Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Studio and Apartment

In this building with the sorta-secret Japanese restaurant “Bohemian”, native New Yorker Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and worked until his overdose at that magical age of 27. His life was short but rich- starting out as a graffiti artist writing SAMO all over the East Village, then later  joining the punk rock scene with this band with Vincent Gallo called “Gray.” Frequenting and playing Max’s Kansas City, CBGB and Mudd Club with Gray, he began meeting the downtown art stars, hooking him up to be cast in the movie “Downtown 81” and in Blondie’s “Rapture” video.

Moving on to create his legendary Neo-Expressionist paintings, Basquiat participated in the infamous “The Times Square Show,” and then met and began working with Andy Warhol in 1982 (he also dated Madonna that same year. Lower East Side power couple!!!!)

It was here, in a loft in the building then owned by Andy Warhol, that Basquiat made the work that the galleries Annina Nosei, Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone clamored over. It was also here that, not long after Warhol’s death, Basquiat died of a heroin overdose on the 12th of August, 1988.

In the days of the Civil War, the building was a horse stable, then renovated into a dance hall and saloon in the early 1900s, which was frequented by the Italian mob. In 1905, one gangster “slipped and fell on a bullet” inside (seriously) and lived…for just two days before someone else shot him.

Who: Jean-Michel Basquiat

What: Studio and residence

Where: 57 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012