Jean-Michel Basquiat - A Homage & How I Knew Him- Bill Rabinovitch
Two June 2020 threads on FB just now about Jean-Michel Basquiat from art writers I know have just appeared & I just chimed in with this now edited a bit - on the latest by John Seed. The other by John Hastings.
John, great sensitivity of thought in your Ghost Letter to Basquiat. Perceptive on all counts. I first hand knew Basquiat - & consider this of mine an homage. I attended some of his openings & he once gave me a signed print. Robert Hughes I knew once wrote an unkindly controversial piece criticizing him for not soon taking up academic painting he felt would help him a great deal. I did a 20 min video interview with Hughes in 2010 who loved Goya. I knew Jean Michel earlier who used to graffiti right near my big street level studio gallery windows at 74 Grand St in SoHo for 7 years until 1981 when Annina Nosei let him take over her gallery basement on Prince & Mercer.
I think Basquiat surely picked up a few ideas from me in that period before he had a studio - though he was an ultimate great original visionary artist from the start. He often saw my expressionist art over 7 years as my sometimes depicted black figures & jazz musicians in my expressionist manner. There's a long earlier FB thread about this a few years ago. I had already become friends with some famous jazz musicians who sought me out because of my art which was hen often reviewed & well known in the downtown & uptown media like jazz master revolutionary Ornette Coleman & often invited me alone to his Prince street loft above Meisel Gallery in SoHo I'd already for decades hung out at great jazz clubs & was once selected as solo artist of The Monterey Jazz Festival in Ca by it's founder with my ten foot paintings they hung on poles throughout the fair grounds - a huge honor & a very nice piece in the catalog.
In 1996 I created a half hour cable TV play largely about Basquiat as core figuring into it. Many famous artists & dealers like Leo Castelli took part besides my stellar cast. In it a black art critic plays Jean-Michel in a no holds barred hot performance. Andy Warhol had been repeatedly very kind to me when he was alive. Many thousands have since seen it as the NYC MNN cable network played it for years on all its four channels.night & day I would get many telephone calls about.
Art critics/ historians Irving Sandler, Donald Kuspit, Arthur Danto as well as Walter Robinson, all loved it & told me so. It's been on Vimeo since 2014 & still gathers an audience. "Rabinovitch vs Julian Schnabel. It was very popular NYC cable TV watching by tens of thousands over years & still gathers an audience as reflecting much of what SoHo was then like with many of its art stars & dealers & the entire ambiance of the scene during SoHo's golden art years. Yes, even a young Warhol. I also knew the real Andy Warhol who repeatedly treated me well. A clever plot in my video play & it all gradually builds to a fantastic ending many are still thrilled with. & even the demise of Warhol. If you send Jean-Michel a new Ghost letter about totally positive things please mention it.
