'Immeasurable' Impact Of Jean-Michel Basquiat On Exhibit At The Brant Foundation

Chances are you've seen some kid somewhere wearing a Jean-Michel Basquiat t-shirt whether you knew it at the time or not. It likely featured a crown with his name scrawled in all caps underneath.

Chances are you've also never actually seen one of his paintings in person.

And chances are you will not have another opportunity again like the one being presented now through May 15 at The Brant Foundation in New York City's East Village to see so many of his best works in one place at one time.

Basquiat began his career as a graffiti artist before rocketing to international contemporary art superstardom in the 1980s, dying of an accidental drug overdose in 1988 at 27-years-old.

An early death naturally limited his artistic output. His background with graffiti and being a black man resulted in museums turning up their noses at his work when it was still affordable. Private collectors, like Peter Brant, namesake of The Brant Foundation, however, flocked to him, driving up his prices.


By the time museums had caught on, it was too late.

As a result of these unique circumstances, Basquiat's art proves exceedingly difficult to find in public collections making this exhibit, Jean-Michael Basquiat, all the more rare.

If you've never seen a work by Basquiat in person, you are in for a treat.

"I think the experience of seeing a Basquiat work in person is immeasurable," The Art Newspaper reporter Gabriella Angeleti, who has seen the exhibit, said. "It has an immense energy that almost dwarfs the viewer. It's an emotional experience and that's something hard to translate when you view the work through a screen or a book."

In 2017, Basquiat dethroned Andy Warhol, a mentor and admirer, as the most expensive American artist at auction when a Japanese billionaire purchased his Untitled (1982) at a Sotheby's auction for $110.4 million including buyer's premium.

"It's interesting to stand in front of Untitled, (1982), for example, and reflect on what Basquiat would have made of the whole circus around his work if he were still creating today," Angeleti said.

Advance tickets for Jean-Michel Basquiat have long been sold out. A limited number of same-day tickets are available. Contact The Brant Foundation at ticketsnyc@brantfoundation.org to have your name added to a waitlist. Each day the foundation accommodates people on the waitlists for entry on a first-come, first-serve basis. Walk-ins will not be permitted.

Basquiat fever, hot as ever three decades after his passing, has had an unusual effect on the art world and art-admiring public, with a potential silver lining for fans according to Angeleti.

Joe Beef and the Excesses of Restaurant Culture

For Americans living through turbulent times, Canada can seem like a refuge. The Montreal chef David McMillan figures it doesn't hurt for Canadians to have a getaway plan, too. Since 2012, he's owned a lakeside cabin in the Laurentian Mountains, accessible only by boat. It's equipped with solar power, fishing rods and rifles, and enough dried provisions to last a year. McMillan, who has three young daughters, told me, "If anything is weird, I could grab everybody and head up there." The cabin was an inspiration for "Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse," McMillan's second cookbook with Frédéric Morin, his partner in five Montreal restaurants, including Joe Beef. Published late last year, and co-written with Meredith Erickson, a cookbook author who was one of Joe Beef's first servers, the new book is in part a tongue-in-cheek survivalist's manual, with instructions for building a subterranean bunker, making hardtack, and growing endive in darkness. By "apocalypse," the authors mean a range of modern ills, from the "constant noise" of social media to the threat of nuclear war. "We don't want to just survive," Erickson writes. "We want to live it out in full Burgundy style." To that end, the book also collects more than a hundred of the chefs' recipes, including a tater-tot galette, sweetbreads cooked with charcoal and licorice, and a rendition of jambon persillé, a Burgundian charcuterie of ham suspended in parsleyed jelly.

Joe Beef, which opened in 2005, is McMillan and Morin's first and best-known restaurant. It specializes in ambitious but unfussy French cooking—no white tablecloths, no minimalist dishes sprinkled with microgreens or gold leaf. Situated in the former industrial neighborhood of Little Burgundy, near the Lachine Canal, the restaurant has the feel of a ragtag bistro, with vintage furniture and stuffed animal heads mounted on the walls. The menu, written only on chalkboards, in French, is defined by exuberant immoderation, a blend of the haute and the gluttonous. On a given night, it might include a traditional foie-gras torchon or a sandwich of foie gras on white bread; tartare of raw duck, venison, or horsemeat; and a hulking strip steak topped with cheese curds—a Québécois staple—or fat links of boudin noir. Often, it includes dishes that aren't French at all: skate schnitzel, porchetta, barbecued ribs cooked in the back-yard smoker. Diners willing to spend at least a hundred dollars apiece can forgo ordering and let the kitchen stuff them with a dozen courses of its choosing. The food writer John Birdsall once published an ecstatic piece on the site First We Feast titled "I Puked at Joe Beef and It Made Me a Better Man."

For a long time, McMillan and Morin made a point of living the experience that they were selling. McMillan was known for drinking with his customers, and then downing bottles of wine long after dinner service was over. The chefs' spirit of extravagance helped make Joe Beef a success. In 2007, they opened Liverpool House, two doors down, to accommodate Joe Beef overflow; four years later, they expanded Joe Beef into an adjacent space, doubling its capacity. And, a couple of years after that, they opened a wine bar, Le Vin Papillon, two doors down from Liverpool House. Today, they employ a hundred and fifty people. But their ethos of excess proved unsustainable. In an essay for Bon Appétit, in February, McMillan wrote, "The community of people I surrounded myself with ate and drank like Vikings. It worked well in my twenties. It worked well in my thirties. It started to unravel when I was forty. I couldn't shut it off."