art dealer
but I'm an art enthusiast,

and Jean-Michel's painting
was really story telling

in a really fresh way
that I had never seen.

I was planning to do a show at
the uptown place where I was living

in April of 1983
and he said yes right away,

he wanted to do the show.

I never put any pressure on him
because I didn't have the overhead

of running the gallery,
and that responsibility.

I don't think I've ever been
swayed by what a dealer thinks

about an artist.
I always listen to artists.

At this time, like,
the spring of '84,

I was swayed to take
Jean-Michel into my gallery

because of Brice Marden
and Julian Schnabel's respect

for Jean-Michel's work.

I think that Jean-Michel
was an original

and those were the kind of
artists I wanted to show.

It was somewhere around that time
when Julian Schnabel left

the gallery to go to Pace.

I was sitting at my desk and
I was crying because I was sad

that Julian had left and Jean-Michel
came into my little office,

which was smaller even
than this room,

and put his arm around me and said,
"Oh, Mary, don't worry.

"I'm going to be a much better
artist than Julian will ever be."

It was an amazing first show.

So many people came.

A whole new group of collectors.

Most of the work went
for $25,000 or less.

That's kind of normal for a young
artist in their first show.

I was aware that Jean-Michel was

doing really well as an artist.

It was very important
to Jean-Michel that he be regarded

as a great artist

versus a black artist,

while he was also incredibly

connected to the black experience

and to his blackness,
because he was a black man.

There's a lot of people
that are neglected in art.

I don't know if it's because
who made the paintings

or what but, um...

..black people are never really
portrayed realistically in...

Not even portrayed
in modern art enough.

That Basquiat did not want
to be seen as a black artist

is completely understandable.

Louise Bourgeois did not want
to be seen as a feminine artist.

There are many artists
who are homosexual

who do not want to be seen
as gay artists, right?

Any artist who gets identified
with a social group

finds themselves on the spot in
ways that limits their freedom,

limits the understanding
and interest in their work.

He was looking
at his career and saying,

"I don't want to be pushed
into this particular ghetto."

He was playing a very subtle
game of, on the one hand,

again showing people things about a
world they were largely ignorant of

and mostly afraid of
and, at the same time,

doing it in idiom which
was informed by the grand tradition.

This work that's just screaming
revolutionary intentions, you know,

in terms of who it celebrates,
who it valorises, who it trophies,

whose experience in
culture and history

it completely embraces

as heroic and regal

and gutbucket at the same time.

There are really complicated matters
that make us say,

"I don't want to be regarded
as a black artist,

"or I want to be regarded
as an American artist."

But, in fact, it is because
of a certain kind of tragedy,

Jim Crow laws,
lynching, and the civil rights

that Basquiat's work has
the potency that it does

and that tragedy is no less black,
and Haitian, and Puerto Rican,

and Brooklyn.

He filled his work full of energies
and references to the very thing

that scared the shit
out of a lot of the art world.

They wanted it
because it was exciting,

but they didn't want it
if it came in a package

and with a messenger who would
make them feel more uncomfortable

than they already did.

Tonight, the furore continues over
the death of Michael Stewart,

the young Brooklyn man who died
13 days after he was arrested

by transit police officers. Artists
from the Lower East side picketed...

I knew Michael Stewart.

He was part of the downtown scene.

We all knew him.

Michael Stewart emulated Jean.

Michael Stewart
cut his hair like Jean.

Michael and I were romantic friends.

I was not still with Jean-Michel
when that happened,

when the Michael Stewart
case happened.

I started dating Jean-Michel
and then one night

we went to the Roxy
and a friend of his came up

and told him about Michael Stewart
being beaten to death.

Michael Stewart was brought to
Bellevue Hospital unconscious

on the morning of September 15th.

He'd been arrested by transit police

for painting graffiti
in a subway station.

The family charges
the police beat up the young man.

The TA Police deny it.

Normally we'd go into the club
and hang out for a while and dance.

He wanted to leave right away.

We went back to my apartment.

He was just drawing skulls
all night.

He was so incensed about it.

He just said, "You're white.
You would never understand.

"You can't imagine...
You can't even talk about this.

"It just is so deep."

He was terrified
that it could have been him.

I was very close to Michael.

I know in my heart

that Michael
was murdered by the police.

I hate violence and
I don't know why they killed him,

but they're not going to get away
with it, that's for sure.

We were talking about more than
a close friend of everybody's.

He was killed senselessly.

Madonna, Keith Haring, and then
several galleries gave money

for Michael Stewart's
legal defence fund

and I went to Jean-Michel
and asked for money

and he was terrified that
if he gave any money

that he would somehow be implicated

or that the police
would come after him.

