What does the word ‘Zurich’ mean to you?
A feeling of openness, care, and understanding.
Your first memory in Zurich?
A kiss in the rain in the Limmat.
What is the mark of a true ‘Zuricher’?
Freitag bags.
Which famous figure best embodies Zurich?
Lhaga Koondhor – popess of Zurich nightlife, influencer, coach, guru, curator, silly girl.
Your favorite place for breakfast?
Café du Bonheur on Bullingerplatz, where you can dip your feet in the water fountain while enjoying a nice drink.
Where are the best boutiques?
Tasoni is a must, and the flea market on Bürkliplatz is cute.
I first met Jean on the street, when he returned keys to my sometime, henna-headed French girlfriend after sleeping over at her place. Couch surfing was his thing, importuning the pretty girls for places to stay during that sexual idyll of the late 1970s, bookended between the availability of birth control and the advent of HIV/AIDS. He was a night owl, feral, and an artist from the word go, with drive and an already developed idiom. His simple but Expressionistic style – odd considering most boys his age were doing detailed copies of Marvel Comics superheroes – is rooted in graffiti and cartoons, but also arose from visits to the non-European collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 12-foot-wide 1983 triptych El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) (1983), recently sold by fashion designer Valentino at Christie’s for USD 67 million, features – amidst its many symbolic references to the Middle Passage and the crossed-out word ‘slave’ – a rendering of a papyrus skiff, clearly the result of Jean-Michel’s visit to the museum’s Egyptian wing.
The year 1980 marked a transition for the New York art world and everyone in it. The 1960s had seen Modernism gorge itself on pop culture, pare itself down to the minimum, and finally dematerialize into an exhausted finale. The 1970s began in a kind of hangover. Everything had been done – what was left to do? One solution was to spread sideways, rhizomatically, rather than progressing ever upward or forward. New York City had barely skirted bankruptcy in 1975, with entire neighborhoods – notably the South Bronx and the Lower East Side – abandoned by landlords and the government. Light manufacturing had departed SoHo and by the 1980s, the area became the art scene’s new wellspring. Its 19th-century cast iron buildings contributed to the new aesthetic thanks to sprawling loft spaces. Jean-Michel adopted a model of art-making that used the detritus of abandoned slum lives rather than industrial castoffs.
What can you only do in Zurich?
Swim in the Limmat.
What do you miss most about Zurich when you are away?
Nights at Longstreet Bar when it used to be cool.
Your best advice for those just visiting?
Fall accidently in the river, eat a vegetarian currywurst, enjoy a cocktail at Kronenhalle, invite the barman of Chicago Bar to show you his panini book.
Despite the satire, Jean-Michel had ambitions to become part of the above-ground art business. In June 1980, he took part in the seminal, artist-organized ‘The Times Square Show’, notably writing ‘FREE SEX’ above the doorway, which was later painted over to avoid trouble in the still-seedy Times Square district. More dramatically, in a punk fashion show featuring artists dressed in thrift shop gear, Jean-Michel stood by with a house painter’s brush and bucket, slapping paint on the models as they went by.
But by February 1981 he’d quickly morphed from street artist to establishment painter, showing at P.S. 1’s ‘New York/New Wave’ exhibition. Black culture in all its forms was Jean-Michel’s central subject, and he can be credited as a harbinger of the Black presence in art that is only now being fully acknowledged. The artist Stephen Torton, Jean-Michel’s studio assistant, describes an almost delirious, mostly nonverbal work method, characterized by abrupt shifts across the canvas and feverish free association, painting on found objects and home-stretched canvases. ‘It was rata-tat-tat,’ says Torton. The art looked immediate and almost easy. In terms of prolific production, Basquiat was a budding Warhol, but with a human touch.
In 1988, Jean-Michel died of an accidental heroin overdose at age 27. He’d created more than 600 paintings and 1,500 drawings; an inspirational tale with a cautionary conclusion. Isn’t that the stuff of classic tragedy? Such talent, such ambition, such luck. In advance of his first major gallery show, at Annina Nosei in SoHo in May 1981, the air was abuzz with anticipation for this kid and his big brash paintings. We could feel it. We thought we had ‘good antennae’, trained to pick up what was new and important. The next year, in summer 1982, Jean-Michel, just 21, went to Italy on the invitation of gallery owner Emilio Mazzoli to produce new works for a solo exhibition. Working feverishly and intuitively as always, Basquiat painted eight canvases. The exhibition never happened, but these works, now called the Modena Paintings, are on view at Fondation Beyeler, together for the first time.
I realize now we were sensing only a rapidly approaching tsunami of fame and fortune, a flood that hasn’t let up for a minute, not even after, especially not after, the artist himself was swept away.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
‘The Modena Paintings’
Fondation Beyeler, Basel
Until August 27, 2023
Walter Robinson is an artist and writer based in New York. He cofounded Printed Matter, and with the late critic Edit DeAk edited Art-Rite magazine from 1973 to 1978. He was the editor of artnet.com magazine from 1996 to 2012. As a painter, he is represented by Air de Paris in Paris.
Originally published on June 08, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, 1982. Private Collection © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photograph by Daniel Portnoy. A dark filter was applied over the image for readability. 2. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Woman with Roman Torso [Venus]), 1982. Private Collection © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photograph by Robert Bayer. 3. Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Guilt of Gold Teeth, 1982. Nahmad Collection © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York/2022, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photograph by Annik Wetter.