It was hard to believe Jean-Michel Basquiat was a historically famous genius when we first met. At Andy Warhol’s studio, Jean-Michel was not what I anticipated—He was just an eager kid with zero artifice.
The art dealer Leo Castelli had arranged the portrait session of Warhol. When I entered Warhol’s studio, Andy merely said to Jean-Michel, “He is here to shoot me”. Then Andy whispered to me, “Would it be ok to shoot the two of us together?”. For me, I knew I was being offered a bite into a slice of a delicious cake. I knew there was something more happening. I knew that my archives would forever be punctuated by “the moment”. Yet I still didn’t quite understand the fame game.
When I was alone with Basquiat, he told me that “Andy said this was to be an important picture.” Somehow, my mind spun like a top. Was I being manipulated? Nope! This kid, who was a few years younger than I, was just being himself. When I arrived a few days later to show him what I had captured, I felt that every bone in his body was transparent truth. We talked, we smoked a bit, laughed a lot, and made the most of good conversation and good company.
He invited me to join him across the street for a drink. There we sat at one round table. There was one unglamorous spill on the table, two chairs and one bottle of Stolichnaya Pertsovka Russian Peppered Vodka and some “smoke”. We poured shots of the 100-proof vodka. The conversation became quite animated. He knew artists were envious of his stardom. Nobody wanted to be eclipsed from society’s eyes. He named names. It was clear that the fame game affected perceptions and relationships. I will not share who, according to Jean-Michel, needed to be close. Today it would not be fair to reveal the intimate exposures. Yes, some pretty famous names.
Basquiat could have shared stories way beyond the a.m. hours. He knew a club or two he wanted to hang out at, but I needed a fresh-air experience. The bottle was empty. I thanked him for being so goddamn normal. I had stories to remember for a lifetime.
I walked home. Prostitutes lined the streets like Caesar’s Roman Legions saluting my endeavors. I absorbed hours of an artist revealing his art-world likes and dislikes. It did not matter if it was the vodka or the smoke, I enjoyed the reveals, the revelations. I was able to relive the past few days of art-world royalty entering my mindset—Castelli, Warhol and Basquiat front and center. I was just a camera guy, but I felt I made a few captures I could talk about. I could privately celebrate a bit of art history.
Now, decades removed, I can do the dance I do when there is a bit of wind at my back.
There was no vast Nile River, towering Yosemite, or grand Chihuahuan Desert. There was a mere, intimate, vulnerable pose. Pieces of time lay before me and behind me.
“There is no present or future
—only the past, happening
over and over again—now.”
Eugene O’Neill, A Moon For the Misbegotten
