35 years later, East Village resident auctioning off the work of her former lover, Basquiat

You may have read the story about longtime East Village resident Alexis Adler, a one-time girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1979, he "began transforming" her East Village apartment into "a living installation," including a wall mural featuring Olive Oyl. The two broke up the the following year, but Adler preserved his work.

With the help of several people, including Basquiat’s former assistant, Stephen Torton, Adler, a 57-year-old mother of two and an embryologist, is finally ready to put the work up for auction, the Post reports today.

"I couldn't hold onto everything, or leave it in a safe-deposit box," she said. "It’s not fair to Jean! It needs to get out into the world."

And about their relationship, from the article:

As Adler describes it, living together was less 'Barefoot in the Park' and more 'Desperately Seeking Susan'-meets-'The Odd Couple.'

They foraged for furniture off the streets and lived on eggs, grits and cereal. He gave her gifts of painted T-shirts; she brought home batteries to feed his cassette player.

All the while, he painted. Every flat surface was fair game.

"You'd get up in the morning and there was wet paint on the floor," she says. "From the brooms to the bathroom!" One day she came home with a gold lamé coat she bought in a thrift shop; by morning, he'd painted it pink, black and gray.

"I was a little upset," she concedes. But she got over it: That coat is one of the few things Basquiat made for her that she hasn’t put up for sale.

Basquiat's work will be on public display Saturday through March 28 at Christie's. Check it out here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A treasure trove of Basquiat in this East Village home

A treasure trove of Basquiat in this East Village home

ArtInfo has more about Alexis Adler, a one-time girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 1979, he "began transforming" her East Village apartment into "a living installation," including a wall mural featuring Olive Oyl. While the couple broke up a year later, Adler, one of the two supervisors of the Embryology Laboratory at NYU, never painted over his work.

We'll let ArtInfo pick up the narrative:

Obviously that turned out to be a wise decision — as was storing his notebooks, postcards, painted clothes, photographs, and drawings on yellow legal paper. Thirty years later, Adler has now begun to assemble a team of advisors to help sort through the material in preparation for a book on the collection and, in all likelihood, an exhibition and sale. "Part of the issue has been that I am a working biologist who has raised two kids on my own and have not had time or energy to deal with it," Adler said. "Now is the time, however."

Adler, who owns the apartment, is having someone from Fine Art Restoration refurnish and remove the wall... and is enlisting Basquiat’s former assistant, Stephen Torton, to rep her in any possible future sales.

Regardless, Adler is in no hurry. She says she is financially secure and has already waited 30 years, after all. "I just want to show it," she said. Her two children are now grown and she has a boyfriend who lives uptown, which means that these days her cats are the main witnesses to the mural. "And that’s a damn shame," she said, "because it’s a beautiful piece of art."

You can read the whole ArtInfo post here.

Basquiat died in 1988 at age 27.

[Image via Wikipedia Commons]

Chico's Basquiat

Art Around the Park today... Photos by Bobby Williams.

New on 98 Bowery: Basquiat, Haring and ART/new york

[Photo via 98 Bowery]

Marc H. Miller has told me about another major addition to the 98Bowery site.

ART/new york; A Video Magazine on Art
(1981 - 1985)

Between 1981 and 1985, Miller and Paul Tschinkel collaborated on 17 ART/new york programs containing interviews with more then 50 artists. Miller wrote the narration and conducted the interviews. Tschinkel produced the series and worked the camera. The tapes were co-directed. (Tschinkel continues producing ART/new york programs.)

This is the story of the early years of a pioneering effort to provide video coverage of the New York art world. 98Bowery now includes segments from historic video programs with artist interviews and rare footage of exhibitions. Among the footage that you'll find:

-- Richard Serra & the Tilted Arc Controversy (1982-83)
-- John Ahearn, "We Are Family", Public Sculpture Dedication, South Bronx (1982-83)
-- Graffiti/ Post Graffiti – Opening at the Sidney Janis Gallery; Collaborative -- Painting Demonstration at the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1985)
-- Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Fun Gallery (1983)

There are also audio excerpts from interviews with Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Brice Marden, Nam June Paik and Cindy Sherman.


[Photo of Haring via 98Bowery]

As you can imagine, there are stories behind every video here... I asked Miller to share an anecdote about one of the interviews...

"The posting of the Jean-Michel Basquiat tape is in part an attempt to reclaim my credibility. It is the original program that Paul Tschinkel and I made in 1982 and it captures a 21-year-old Basquiat just as he was coming into his own. It includes footage from his phenomenal Fun Gallery exhibition and about four minutes from a 40- minute interview. This may have been the happiest and most upbeat moment of his life.

"Unfortunately, after Basquiat died in 1988, my interview with him was released in its entirety without any editing. In retrospect, this was an incredibly naive and foolish thing to do. Buried within the interview were a few clumsy moments and exchanges in which I played the devil's advocate to elicit lively responses. Over the years, these are the moments that have received the most attention. It's something I've had to live with. I'm just happy after 20 years that I can get the original tape back out there."

Here's an excerpt of ART/new york program no. 30A: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: An Interview, uploaded to YouTube by Tschinkel.



By the way, the new Basquiat documentary by Tamra Davis, "The Radiant Child," opens tomorrow at the Film Forum.



For further reading on EV Grieve:
Life at 98 Bowery: 1969-1989

Revisiting Punk Art

Q-and-A with Curt Hoppe: Living on the Bowery, finding inspiration and shooting Mr. Softee

Voices from 98 Bowery's past