He kept saying, "It could have
been me, it could have been me."

No one man against white supremacy

is going to end up being the winner.

People like James Brown
and Nina Simone...

..who also had apprehension
about being identified

as anti-authoritarian,
radical black artists.

There's an anxiety because,
you know, at that point,

how much of your success is
dependent on a white audience.

In response to
Michael Stewart's death,

Jean-Michel made
a painting called Defacement.

With a painter who's that diaristic,

he saw himself there.

He saw the potential
for his own annihilation

at the hands of authority.

Just as it was Michael Stewart,

it could have been Jean-Michel
Basquiat, who was affected and...

..it was scary.

It was scary to see that
that could happen.

It continues to be scary to see
that these kind of things happen

and that young black men continue
to be killed and treated

the way that they are and I know
that it also deeply affected

and impacted Jean-Michel.

He had this real fear that
he wasn't really allowed in

because it was a mostly
white, affluent world.

New York Times Sunday magazine
wanted an article

about the art market,
and how it was exploding.

And my assignment was

to follow Jean-Michel Basquiat

as an exemplar of what was happening

to the art market
in the early-1980s.

Kathleen McGuigan
came to the gallery,

and approached me about doing
a story on Jean-Michel,

and I think they loved him.

They loved the whole story that he
was so young and that he was

full of all this energy,

and yet he also kind of tied
into history.

He was only 24 years old
at the time I interviewed him.

Andy Warhol told him it would be
a good idea to do it.

He did also give me access.

You know, he let me watch him
paint in his studio.

There was only a little glitch that
they kept sending the photographer

to the studio to take
a picture and Jean-Michel

didn't want to put on his shoes.

The editor of the magazine
didn't see the irony in that,

so he just kept yelling and
sending the photographer back.

"Get him to get his shoes on."

Finally, he calls me up and yells at
me that I've got to get the artist

to put his shoes on.

I said, "He's a grown-up. If he
doesn't want to put his shoes on,

"he's not going to
put his shoes on."

That was a very peak moment
for Jean-Michel Basquiat,

and then, of course, they got
this really, really great image

and I think people remember the
image almost more than anything.

It was really breakthrough for
Jean-Michel and he knew it.

He knew he had made it.

He was so proud of it,

he went out and bought stacks
and stacks of New York Times.

And Andy was reading it
right up next to his face,

and he was really blown away by it.

I think he would have liked
to have been on the cover.

Jean-Michel's father decided to
have a dinner at his town house in

Brooklyn and Jean-Michel
invited Andy and myself.

I think Andy Warhol coming over to
the house for dinner

is pretty cool, really cool.

I was probably about 14 years old

and I barely knew
who Andy Warhol was.

So, for me, it was just this
kind of this eccentric friend

that he was bringing over
to the house.

It was a little dinner.

It was Jean-Michel and Gerard

and Nora and Andy and myself.

A really sweet dinner,
and it was really fun.

And the item for dinner was
stuffed fillet of sole.

I thought it would be so great
if Basquiat and Warhol

would do works together.

Every artist would have dreamt of
doing collaborations with the most

famous artist on earth.

So I asked Basquiat, "Would you
like to do such a thing?"

He said, "Of course, immediately.
What do you think?"

I mean, this is your big chance.

For what? For nothing.

Nobody sees this painting.

There's never been
anything like this,

this kind of collaboration
of the two artistic giants

of different generations.

I think that Andy Warhol was
a great influence on Jean-Michel.

He didn't do drugs.

Maybe in Andy's attempts
to get Basquiat off drugs,

he was trying to redeem himself
in the eyes of all of those,

including some others
at The Factory,

who felt he had pushed people
to the edge.

Andy was paternal but
there's jealousy and rivalry

going on all the time.

I mean, I like the way, you know,

here we're doing some work together
and you paint me out.

Where did I paint you out?

Where? Everything I've done,
you've painted me out.

Where? Well... Where? Where?

I think, in some ways, Andy Warhol
might have been his art father.

Andy is a peculiar father to have.

And also, Andy was competitive
and when he made these paintings

with Basquiat,
he was competing with his son.

Now, that's great in certain ways,
in other ways maybe not so great.

You didn't give us enough
to paint out. Oh, OK.

Here is the painting
called Clear Boy,

a collaboration done between
Warhol and Basquiat.

So, Warhol did the logos of
all kind of different products,

like the General Electric logo here,
the Ford automobile logo.

Basquiat convinced Warhol
to start hand-painting again.

For 23 years, he had only
used silk screen.

And Basquiat,
in silk screen technique,

seen in these two bananas.

