Photo Courtesy: Sean M.

  SELECTIONS FROM:  

Phoebe Hoban’s,

“BASQUIAT:A Quick Killing In Art”

JEF BRETSCHNEIDER

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT

PUBLIC ADDRESS SHOW

Annina Nosei Gallery

NEW YORK

1981

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Excerpt from Phoebe Hoban’s, “A Quick Killing In Art”

The day after the show, Jean-Michel, who had been up all night partying, rode out to Brooklyn in a limo with two friends, musician Arto Lindsay and Jeff Bretschneider.  “"It was about six-thirty and I was getting dressed,”" says Gerard Basquiat. "“Jean-Michel was wearing a pin-striped suit and he came into the kitchen and he said, ‘Papa, I’ve made it.’ And he gave his younger sister Jeanine a pocketful of money.”"

Recalls Bretschneider, "“He went in and gave money to his father, and he was very concerned about his sister. He went there to park the limo out in front, to walk in with his clothes, and to show his father he had made some money. But I know he walked out of there feeling really empty. Whatever he went back for, it wasn't there.”" 

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JEF BRETSCHNEIDER

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT 

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

LOS ANGELES

MARCH 1983

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Excerpt from Phoebe Hoban’s, “A Quick Killing In Art”

The opening itself was glamorous even by Hollywood standards. “It’s like a Hollywood premiere …all this energy and vitality,” Irving Blum told the gossip columnist of The Hollywood Reporter. He was in town with Roy Lichtenstein. Also present were Gene Kelly, Diandra Douglas, and producer Steve Tisch.

“"It was a wonderful Spring evening in Los Angeles",” reminisces Jef Bretschneider, who flew out to California for the occasion. "“It was a huge, garage like space, swarming with people. I went with John Lurie and it was a fucking mob scene. Like a lot of openings in the eighties, it was not about what work was on the walls, but which people were in the room."”

Bretschneider taped the event for posterity. "“I decided to videotape peoples reactions to Jean'’s work. One young couple told me it was the biggest con they ever saw. Another guy told me he was one of Jean-Michel’s best friends. I had never seen him before, but people were already saying they were ‘a friend of the artist.’ I met another woman who said she had a friend who owned five Basquiats. Five Basquiats! One for each home! Shenge [a friend who would later become one of Basquiat’s assistants] was rolling joints in the office, where Jean was hanging out. Suddenly, Gagosian comes in with Roy Lichtenstein, this icon, and introduces him to Jean."”

When Basquiat took off for the private dinner after the show, Bretschneider left too. But, it seemed, Jean did not intend to include his New York friends." “I saw Larry’s Mercedes pull up beside my rental car,” says Bretschneider. “And I looked at Jean and we exchanged smiles. Then they just pulled away. Jean and Larry and Larry’s beautiful girlfriend. Jean was already moving up the ladder."

JEF BRETSCHNEIDER

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT 

MARY BOONE GALLERY

NEW YORK

MAY 1984

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Excerpt from Phoebe Hoban’s, “A Quick Killing In Art”

“Basquiat’s first show at Mary Boone, which opened on May 5, 1984, was a huge success, despite the fact that Boone herself felt that it had been rushed. " “It was supposed to be in the fall of 1985, but then Julian (Schnabel) left, and I thought I needed something really energetic at that point,"” she says. " “Usually I don’t do a show with an artist immediately, not until I’ve already created a market for the work. So it was a very last-minute decision."”

Everyone showed up at the opening, including the artist’s father (Gerard), who seemed to appreciate his son’s work only in public, and Andy Warhol. Recalls Jef Bretschneider, " “Jean had moved into blue-chip status. Andy was standing in the entrance of the gallery, and he stood there the entire length of the show. It was a barometer to where Jean was in the art world. But the paintings were more like a wallpaper version of his work. The opening was a circus. The Day of the Locusts. People were pushing up against this velvet rope that separated Jean-Michel from the thronging mass, and Jean-Michel was letting in whoever he thought was appropriate. Some woman offered Jean her baby, and he lifted it up with his arms above him, and looked at us with a big smile. I'’ll never forget that.”"

JEF BRETSCHNEIDER

165 W 23rd STREET NYC

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Excerpt from Phoebe Hoban’s, “A Quick Killing In Art”

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Jef Bretschneider lived on Twenty-third Street and Seventh Avenue; “between the Chelsea Hotel and Squat Theater,” those were the directions he’d give first time visitors. Bretschneider’s apartment served as a kind of drug den and cross-cultural salon of the early-eighties, After Club 57, after the Mudd Club, after the last after-hours joint had wound down, a group of regulars would congregate in Bretschneider’s place and hang out until it was time to start the club crawl again. John Sex, John Lurie, Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, Henry Geldzahler, Billy Idol, Michael Stewart, Cookie Mueller, Klaus Nomi, Rammellzee, Fab 5 Freddy---the list sounds like a downtown social register." “Nobody worked,”" explained Bretschneider, himself a kid from the suburbs." “Everybody seemed to have underground incomes.”"

Basquiat left a number of paintings and drawings at Bretschneider’s apartment, and asked him to try to sell them to David Bowie. Every day, he would show up with a friend, musician Arto Lindsay, for hours of coke snorting, "“Whenever I got a new shipment of coke,"” said Bretschneider," “I would invite them for a taste-test. We’d sit listening to new music then go out to the clubs. We never discussed art." (Lindsay says with amusement that this is a slight exaggeration of their activities.)

One time Basquiat came over to Bretschneider’s and brought Nosei with him." “I thought it was strange and unorthodox to bring this older woman over."” said Bretschneider." “But she came in and was fascinated with the place. She said it reminded her of the sixties."