You Can Now Take a Stroll Down Jean-Michel Basquiat Way in New York City
A stretch of lower Manhattan has been named in honor of the iconic artist, who rented a studio there from Andy Warhol between 1983 and 1988
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A stretch of Great Jones Street in downtown Manhattan has been officially named Jean-Michel Basquiat Way. The street includes the second-floor warehouse that Basquiat rented from Andy Warhol, where the artist lived and worked from 1983 until his death in 1988.
The change recognizes Basquiat’s legacy as a “visionary Black artist who helped redefine modern art through his bold, expressive and socially conscious work,” says the New York City Council in a statement, per Hyperallergic’s Isa Farfan.
On October 21, in an official ceremony held by the city council and the Basquiat estate, the sign for Jean-Michel Basquiat Way was installed below a Great Jones Street sign. Officials are calling the change a “co-naming” rather than a “renaming,” allowing the street to retain multiple names.
“I think he’d feel so acknowledged and honored, and I think he would be thrilled,” Lisane Basquiat, the late artist’s sister, tells ABC7’s CeFaan Kim.
Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat had his first brush with fame at 17, when SAMO, the tag he graffitied around lower Manhattan with his friend Al Diaz, was written up in a 1978 article in the Village Voice.
The art world started paying attention to his graffiti-inspired paintings in the early 1980s; he sold his first painting to Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, for $200. He became one of the youngest artists ever to participate in Documenta, a major art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and in 1983 he exhibited at the Whitney Biennial.
In 1982, Basquiat was formally introduced to Warhol, and the two struck up a close friendship and creative partnership. The following year, Basquiat leased the space at 57 Great Jones Street from Warhol.
Quick fact: Basquiat’s studio at 57 Great Jones Street
In 2023, actress Angelina Jolie bought the property, which is now home to Atelier Jolie, an art center with a gallery and a cafe.
“The space [at 57 Great Jones Street] served as his home and studio during some of the most prolific years of his career, anchoring him in a neighborhood that was at the heart of New York’s creative energy in the 1980s,” says the city council, per ARTnews’ Tessa Solomon.
The loft on Great Jones was where Basquiat made a lot of his work in the latter half of his career. It was also where he died of a heroin overdose at just 27.
Basquiat is buried at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, which hosted an evening of art, poetry and music in his honor in 2023. His artistic legacy still looms large in the minds of creatives everywhere, especially in New York City. In 2022, he was the inspiration for The Collaboration, a Broadway play that explored the partnership between Basquiat and Warhol.
“I feel like he changed the culture,” Basquiat’s nephew, Raymond Joseph Basquiat, tells ABC7. “I think art had a certain way of [looking] before and now it has a different culture. And it looks good.”