So, they reversed the techniques.

Basquiat used silk screen
and Warhol painted by hand.

So, this is where
the famous exhibition

of the collaboration paintings of
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

first took place
at my gallery in 1985.

I haven't been here in 30-odd years.

Wow!

The poster for the exhibition
of Warhol and Basquiat

was one million percent my idea.

I got a call from Paige Powell

asking me if I wanted
to come to a dinner

that Andy was giving at Texarkana.

I showed up a little late.

The one empty seat was
right next to Jean-Michel.

And the second I sat down, he said,

"Oh, I've been a fan of
your work for five years.

"That portrait you made of
Klaus Nomi,

"I've loved your work from the
portrait you made of Klaus Nomi."

And I realised, wow,
that's five years ago.

That's incredible.
He really is for real.

So, this is the camera
I used for the sitting.

And I've had it since
my 21st birthday.

He explained that they had
this idea to make this poster.

And then he said, you know,
"Would you be interested

"in making the picture for it?"

I said, "Um, sure."

In my mind, I thought,
"This is never going to happen."

I placed them right about here.

Jean turned to Andy, who was
sitting at the head of the table,

and he yelled across to Andy
and said,

"Michael's going to make
that picture for the poster."

And Andy said, "Oh, wow!

"We already asked
Robert Maplethorpe to do that."

And Jean said,
"No, Michael's going to do it."

And he said, "Wow, great!

"I love Michael's work,
I love Michael's portraits."

Andy just seemed to be
almost like a mannequin.

I noticed that Jean was very
comfortable moving Andy around

physically and
telling him what to do.

This was interesting for me to see
that he was comfortable with Andy

in a way that I hadn't witnessed
anybody be with him,

which was kind of nice.

There was a dividing wall here and,
um, you could go round one painting

hanging here as you entered.

And, er, the famous photograph of
the two of them together, standing.

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel,
next to each other, back-to-back,

right here. Then you come
into the larger room,

where the larger paintings were.

And this is the huge painting
with a big piece of steak

that Warhol had painted.

And Jean-Michel turned
the steaks into mountains

with skiers sloping down the
mountains with a crocodile

or two at the bottom.

And this is where
the two of them sat down

and a television documentary
was made from England.

Then the other big painting being
here was the famous painting

of the large dentures and head.

Boy, it was a great, great show.

One of the greatest shows,
I think, of the last 100 years.

Andy Warhol was the great master
of the '60s, '70s and '80s,

and befriended Jean-Michel.

And now the world was coming to see
the collaboration paintings.

The paintings were
far too radical then.

They're still radical now.

The world wasn't ready for it then
and the response was not that great.

Jean had called me to come
and have brunch with him.

It was the weekend after
the opening of the exhibition

at Tony Shafrazi's.

That day, he had the New York Times

and he was excited
to read the review.

And then, after he finished
reading the review, he kind of...

His mood collapsed.

He just became really upset.

It definitely painted this picture

of him being portrayed
as Andy's mascot...

..and being really used by Andy.

Jean-Michel felt violated that
he was called Andy's mascot,

and, erm...

Because he was already established.

I think he felt
he was going backwards.

He really, really took it very hard

and he expressed he would
never talk to Andy again.

That was it. He was done with Andy.

I think Jean became very paranoid
and suspicious of even Andy

and felt that Andy had this
reputation of being a vampire

and feeding off of younger artists
and needing new blood

to infuse his own career.

About a month later,

I was photographing Andy for Giorgio
Armani and then the conversation

shifted into Andy asking
me about Jean-Michel,

and he was really concerned
about him and wanting to know

if he was OK. He was very
concerned that he was possibly

going to be self-destructive with
the way he felt about this review.

He said, "I've been trying to reach
him and I can't reach him.

"Is there a way?

"Could you tell him that I'd
like to talk to him about it?"

I said, "OK, I'll try."

Andy kept saying, like we'd go out
to dinner and he'd say,

"Do think we should call
Jean-Michel?"

I said, "Well, Andy, you've tried
before and he doesn't want to go."

I mean... I just said to him,
"Andy, he deserted you.

"He deserted you."

Jean started to doubt himself

and started to feel like there was
a turn in the critical response

to his work.

I like to try to remain a little
reclusive, not just be out there,

to be brought up, and be brought
down, like they do to most of them.

I can't think of
one big celebrity type person

they haven't done that to.

He was somebody who understood
the value of his own work

and always knew it and never
really kind of doubted that

until he was, I think, weakened
by some of the drugs that he took

in the later part of his life.

The night that Andy died,
he came into Indochine.

I was a waitress at that point.

