A New Exhibit is Bringing Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Earliest Works to Bed-Stuy

By Michael Gonik

Before his assorted canvases were collected for status, Jean-Michel Basquiat was an archetypal artist’s artist, hustling by day, painting and tagging up walls and trains by night. It’s an era of his career not documented quite as thoroughly as others. Many of the late painter’s works that have broken records at auction—going for seven, eight, and even nine figures over the last decade—are from later in his life.

But a new exhibit at The Bishop Gallery in Bed-Stuy’s Pfizer building will offer a rare glimpse at those precious pre-fame years, along with some of Basquiat’s earliest known works. The show, aptly and lovingly titled Our Friend, Jean: Early Works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, features paintings, photographs, sketches, and myriad representations of a Basquiat not established, but still on the come-up from 1979 to 1980. Works included in the show are mostly from the collection of Alexis Adler, a former lover and roommate of Basquiat’s at the time, with intimate insight into the life of an artist who barely got his flowers while he was living.

The show has a limited run, starting on May 13 and closing on May 17, but it marks the launch of Bishop Arts & Research Center (BARC) initiative for the gallery, which will feature extensive programming, including panel discussions and film screenings that add some needed color from friends and collaborators. You can see precisely what will be on view, as well as the schedule for the exhibit’s subsequent bloc of programming, via The Bishop Gallery’s website.