8 saturday review Saturday April 9 2022 | the times
W
hen the 1980s art
superstar Jean-
Michel Basquiat
died at the age of
just 27, in 1988,
his family inher-
ited a vast collec-
tion of paintings, drawings and ephemera,
most of which have spent the past 34 years
in a warehouse. This month they will fin-
ally be displayed in the Starrett-Lehigh
Building, in Chelsea, New York. Jean-
Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure is one of the
year’s most eagerly awaited exhibitions.
The show is a huge undertaking, featur-
ing more than 200 works, housed in an
immersive set designed by the British-
Ghanaian architect David Adjaye. Includ-
ing recreations of Basquiat’s childhood
home and studio, as well as a “party room”
inspired by the Palladium nightclub in
New York City — a hangout of Basquiat,
Andy Warhol and Keith Haring — the
exhibition will present “a more personal
account of the man that he was”, according
to his sister, Lisane Heriveaux, 57.
The exhibition is the first curated by the
artist’s family, an idea that has been in
development since about 2017. Lisane and
her sister, Jeanine Basquiat, inherited the
estate in 2014 after their father, Gerard
Basquiat, died in 2013. They manage it
with their stepmother, Nora Fitzpatrick.
Before taking over the estate, “Lisane
and I lived very private lives — our own
lives, our own careers,” Jeanine, 54, says. It
took some time “to kind of wrap our hands
around the estate, to think about what we
might do next”, until “our stepmother
Nora said, ‘These paintings are just
sitting in a warehouse, they need to
be seen.’ We agreed that the best
way would be to have a show of our
own. We had no idea what that en-
tailed, so we had to figure out how to
make that happen.” With their own
careers and commitments to negoti-
ate, the process took time, but they
never considered handing it over to a gal-
lery. “Never!” Jeanine says. “If we were
going to come up with something this
grand it was definitely going to be
us — no one can tell us how to
curate our lives and our expe-
rience with our brother.”
Jeanine and Lisane
have spent decades
looking on as others
have told their
brother’s story.
Jean-Michel
ceral, colourful works for which Basquiat
is best known. Many are from 1982, when
he first had his own studio space, the year
many critics regard as his best. They
include a Venus — a subject to which he
frequently returned — and Cabeza, thedazzling portrait of a black figure on a
yellow background. Another standout,
Nu-Nile, is a 40ft-long black-and-red
mural that was once displayed behind the
bar in the VIP section of the Palladium.
“Just looking at a work that had been
tucked away for decades, at how vibrant ithave a time in their life when they’re couch
surfing, but because he’s famous people
put their own spin on that,” Lisane says.
“One narrative we want to clear up is that
Jean had a family. He wasn’t just plopped
into whatever story people create for him.”
That they were still close after he left
home seems evident from a selection of
high-profile works in the show: photo-
graphs of Andy Warhol popping around to
the Basquiat house to dinner, in about 1985
(Jeanine, seven years Jean’s junior, admits
she didn’t know who he was until someone
said: “You know, the soup cans?”), and a
collection of silkscreen portraits Warhol
produced of Gerard, their mother, Matil-
de, and Jeanine (who tells me hers has
remained in the warehouse with the rest
of the work: “Where in your house would
you put that?”)
The show will feature dozens of the vis-visual art
Basquiat: the real
story of the art star
— by his sisters
As they prepare to open an exhibition of their brother’s work
in New York, Lisane Heriveaux and Jeanine Basquiat tell
Hannah Marriott about the man behind the superstar myth
Basquiat is often presented as something
of a rags-to-riches tale: the homeless graf-
fiti artist, estranged from his family, who
became an overnight art-world superstar
and died young from a drug overdose.
There has been a tendency, Lisane says, to
sensationalise the story “of this black kid
who came out of the ghetto and was on the
streets, something Jean-Michel battled in
his own lifetime”. The truth, the sisters say,
is a lot more nuanced; their family were
middle class and highly cultured; there
were joys as well as sorrows.
The show’s title — which came out of
a family brainstorming session and was
suggested by Jeanine’s daughter, Sophia
Heriveaux, a film-maker who also record-
ed interviews for the exhibition — aims to
set the tone. King Pleasure is a paintingnamed after a jazz singer, whose song,
Moody’s Mood for Love, was played in
the Basquiat childhood home. It is fitting,
Lisane says, “because this is a celebration
of Jean-Michel, who worked so hard but
also played hard — he loved music and
loved to dance”.
In the show catalogue the sisters write
about childhood difficulties — their
parents separated when Jean-Michel was
eight and the children were raised by their
father — but about happiness too, repre-
sented in the show by Basquiat sketches
inspired by Saturday morning car-
toons such as The Bullwinkle Show
and Rocky Racoon, and the many
museums that Jean-Michel’s
mother took him to (his Brooklyn
Museum junior membership card
will be displayed).
While Jean-Michel clashed with
his father — a Haitian immigrant and
businessman who viewed a steady corpo-
rate job as essential to a successful
American life — over his deter-
mination to be an artist, and
slept on a series of sofas
when he left home, the
sisters say he was
always in contact
with the family.
“There are
many, many
people whoHe battled the story
of this black kid who
came out of the ghetto
and was on the streets
sister act Jeanine
Basquiat and Lisane
Heriveaux, the sisters of
Jean-Michel Basquiat,
below, pictured in 1983me “to kind of wrap our hands
tate, to think about what we
t”, until “our stepmother
hese paintings are just
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no idea what that en-
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red handing it over to a gal-
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can tell us how to
es and our expe-
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nd Lisane
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s others
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inspired by Saturdaym
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While Jean-Michel c
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always
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