During the mid 1980s, 57 Great Jones Street was the house and studio of neo-expressionist painter and enfant terrible of the art world, Jean Michel Basquiat. He rented the space from his friend and mentor, Andy Warhol in 1983 and stayed until his eventual death there of an overdose in August, 1988. Before this loft became the harbor for Basquiat’s reclusive lifestyle as an addict, it was an emblem of his penchant for high living. Here, Basquiat would paint in Armani suits, and discard them as they collected splatter, He threw legendary parties here, hosting friends like Julian Schnabel, fellow graffiti artist Keith Haring and his one-time girlfriend, Madonna. At the height of his artistic stardom in 1984, his reputation suffered from the effects of a celebrity lifestyle that had nothing to do with his art. Drawn to the image of the genius as outsider, Basquiat once said that “the only artists who matter die young.” His paintings, which often feature skeletal figures depicted in a primitive style, betray this preoccupation with mortality. Despite a cocaine-fueled ability to produce brilliant works rapidly, Basquiat’s addictions became debilitating in the two years leading up to his death. Warhol had died late in 1986, and Basquiat took the news hard. Warhol had acted as a father figure to Basquiat, discouraging his friend’s excesses and influencing his art. Basquiat’s relationship to his actual father, Gerard Basquiat, had been troubled, estranged and obsessive.

By 1988, Basquiat boasted he was using a hundred bags of heroin a day. In a final attempt to get clean in the spring of 1988, Basquiat spent a stint in Hawaii where he worked in a restaurant and fished for cash. His girlfriend, who would ultimately discover him dead in his bathtub back in New York, tried to persuade him to stay there. She promised to send him art supplies, but Basquiat grew bored and returned to New York. In the summer of 1988, Basquiat slept through the day in this loft, which despite its airy appearance, was stifling since Basquiat refused to open the windows. He rarely left except for reported excursions to the lower east side, presumably to replenish his supply. On the evening of August 12th, his twenty-two year old girlfriend, braving the heat to check on him, ventured upstairs and found him dead. She and two former art dealers rushed Basquiat to the hospital too late. He was pronounced dead of “acute mixed drug intoxication.”