Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement Page A

understood how to do this. He had great respect for people who could improve their lot in life. I think that this is also what he loved about Madonna. And also why he loved Andy Warhol. Jean greatly respected Warhol because he was so famous and had such an interesting life and because he hung out with so many famous people. But deep down Jean thought he was a much more talented artist than any of them. Jean really believed that he was a great artist.
    As for Keith Haring, they were friends. Jean went back and forth with him: friends and not friends. Jean had very mixed feelings about Keith’s work. He loved it that Keith gave the graffiti artists an open door. But, at the same time, he felt that Keith’s work was a bit contrived. Jean once said to me that it was “formula art” and that Keith had found a good thing, that he just did it over and over again. Jean resented it, though—thatit took a white guy to bring graffiti to SoHo. Keith hung around with black and Puerto Rican graffiti artists and had a lot of them collaborate on his work, especially a guy called LA2. It was Keith that really made the graffiti artists legitimate. I think his influence in this was greater than Jean’s.
    Jean was very nervous about how he appeared all the time and was always thinking of strategies. If Jean made the wrong move it was much more dangerous than if Keith made the wrong move. Jean was the first black to be seen as a legitimate artist in the white art world. He had to secure his own place before he could help the graffiti artists. This is why he did the Fun Gallery show. This gallery was owned by Patti Astor in the East Village. Jean had already shown his work in SoHo. He did this show to demonstrate his solidarity with the graffiti artists. It was also a very hip show. Jean would only put himself out for others if it also helped his own career.

INSIDE A TELEPHONE BOOTH
    Suzanne spends a month living with friends and then moves back into her own apartment that she had sublet for a year. The place is covered with paintings Jean-Michel gave to Suzanne. She thinks it looks like a shrine. Even the refrigerator is covered with his doodles.
    She takes everything down. She throws some drawings and paintings out of the window and they fall on the roof below. The next day someone cleans the roof and everything is thrown out.
    Suzanne makes up a spell. She places four “Venus” paintings in a plastic garbage bag. She buys a can of lighter fluid. It is midnight. She walks to Jean-Michel’s loft taking three steps at a time and then turning around three times. She does this until she gets there. It takes her an hour and makes her very dizzy.
    On the sidewalk in front of Jean-Michel’s loft she pours lighter fluid on the paintings and sets them on fire. It makes a small bonfire.
    Jean-Michel looks out of the window to the street below and yells, “Suzanne, what are you doing?”
    She hides inside a telephone booth.
    Jean-Michel yells out once more, “Suzanne, I can see you.
Niña
, what are you doing?”
    She does not answer. Her heart beats fast like a chicken heart. AAAAAAEEEEEEAAAAEEEE.

L.A.
    The spells don’t work. The girl sleeps with ten different boys in two weeks and it doesn’t work. She kisses a girl at the Pyramid Club and nothing changes.
    Suzanne packs her clothes and puts her heroin inside her hair. Jean-Michel sends her a first-class ticket to L.A.
    On the airplane she sits beside the country-western singer Mac Davis. He is wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a belt of matching lizard skin. It makes Suzanne giggle.
    She gets up and goes to the bathroom and sniffs some heroin and puts on some more red lipstick.
    If the airplane crashes she does not care.
    Jean, Rammellzee and Toxic were at the airport to greet me. We drove in a pickup truck on the freeway to Larry Gagosian’s house in Venice. Jean was living in Larry’s house. Jean had a studio for painting on the ground floor with a bed in the middle of the room.