It’s a busy week for the GV Historic Society:<\/p>\n
T’row evening it places a commemorative plaque on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s former studio\/ home on Great Jones Street. It’s a praiseworthy thing to do, but nevertheless there are so many layers of irony to this. Jean would scoff and be pleased–he was a renegade but also desperate for official approval. He was cannibalized by the art world–and he avidly submitted himself to be devoured. GVHS, of course, is a much gentler seal of approval.<\/p>\n
I went to high school with him at City-as-School, a public alternative high in Brooklyn, just across Court Street from Brooklyn Heights. I often think of him when I go to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a few blocks away from the brownstone where he lived with his family.<\/p>\n
Jean was a very strange person. I want to look up something one of our teachers said soon after he died in 1988.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s a busy week for the GV Historic Society: T’row evening it places a commemorative plaque on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s former studio\/ home on Great Jones Street. It’s a praiseworthy thing to do, but nevertheless there are so many layers of … Continue reading