Jean-Michel Basquiat died on 12 August 1988, at 27, of a heroin overdose in his loft and studio at 57 Great Jones Street, in lower Manhattan. His girlfriend, Kelle Inman, found him unresponsive that afternoon.
The building was a former stable that belonged to Andy Warhol, his friend and landlord. A plaque put up on the front in 2016 says he lived and worked there from 1983 to 1988.
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"Overdose" is the word the accounts use, and it suggests a man giving in. His last summer looks different. Basquiat had left New York for Hawaii to withdraw from drugs, and he came back that summer. Friends who saw him thought he looked well. The writer Glenn O'Brien remembered a phone call in which Basquiat said he was feeling really good.
He died ten days before a trip meant to cure his addiction. The usual summary, a young star undone by drugs and by the loss of Warhol, leaves that out. A man with a cure on his calendar has not stopped trying, and I find that harder to read as a surrender.
What You'll Discover
What the record never confirmed.
Where the trip was meant to take him.
What losing Warhol took away.
What a break from heroin can do.
Who spoke at his funeral.