And he stands in the middle
of the dining room, sobbing.

He was inconsolable.

He said,
"I'll never fucking get over this."

Crying hysterically.

He was like,
"You've got to come with me."

I was like, "I can't, I'm working.

"I'm going to get fired if I leave
in the middle of the shift."

The buzzer went and it was
about 2am and it was frantic.

It was absolutely frantic.

My new boyfriend said, "Who is it?"

Jean-Michel,
in a frantic voice, said,

"It's Jean-Michel, it's Jean-Michel.
Is Suzanne there? Is Suzanne there?"

And I said, "Let
him in, he's probably in trouble.

"He was probably mugged
or something. Let him in."

And we buzzed him in.

And he never came up.

He felt guilty cos he dropped Andy.

And then he really got into drugs.

Jean-Michel came running from
his studio all the way here,

he'd come to see me in my office.

He entered there. Laid down, crying,
he was crying, poor guy.

Crying, confessing, that he'd
cleaned up, it was all fine,

it was all going to be good
from now on.

In the case of Jean,

like, the only person he listened
to about drugs was Andy.

You know, I used to think,
well, you know,

a separation of church and state,
you know, you just...

You owe the artist the money,

you give it to them and it's not
your business how they spend it.

And now I feel more like if
someone's hurting themselves...

..if I could have done anything to
prevent that from happening...

..I would have, and should have.

I rented a house in Hawaii.

You know, everybody kind of
understood why we were doing this,

because it would be a healthier
environment for Jean-Michel.

He liked Hawaii and I think
sometimes Paige would stay with him.

He really loved spending time there.

It was a great way
for him to escape the city.

It just had everything there.

They had horses, a horse stable

and different houses on it

and beautiful tropical fruit trees.

But also he didn't
do hard drugs over there.

It was really great
to see him in that world, too,

because he was so happy.

He would never... I never saw him
upset when he was in Hawaii.

It was like a sanctuary for him.

It wasn't so much that he wanted
to go back to New York,

or back to LA to, you know,
get some harder drugs,

I think it was that
he couldn't work there.

Basquiat's art is full of
many of death's heads.

There are many skulls.

There are many faces that
seem to have, you know,

skeletal structures behind them.

Some of that may simply come from
how he looked at Gray's Anatomy

and lots of skeletons.

But some of it is there as
intimations of mortality,

if not an actual death wish.

Like a lot of the great artists,

they are very aware of
their mortality

and contrast the life force
with the inevitability of death.

And that's central to Jean-Michel.

The many paintings that
you see that give you a skull,

or skull and bones,
or give you anatomy,

they're very much about kind of a
symbolic gutting of black males

in American society.

Jean-Michel invited
all his old friends at the show

he had at Baghoomian in 1988.

He was very affectionate.

The whole show was like
a prophecy of his death.

And there is a big painting
of the death on a horse.

Well, the painting Riding With Death

is, undoubtedly, an existential cry
of some kind.

It's a hard painting to look at.

What I saw was an incredible
amount of pain.

It just was a very clear
and very profound view...

..into some of what Jean-Michel
was thinking about at that time.

There is also another big painting
that says, "Man dies, man dies."

That that embraced not just
goodbye for the summer vacation,

it was like a goodbye.

Already I felt it.

I got a call from
Jean's housekeeper.

I was out on Long Island at the
beach and she called and said,

"Jean-Michel's very sick.

"He's sweating, the room is very
hot, there's no air conditioning...

"..and he has foam coming out of
his mouth."

And I said, "Well, what are you...?
You know, call 911."

Someone called me and told me
Jean-Michel died.

And I said, "When?" And they told
me and I was like, "Oh, my God."

I wished it had have been me there
when he overdosed because...

I wish it had have been me,
now as a doctor,

cos I would have revived him.

So in my mind, I play with
time sometimes, and I wish.

It's amazing and humbling
how Jean-Michel speaks to

not only my generation

but the generation of my children

and how powerful his voice is

even 30 years later.

Whether we're talking about
Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix,

there's a romantic aspect of drugs

in terms of Jean-Michel being linked
to the inspiration of his heroes.

His career goes beyond just
a normal career, becomes mythic.

I mean, he died at...

He was 27 in 1988.

People are buying into that whole
myth in addition to buying his work.

Thank you, Yuki. Congratulations.

What's interesting about the
auction breaking $100 million

is that I feel like the rest of
the world only understands greatness

by these consolidated values
that happen through the market.

But it confirms something
that many of us already knew -

how important he was to
the legacy of American art.

I wish my brother were here today.

This may have been what to happen

in order for his voice to be
as powerful as it is today.