arts&life

exhibit

B asqui
asquiat
at Before

The artist’s friend,

lover and roommate

Alexis Adler brings

her entire collection

to exhibit at the

Cranbrook Art

Museum.

JULIE EDGAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER

details

“Basquiat Before Basquiat:
East 12th Street, 1979-1980”
runs through March 11
at the Cranbrook Art
Museum, Bloomfield Hills.
(248) 645-3320;
cranbrookartmuseum.org.

ABOVE: Basquiat in the apartment,
1981. Photograph by Alexis Adler.

44

December 21 • 2017

I

Basquiat

n his short life, artist Jean-
Michel Basquiat put his
mark on a lot of things —
from large-scale murals on his
apartment wall to musings and
doodles on ordinary notebook
paper to sweatshirts and radia-
tor covers.
Before he became known
simply as Basquiat, the Brooklyn
native transformed the mundane
objects surrounding him in the
sixth-floor walkup he shared
with Alexis Adler in New York’s
East Village — her coat, a wall, a
door — with a style that would
later fetch very steep prices. At
the time, 1979, he was leaving his
“SAMO” tag on walls throughout
the city — but graffiti was just
one more form of expression
for a restless and very prolific
teenager on his way to art-world
superstardom.
Adler saved more than 100
photos, art objects and ephem-
era from their time together.
Those products of Basquiat as a
young man — he was 19 — are
on view at the Cranbrook Art
Museum through March 11.
Called “Basquiat Before Basquiat:

jn

East 12th Street, 1979-1980,” the
show features odds and ends
from a notebook he kept,
sweatshirts he painted and
sold on the street, a jumpsuit,
drawings, writings and photo-
graphs Adler took of him clown-
ing around — that add a little
more information about how
Basquiat interacted with the
world. The show also features
paintings on loan from private
collectors.
In 1988, at the age of 27,
Basquiat died of a heroin over-
dose. At that point, he had
become part of Andy Warhol’s
circle and a darling of the
downtown scene. His Neo-
Expressionist paintings took off
and he profited, but he would
not live to see the day that one of
his paintings (Untitled) fetched
the highest price of any painting
sold at auction by an American
artist. A Japanese collector
bought the portrait in May for
$110.5 million at Sotheby’s.
A new interest in Basquiat
is also evidenced by two docu-
mentaries that have just been
released about his life — Rage to

Riches by the BBC and Boom
for Real by Adler’s friend,
filmmaker Sara Driver.
Basquiat was 19 when
he shared the flat with Adler, an
embryologist who had moved to
New York from Seattle to go to
school at Barnard. They met at a
club and eventually moved into
a building that was half-empty.
Their cozy apartment (400
square feet) burst with Basquiat’s
creative output — he painted
and wrote on the refrigerator,
the walls, the TV — most of it
preserved in one way or another
through the years.
Adler, 61, has since married
and divorced and raised her two
children, Max and Zoe Katz, in
the same 12th Street building.
After flooding from Hurricane
Sandy seemed too close for
comfort, Adler pulled Basquiat’s
notebook and other drawings
from a downtown bank where
she had a safety-deposit box.
In 2014, she started consider-
ing selling them. After a bit
of research, Adler went with
Christie’s, which cut out the wall
where Basquiat had painted a

mural and took a door that was
also marked by his spiky brush-
work.
A lawsuit by Basquiat’s estate
halted the Christie’s auction
after the mural and door sold
— leaving the rest of the trove
with Adler. That is what she is
now sharing with the world.
The Museum of Contemporary
Art in Denver was the first stop,
Cranbrook the second. Adler
thinks the exhibit will head to St.
Louis next.
“Basquiat’s time with Alexis
was an important transitional
moment,” says Nora Burnett
Abrams, the show’s curator. “He
was still exploring many cre-
ative outlets with equal passion,
including playing music, perfor-
mance, drawing and writing.”
Adler was happy to talk to
the Jewish News about Basquiat
and about how the exhibit came
together:
JN: How did you meet Jean-
Michel?
AA: We met at a party in the
spring of 1979. I’d seen his wall
tags and we were introduced.
When I was leaving, there was a

